Chapter 1 THE PEN

[ARIA POV] 

The phone screamed at 2:47 AM, shattering what little sleep I'd managed to scrape together.

I was already awake. I'm always awake these days—staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster, listening to Ethan's breathing beside me. Steady. Peaceful. The kind of sleep that belongs to people with clear consciences.

Marcus's name lit up my screen. I answered before the second ring.

"We got another one."

My stomach dropped. I didn't ask where. Didn't ask who. He'd send the location—he always did. I was already reaching for my coat when the text came through.

The Starlight Motel. Room 406.

I know that place. Everyone in the department knows it. Forty dollars a night, cash only, no questions asked. The kind of establishment where people go to do things they can't do at home—or to forget things they wish they hadn't done. The carpet is stained with decades of bad decisions, and the walls are thin enough to hear every transaction, every lie, every muffled sob.

Ethan didn't stir when I slid out of bed. He never does. I used to find that comforting—his ability to sleep through anything. Now it makes my skin crawl, though I can't explain why.

I dressed in the dark, my hands moving on autopilot: jeans, thermal shirt, shoulder holster, jacket. My detective's badge felt heavier than usual when I clipped it to my belt.

Before I left, I stood in the doorway of our bedroom, watching him. The moonlight caught the edge of his jaw, the curve of his shoulder. He looked like a photograph—perfectly still, perfectly composed. Beautiful in that unsettling way that makes you want to look closer and run away at the same time.

On his nightstand, a half-finished origami crane sat beside his reading glasses. White paper, intricate folds. He makes them when he can't sleep, he says. When his mind is too loud. He claims it helps him think.

I turned away and left.

The Starlight Motel squatted on the edge of the industrial district like a guilty secret. Four stories of peeling paint and flickering neon, the kind of place that looks worse in daylight. By the time I arrived, three patrol cars were already parked at awkward angles in the lot, their lights painting everything in nauseating blues and reds.

A young officer I didn't recognize was standing outside Room 406. His face had gone the color of old newspaper, and he was breathing through his mouth—shallow, rapid breaths that told me he'd already been inside.

"Detective Kane," I said, flashing my badge.

He nodded but didn't speak. Didn't need to. I've seen that look before—the one that says whatever's behind that door has fundamentally altered how he sees the world.

I snapped on latex gloves and pushed the door open.

The smell hit me first. Artificial lavender—the cheap kind that comes from those plug-in air fresheners people use to mask other smells. Underneath it: copper. Blood. And something else, something organic and wrong that I couldn't name but recognized instantly as death.

The room itself was unremarkable. Floral bedspread that had probably been here since the nineties. Nightstand with a scratched surface. A TV bolted to the wall. Water-stained ceiling tiles. The heater in the corner rattled like it had emphysema.

She was on the bed.

Blonde. Mid-thirties, maybe. Arranged carefully on her back with her arms crossed over her chest like she was sleeping. Peaceful, almost—if you ignored the savage slash across her throat. One clean cut, ear to ear. Professional. Precise. The kind of wound that speaks to knowledge, to practice, to someone who understands exactly where to cut and how deep.

The sheets beneath her had been smoothed. No wrinkles. No signs of struggle. Whoever did this had taken the time to make the bed after—to make everything neat, orderly, perfect.

And there, resting on her sternum like a blessing or a curse, was a small paper bird.

Origami. Folded with exact precision, each crease sharp enough to cut. A crane, wings spread mid-flight, its neck arched gracefully toward the ceiling.

Number five.

My chest constricted. I forced myself to breathe—slow, controlled, professional. This was a crime scene. I was a detective. I had a job to do.

I moved closer, documenting everything with my eyes before anyone else could contaminate the scene. The victim's hands were clean, nails manicured. No defensive wounds. She hadn't fought back—or hadn't had the chance to. Her eyes were closed. Someone had done that too, I realized. Closed her eyes after she died.

The nightstand held the usual motel debris: a room service menu, a notepad embossed with the motel's logo, a plastic cup still half-full of water. The lampshade was crooked. I made a mental note.

That's when I saw it.

