Kylee stared at Justice's chest.

She didn't argue. She simply turned on her heel and walked away from the sofa, heading straight for the apartment door.

Justice cursed under his breath. He caught up to her in the hallway, his large hand wrapping firmly around her wrist.

"Kylee, stop," he said.

She yanked her arm back. Her eyes were like shards of ice. "No one in that building knows Dana's medical history better than I do. I know every baseline in her body."

"And if you do the autopsy, any defense lawyer will tear the report to shreds on the stand," Justice countered, his voice rising. "They will claim conflict of interest. They will throw out the evidence, and the bastard who did this will walk free."

The words hit Kylee's logic center like a hammer.

Her physical resistance stopped instantly.

She closed her eyes. She took one deep, controlled breath. When she opened her eyes again, the anger was gone, replaced by a terrifying, dead calm.

"Fine," Kylee said. "Transfer the body to Dr. Vance."

Justice let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He turned and waved down the hallway.

Detective Mickey Nowak, a young cop in a cheap suit, jogged over.

"Mickey, drive Dr. Mcdonald home," Justice ordered. "Make sure she stays there. Do not let her out of your sight tonight."

Kylee let out a short, humorless laugh. "This isn't protection, Justice. It's house arrest."

Justice didn't deny it. He just looked at her, his eyes heavy with warning, before turning back to the crime scene.

Kylee walked to the elevator. Mickey followed her like an anxious puppy.

They rode down and got into Mickey's beat-up Ford cruiser. The smell of stale fast food and cheap air freshener filled the cabin.

Mickey started the engine. The silence in the car was suffocating.

"Do you, uh, want to stop for some coffee?" Mickey asked, gripping the steering wheel tight.

Kylee didn't look at him. She stared out the passenger window at the blurring streetlights. "No."

Her brain was moving at a million miles an hour. She mapped out the timeline of Darius Cash and Dana's interactions in her head.

She turned her head, locking her piercing, analytical gaze onto Mickey. "Officer Nowak, if Darius Cash is the prime suspect, his financial footprint over the last week will be entirely digital. Pull up his peripheral banking flags on your terminal. Now."

Mickey glanced over, swallowing hard under the weight of her cold authority. "Doc, you know I shouldn't be running unauthorized queries on an active case..."

"I am not asking you to hack the mainframe, Mickey. I am instructing you to verify a suspect's digital heartbeat. If I am wrong, it takes two seconds. If I am right, you just saved the department a massive tactical error," Kylee stated, her voice devoid of any emotion, presenting pure, unadulterated logic.

Intimidated and outmatched, Mickey typed the query into his police dashboard.

He typed in Darius Cash's name.

The financial flags popped up. Darius owned a shell entertainment company. But what caught Kylee's eye was his personal spending.

For a billionaire who lived on his phone, Darius had zero credit card transactions in the last seven days. No food deliveries, no car services, no online purchases.

A tech mogul doesn't just stop using digital currency for a week.

"Take a screenshot of that financial dead zone," Kylee instructed softly, her eyes narrowing. "Send it directly to Justice's encrypted channel. Tell him to watch his six."

The Ford cruiser pulled up to the curb in front of Kylee's standalone house.

Mickey put the car in park and reached for his door handle.

Kylee unbuckled her seatbelt. She turned her head and locked eyes with Mickey.

"Stay in the car," she commanded, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Do not step one foot on my grass."

Mickey swallowed hard. He slowly pulled his hand away from the door handle and nodded.

Kylee got out. She walked up the concrete steps and unlocked her front door.

The house was pitch black.

She didn't turn on the lights. She walked straight to the kitchen island, grabbed a bottle of whiskey, and poured a heavy measure into a glass.

She drank it in one swallow. The alcohol burned its way down her throat, fracturing the perfect wall of calm she had built.

Her phone buzzed on the granite counter.

It was a text from Justice: Got it. Pinned his penthouse location. Moving in to breach.

Kylee gripped the edge of the counter. Her knuckles turned white. She walked to the front window, hiding in the shadows, and stared at the police cruiser parked outside.

She was waiting for the kill.

It was 2:00 AM.

Justice stood in the carpeted hallway outside Darius Cash's penthouse. He was strapped into a heavy tactical vest, his hand resting on the grip of his Glock.

He raised his left hand and gave two sharp chops in the air.

The SWAT officer beside him swung the heavy steel battering ram forward. It smashed into the custom wood door with a deafening crash.

The lock shattered. The door flew open.

"NYPD! Hands in the air!" the tactical team screamed, flooding into the foyer.

Justice stepped through the doorway.

Instantly, a smell hit him like a physical blow to the face.

It was a thick, sickly-sweet stench of rotting meat. It coated the back of his throat and made his stomach heave violently.

This wasn't a suspect apprehension. This was a tomb.

Justice tapped the comms unit on his helmet. "Masks on. Watch your step."

He pulled his gas mask over his face. The filtered air barely cut through the stench.

The penthouse was massive, lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. But the central air had been turned off. The apartment was a greenhouse, baking in the residual heat of the city, accelerating the decay.

Justice followed the smell down the long hallway.

He pushed open the ajar door to the master bedroom.

A cloud of green blowflies erupted into the air, buzzing furiously against the glass windows.

Justice shined his tactical flashlight onto the massive circular bed.

A male body lay in the center.

It was bloated to the point of bursting. The skin was a dark, mottled green, tight and shiny. The facial features were completely erased by the swelling.

Justice walked closer, his boots squishing slightly on the bodily fluids that had seeped into the mattress.

On the nightstand sat a framed photograph of Darius Cash.

Justice looked at the wrist of the corpse. A limited-edition Patek Philippe watch was cutting deep into the swollen, green flesh.

It was Darius.

