The rain painted the cracked windows of the old subway repair shed, where rusted train cars sat like corpses in forgotten coffins. Eddie Grimes, ex-union fixer turned part-time locksmith, scanned the oily light pooling from a workbench lamp. A dead man lay slumped against a wall, a bloody screwdriver clenched in his hand. The guy had been a union bookkeeper. Eddie recognized the face, but not the faint trace of betrayal it bore.
“Third one this week,” murmured Detective Kyra Sloane, leaning against a defunct train car. Her badge gleamed, but her tone was flatter than the ashes of Eddie’s half-smoked cigarette. “Your people were a family once.”
Family didn’t stab you twice in the chest. “Not mine anymore,” Eddie replied, though the ache in his knuckles said otherwise. He’d opened this place tonight with his old union key—a key he told himself he’d buried, though it felt warm and accusing now in his pocket.
“Someone’s cleaning house.” Kyra’s eyes bored into him.
He nodded, unwilling to meet her suspicion. Deep down, he knew who was behind this—Callum Hart, the only other person who’d carried keys and secrets in the union’s golden days. Eddie thought Callum was dead, long since consumed by his own greed. But ghosts didn’t leave fresh bruises, like the ones that now patterned Eddie’s ribs from an ambush last week.
“Leave this. Walk away,” Kyra warned.
But family meant debts. Some weren’t paid in money. Eddie slid that union key back into his palm and stared out into the rain, choosing a side.
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