A pen. Silver, elegant, expensive—absurdly out of place in this tomb of cheap furniture and cheaper lives.

My hand reached for it before my brain could stop me. I turned it slowly under the fluorescent light, and my world tilted sideways.

There was an engraving along the barrel. Small, delicate script that I knew better than my own heartbeat:

To the one who spins stories from shadows – A

The floor seemed to drop away beneath my feet.

Two years ago. The bookstore on Fifth Avenue, rain streaking the windows. Ethan's book signing—his first novel, the one that launched his career. I'd been so proud of him, so stupidly in love. I'd saved for weeks to buy that pen, had the engraving done at a specialty shop downtown.

He'd kissed me when I gave it to him. Kissed me like I'd handed him the moon.

"Thank you," he whispered into my mouth. "I'll treasure this forever."

And now it was here. In a crime scene. Next to a corpse.

My hands started shaking. I shoved them in my pockets to hide it.

Think, Aria. Think.

He could have lost it. Could have been pickpocketed. Could have loaned it to someone and forgotten. The engraving could be different—my eyes could be playing tricks in this terrible light.

I looked again.

The engraving was exactly as I remembered it. My own handwriting, translated into elegant script by the jeweler's machine.

"Detective?"

The young officer was standing in the doorway, looking uncertain.

I palmed the pen in one smooth motion and slid it into my jacket pocket. The metal was cold against my ribs, burning through the fabric like a brand.

"I'm fine," I heard myself say. My voice sounded normal. Steady. How was that possible when my entire world was fracturing? "Just give me a minute."

He retreated into the hallway.

I stood there, alone with the dead woman and the paper bird, and felt something fundamental shift inside me. This wasn't just another case anymore. This was personal. This was him.

No.

It couldn't be. It was a coincidence. It had to be.

But I don't believe in coincidences.

Forensics arrived twenty minutes later—Chen and Rodriguez, both good at their jobs, both mercifully quiet. They moved through the room with practiced efficiency, photographing, measuring, collecting. I watched them bag the origami crane, watched them swab the victim's hands, watched them do everything I should have been doing.

Marcus showed up an hour after that, looking like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. His tie was crooked, his collar unbuttoned, his eyes still puffy with sleep.

"Same as the others?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"Yes."

"Shit." He ran a hand through his hair. "That's five in three months. He's accelerating."

"I know."

"Any witnesses? Any cameras?"

"Nothing. Same as always." My voice sounded hollow even to my own ears.

Marcus studied me with those sharp brown eyes that missed nothing. "You okay, Kane? You look like hell."

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I said I'm fine, Marcus." The words came out harder than I intended.

He held up his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. Just checking."

I stayed until they removed the body. Stayed while the forensics team finished their work. Stayed while the sun began to crawl over the horizon, turning the sky from black to bruised purple to sickly gray.

When I finally got to my car, I sat in the driver's seat with the engine off, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white.

The pen was still in my pocket. Evidence. I should have logged it. Should have tagged it, photographed it, entered it into the chain of custody.

Instead, I'd stolen it from a crime scene.

I could still fix this. I could go back inside, tell Marcus I found it, make up some excuse about why I didn't mention it immediately. I could do the right thing.

But I didn't.

I started the car and drove home.

Ethan was still asleep when I walked in. The apartment was quiet, suffused with that peculiar stillness that belongs to early morning—when the world is holding its breath between night and day.

I stood in the bedroom doorway, watching him sleep. He looked innocent. Vulnerable. One arm thrown over his head, the other curled against his chest. His face was soft in sleep, all the sharp intelligence that usually animated his features temporarily at rest.

This was the man I loved. The man I'd built a life with. The man who brought me coffee in bed, who read his chapters aloud to me before anyone else saw them, who folded paper birds when he was anxious.

This was also the man whose pen I'd just found at a murder scene.

I couldn't reconcile the two.

I didn't sleep. Instead, I went to the kitchen and made coffee that tasted like ashes. The pen sat on the counter in front of me, gleaming accusingly under the overhead light.

Evidence.

Gift.

Coincidence.

Proof.

I didn't know which one it was. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty: everything had changed. And there was no going back.