Justice keyed his radio. "Dispatch, we have a DOA at the Cash residence. Get CSU and the ME down here now."

He backed out of the bedroom, needing to escape the flies.

In the living room, he found a massive glass liquor cabinet shattered across the floor. The pungent smell of dried whiskey mixed with the rot.

"Detective!" an officer called out from the study.

Justice walked over. The officer pointed his flashlight at the floor in front of an open wall safe.

Small, bloody footprints tracked across the hardwood. They were definitely female. The safe was completely empty.

Justice pulled out his phone. He stood in the middle of the putrid living room and dialed Kylee's number.

She picked up on the first ring. "Did you get him?" Her voice was cold and sharp.

Justice took a deep breath inside his mask. "Darius is dead, Kylee. Judging by the bloat and the smell, he's been dead for at least a week."

Silence stretched over the line. Five full seconds passed.

"That's impossible," Kylee finally said. Her brain was tearing the timeline apart. "If he's been dead a week, he couldn't have dropped his lighter in Dana's couch yesterday."

"Someone planted his stuff at Dana's place," Justice said. "They framed a dead man."

"I am coming to the scene. I need to see the body," Kylee demanded.

"No. Dr. Vance is already on his way. You stay put," Justice ordered.

The line went dead. Kylee had hung up on him.

Justice sighed, sliding the phone back into his pocket.

The CSU team arrived, their heavy boots tramping into the pristine penthouse. Dr. Vance walked in behind them, looking miserable as he smeared Vicks VapoRub under his nose.

Vance leaned over the bed. "Deep ligature marks around the neck," he mumbled. "Strangled."

Justice stared at the green corpse. This wasn't a crime of passion anymore. This was a labyrinth.

Suddenly, the radio on his shoulder crackled to life.

"All units, we have a 10-54 at the abandoned rail warehouse in Queens. Female victim."

Justice closed his eyes. The nightmare was just starting.

The morning mist clung to the cracked concrete of the abandoned warehouse in Queens.

Justice slammed his car door shut and walked toward the flashing red and blue lights of the patrol cruisers. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the damp wind.

He ducked under the tape and stepped into the cavernous, echoing space.

In the exact center of the empty warehouse sat a rusted metal folding chair.

A woman's body was tied to it.

Justice walked up to her. She was wearing a pristine, white Chanel haute couture suit. The expensive fabric looked grotesque against the oil stains and garbage littering the floor.

Her head was slumped forward. The back of her skull had been caved in by a heavy blunt object. Thick, black blood had dried down her neck and ruined the white collar of her jacket.

Justice recognized her immediately. It was Cinnamon Coleman, the runway model whose face had been plastered across every tabloid last month.

He looked down. Near the toe of her designer heel, a crumpled piece of hotel stationery lay on the ground.

Justice put on a latex glove and flattened the paper.

Written in bright red lipstick was a single word: LIAR.

Justice's mind snapped the puzzle pieces together. The tabloids had run a massive expose three weeks ago. Cinnamon Coleman was the secret mistress of Damion Hatfield.

Damion Hatfield was Dana's boyfriend—the one whose ironclad alibi in London had kept him off Justice’s radar until now.

Justice grabbed his radio. "Dispatch, I need a city-wide APB on Damion Hatfield. Flag his plates, his credit cards, his passport. Now."

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Dr. Vance.

"Justice," Vance said, his voice tight. "I just pumped Darius Cash's stomach. We found a long strand of blonde hair in the gastric contents. I ran a rapid DNA test. It’s a match for the DNA profile on file for the missing Cinnamon Coleman."

Justice stared at the dead model in the chair. Cinnamon was in Darius's apartment. Cinnamon killed Darius. And now someone had killed Cinnamon.

"Thanks, Doc," Justice said, hanging up.

He turned to the patrol officers. "Hold the scene. I'm going to Damion's house."

An hour later, the SWAT armored truck smashed through the wrought-iron gates of Damion Hatfield's sprawling Long Island estate.

Justice kicked the front door open. The house was dead quiet.

They cleared the first floor and moved up the sweeping staircase.

Justice pushed open the double doors to the master bathroom.

Faint streaks of dried condensation still clung to the mirrors.

In the center of the room was a massive, sunken marble bathtub.

Damion Hatfield was submerged in the water, completely naked. The surface of the water was entirely covered in dark red rose petals.

Damion's skin was a ghastly, translucent white. His eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling.

On the wide marble ledge of the tub sat an empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills and a crystal tumbler holding a splash of amber whiskey.

Justice reached into the water and pressed two fingers against Damion's carotid artery.

The flesh was cold. Rigor mortis had already set into his jaw.

Justice looked up. On the steam-fogged mirror above the sink, someone had written a message using a bar of soap.

GAME OVER.

Justice stepped back. His chest heaved.

Dana. Darius. Cinnamon. Damion.

Every single person connected to this web was dead. The suspects had all become victims. The circle was closed, and there was no one left to arrest.

A wave of absolute, suffocating frustration crashed over Justice.

He pulled back his fist and slammed it into the tiled wall. The skin on his knuckles split open, leaving a smear of blood on the white porcelain.

His phone started buzzing frantically. The precinct group chat was exploding. The media had already dubbed it the "Manhattan Ring of Death."

Justice walked out of the bathroom, down the stairs, and out the front door.

He stood on the manicured lawn, pulled a cigarette from his pocket, and lit it with shaking hands. He took a deep drag, letting the smoke burn his lungs.

A sleek, black sedan pulled into the driveway, stopping inches from Justice's boots.

The tinted window rolled down.

Internal Affairs Detective Leland Parris stared out at him, a smug, dangerous smile playing on his lips.

"Rough morning, Potts?" Leland asked.