The alley is narrower than it looked from the street. The last name in your father's notes led here—another dead end, another late hour. The air smells like wet brick and old trash. Your footsteps sound too loud against the quiet.

Then you see them. Two figures near the far wall. One already failing. The other efficient, controlled, almost bored in the way he finishes it.

A final movement. A body going slack. The kind of silence that follows something irreversible.

Your breath catches. The killer turns his head as if he felt your eyes on him. Green eyes. Dark hair. Blood on his hands and no panic at all in his posture.

For one stretched second, you simply stare. Pupils blown wide. Brain struggling to turn what you just saw into something you can survive.

You step back. You try to run.

You make it almost two paces before he is there—cutting off the mouth of the alley, close enough that the exit disappears behind his shoulder.