Chapter 4 Paper Trails
Mira didn’t tell anyone about the call. Not Hal. Not the captain. And definitely not Marcus. The fewer people who knew, the safer she felt—or at least, the more control she pretended to have.
But the words wouldn’t leave her head: You’re not here to solve it… you’re here to finish it.
Finish what?
By morning, she was back at her desk, the precinct buzzing with its usual chaos. Phones ringing, detectives arguing over stale bagels, the faint smell of printer ink clogging the air. But Mira’s focus tunneled in on the file she had stolen from archives and the pages of the ledger she had risked everything to keep hidden.
Every line of ink seemed alive. Every entry pulsed like a heartbeat.
And her name—still there. Still waiting.
---
She opened her laptop and logged into the department’s financial system. A wall of numbers filled the screen—wire transfers, frozen accounts, insurance pay-outs. On any other day, it was noise. Today, it was a code.
She began cross-referencing. Dates in the ledger against transaction logs. Deaths against corporate collapses. At first, nothing. Just mismatched chaos.
Then, a pattern surfaced.
A sequence of shell companies—Aequitas Holdings, Novant Capital, Pale Fire LLC. Each had filed bankruptcy within weeks of a major unsolved death. The money never vanished. It moved. Off-shore, encrypted, buried in accounts under initials.
One set of initials chilled her: M.C.
Mira Cross.
She stared at the letters until her eyes burned. Was it coincidence? Or was her own identity being weaponized?
---
“Staring at spreadsheets won’t make them confess,” Hal muttered, dropping into the chair beside her. He sipped from his cup, oblivious to the storm brewing inside her.
“Ever wonder why half these cases never close?” she asked, keeping her tone flat.
“Because the city doesn’t care if some hedge fund crook skims a few million, as long as the donors keep writing checks,” Hal said. Then he squinted. “Why?”
She shut her laptop. “No reason.”
Lies tasted bitter, but truth would’ve been worse.
---
That night, Mira walked home instead of taking the train. The city streets shimmered with rain, neon signs reflecting like fractured glass on the pavement. Every shadow looked like it carried eyes.
When she reached her building, the lobby light flickered overhead. The mailboxes hummed with rust. She checked hers—mostly junk. But one envelope stood out.
No stamp. No return address. Just her name.
She carried it upstairs, locked the door, and slit it open with a kitchen knife.
Inside: a single sheet of paper.
Typed in stark black ink:
STOP DIGGING.
Her pulse hammered. She flipped the page. On the back was an image. Not a photograph, but a scan of something older, faded.
The ledger.
The same page she had seen. Her name circled in red.
Someone wanted her to know they were watching. That the ledger wasn’t lost. That she wasn’t the only one holding it.
---
Sleep came in fragments, broken by the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of pipes, the echo of that voice. By dawn, she was back at the precinct, darker circles under her eyes, adrenaline carrying her forward.
Marcus was waiting.
“Morning,” he said, too casual.
She brushed past him. “If this is about last night—”
“It is.” He stepped into her path, lowering his voice. “You need to leave this alone, Mira. You don’t know how deep it goes.”
Her fists clenched. “You sound like them.”
His eyes hardened. “I sound like someone who’s still alive.”
For a long moment, silence hung between them, taut as a wire.
“Tell me what you know,” she whispered.
Marcus shook his head. “Not here.” Then, softer: “Not ever.”
He walked away before she could answer, his back straight, his pace too controlled.
And Mira realized something that made her stomach knot—Marcus wasn’t warning her. He was following orders.
---
That afternoon, she pulled Juno Reyes aside.
The tech analyst’s desk was a chaos of soda cans, chip bags, and glowing monitors. “If the FBI ever raids us,” Juno said without looking up, “I’m pleading temporary insanity.”
“Juno.” Mira’s voice cut through. “I need you to dig into some companies. Quietly.”
Juno finally turned, one eyebrow raised. “Quietly isn’t usually your brand.”
“Then think of it as survival.”
She scribbled the shell company names on a sticky note. Juno scanned them, her grin fading. “Where did you get these?”
“Just run them.”
Juno hesitated, then spun back to the screen. Fingers flew over the keyboard, windows opening and closing in a blur. After several minutes, she whistled low.
“Well, damn. These aren’t just shell companies. They’re ghosts. Accounts open, collapse, reopen under different names. Money flows out but never back in. Classic laundering.”
“Where to?”
“Hard to say. Every trail vanishes offshore. But—” Juno leaned closer, squinting at a string of code. “This one has a marker. A cipher I’ve only seen in dark web forums.”
“Whose marker?” Mira asked.
Juno hesitated. “They call themselves The Canvas.”
The word hit Mira like a punch.
The Canvas.
She remembered Greaves’ smirk in the prison visitation room, his voice calm as marble: They’re completing my unfinished work.
Her throat tightened.
“Don’t dig any deeper,” Mira told Juno.
Juno frowned. “That’s usually my line.”
“I mean it.” Mira’s voice shook with urgency. “If you keep tracing this, they’ll know.”
“They already know.”
The weight of the words sank in.
The Canvas wasn’t hiding. They were watching. And Mira Cross was no longer investigating them.
She was on their ledger.
---
That night, Mira lit a cigarette she didn’t even remember buying. Smoke curled toward the ceiling as she sat cross-legged on her floor, ledger pages spread around her like a ritual.
Her name circled. Transactions tied to deaths. Shell companies feeding shadows.
The city outside buzzed, oblivious.
Inside, the paper trails whispered.
And Mira knew this was only the beginning.
She wasn’t hunting The Canvas.
The Canvas had already chosen her.
