Three days into their partnership, Kyla was beginning to understand Josh's rhythm. He liked his coffee black, always checked his weapon twice before leaving the station, and had a habit of drumming his fingers on the steering wheel when he was thinking hard about a case.
Right now, those fingers were working overtime.
"Four more burglaries in three days," Josh muttered, eyes fixed on the map spread across their dashboard. Red pins marked each location, forming a rough arc through the Westside district. "All the same M.O.—disabled security, cash only, in and out in under five minutes."
Kyla leaned closer, studying the pattern. "They're moving north. Each hit is about half a mile from the last one."
"Good eye." Josh looked at her with genuine appreciation. "If they keep this pattern, next target should be somewhere around... here." He tapped a section of the map near the old industrial district. "Problem is, there's not much up there. Couple of warehouses, a pawn shop, maybe a—"
"Wells Fargo branch," Kyla finished, pointing to a small marker. "Small one, but still a bank."
Josh's eyes widened. "They've been working up to something bigger. Testing their skills, perfecting their technique." He grabbed the radio. "We need to notify—"
"All units, be advised, silent alarm triggered at Wells Fargo, 1847 Industrial Way. Possible burglary in progress."
Josh and Kyla exchanged a look. Josh slammed the car into gear, tires squealing as they shot into traffic.
"Called it," Kyla said, already checking her sidearm.
"Let's hope we're not too late."
The bank sat in a quiet stretch of road, wedged between an auto repair shop and an abandoned textile factory. Two other patrol cars were already on scene, officers positioned behind their vehicles. Sergeant Chen stepped out as Josh and Kyla arrived.
"Reeves, Martinez. Two suspects inside, one hostage—bank teller. They've got the front door barricaded."
"Back entrance?" Josh asked.
"Loading dock. Martinez, you're with Officer Stevens on the back. Reeves, you're with me on the front. We go on my signal."
Kyla's pulse quickened as she followed Stevens around the building. The loading dock door was slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness beyond. Stevens positioned himself on one side, Kyla on the other, weapons drawn.
The radio crackled: "Go, go, go!"
They moved in sync, pushing through the door into a dim storage area. Boxes lined the walls, creating narrow corridors. Kyla could hear shouting from the main floor—Chen's voice, demanding the suspects surrender.
Then she heard something else. That strange humming sound Mr. Patel had described.
"Stevens, you hear that?"
Before he could answer, a figure burst from behind a stack of boxes. Kyla barely had time to register the black hoodie before the suspect was running toward the rear exit. Stevens gave chase, leaving Kyla to clear the rest of the storage area.
The humming grew louder. She followed the sound to a corner where the suspect had clearly been working—a laptop sat open on a crate, displaying lines of code she didn't understand. But next to it was something that made her stop cold.
A small, smooth stone that seemed to pulse with a faint blue light.
"Martinez! We need you up front!" Josh's voice echoed through the building.
Kyla grabbed the laptop and stone, shoving them into an evidence bag before rushing toward the main floor. She emerged to find both suspects on the ground, hands cuffed, with Josh and Chen standing over them. The teller, a young woman who couldn't have been older than twenty-five, was shaking but unharmed.
"Nice work," Chen said, nodding to his team. "Get these two processed. Reeves, Martinez, secure the scene and document everything."
As the other officers led the suspects away, Josh moved to check the damaged security system while Kyla examined the vault door. It was still locked, untouched.
"They didn't even try for the vault," she observed. "What were they after?"
"Same thing as all the others. Hit the drawers, grabbed the cash, maybe five grand total." Josh straightened up, wiping dust from his hands. "But look at this."
Another burn mark, identical to the one at the convenience store. This time it was on the security panel itself, the metal warped and twisted in that same precise pattern.
"Josh, I found something in the back." Kyla pulled out the evidence bag. "One of them was working on this laptop, and this... I don't know what this is."
Josh took the bag, holding the stone up to the light. The blue glow was still visible, pulsing like a slow heartbeat. His expression shifted from curiosity to something deeper—concern, maybe even recognition.
"We need to get this back to the lab," he said quietly. "And we don't mention it to anyone else yet. Not until we know what we're dealing with."
"Why? What do you think it is?"
"I don't know. But I've seen something like this before." He met her eyes. "Six months ago, right before I transferred to Tides. There was a case, an unsolved homicide in the warehouse district. The victim had one of these stones in his pocket. We never figured out what it was or where it came from. Case went cold."
Kyla felt a chill run down her spine. "You think these burglaries are connected to a murder?"
"I think we're looking at something a lot bigger than petty theft." Josh slipped the evidence bag into his jacket. "Let's finish up here and head back to the station. We've got research to do."
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of paperwork and witness statements. The suspects—two men in their thirties named Marcus Webb and David Ortiz—refused to say anything without lawyers present. But Kyla noticed something odd: both of them kept glancing at each other with what looked like fear in their eyes. Not fear of arrest, but fear of something else entirely.
By the time they returned to the station, the evening shift was arriving. Josh led Kyla to a quiet corner of the records room, where he pulled up the file on his old case.
"Victim's name was Gregory Chen—no relation to the Sergeant," Josh explained, opening a folder filled with crime scene photos. "Found in Warehouse 7 down by the docks. No obvious cause of death, no witnesses, no suspects. Just him and that stone."
Kyla studied the photos. The victim looked ordinary enough, maybe forty years old, wearing work clothes. But the expression on his face—even in death, it looked terrified.
"What did the coroner say?"
"Cardiac arrest brought on by extreme stress. But there was no reason for it. Chen was healthy, no heart problems, no drugs in his system. It was like he was literally scared to death."
"And the stone?"
"Sent to the lab for analysis. They couldn't identify the material. Not any known mineral or compound. Eventually it got filed away as a curiosity." Josh pulled out his phone, snapping photos of the file. "But now we've got another one, and it's connected to our burglary ring."
Kyla's mind was racing, trying to connect the dots. "So these guys are stealing money, but they're also collecting these stones. Which means the stones are worth something to someone."
"Or they're dangerous," Josh added grimly. "Either way, we need to figure out what they are before anyone else gets hurt."
They spent another hour poring over the files, looking for any other cases that might be connected. Kyla found two unsolved break-ins from eight months ago with similar burn marks, but no stones recovered. Josh discovered a missing persons report from last year—a geology professor from Tides University who vanished without a trace after claiming to have made a "revolutionary discovery."
By the time they called it a night, Kyla's head was spinning with questions and no answers. As they walked to their cars in the station parking lot, Josh paused.
"Hey, you did good today," he said. "Spotting that pattern, finding the laptop and stone. Most rookies would have missed that."
Kyla felt a warmth spread through her chest that had nothing to do with the compliment. "Thanks. You're not a bad partner yourself."
Josh grinned, and for the first time since they'd met, it reached his eyes. "Same time tomorrow? We've got a mystery to solve."
"Wouldn't miss it."
As she drove home through the quiet streets of Tides, Kyla couldn't shake the feeling that their investigation was about to take them somewhere unexpected. The glowing stone, the burn marks, the terrified victim—it all pointed to something beyond ordinary crime.
What she didn't know was that they were already being watched. In the shadows of the parking garage, a figure observed their cars leaving, eyes glowing the same eerie blue as the stone in Josh's evidence bag.
The hunt had begun.
End of Chapter 2