Detective Fog had her feet up on the desk of her inner office with the door closed, not a yard from where Athena's body had lain and where two bloodstains still marred the ugly carpet.

She swiped on her phone to unlock it, her fingers bumping over the abrasive surface of the cracked screen, and checked out the picture an unknown number had texted her. An hour ago, she had alerted the authorities, but they didn't seem very interested. Photos weren't corpses, and for all anyone knew, this one could be fake.

Of course, with real corpses disappearing every five minutes, photos might just be the next best thing.

Jimmy came in and brought Detective Fog a cup of tea, without even being asked and absent of sarcastic remarks. He saw the photo open on her screen. "Do you think it's her?" he asked.

"I've looked at it over and over again, and really, it doesn't look like her, but I can't say I think it's not her. She hasn't picked up her phone. I know she's mad at me, but I texted to ask if she was all right, and she hasn't returned my text. I need to focus on Paul: who killed him, who set me up to kill Nick Minardos. That's going to lead me to whatever happened to Cassandra. I hope."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Jimmy said, taking a sip of his own tea.

Detective Fog gave him a look that said, what is it, smart ass?

"Aren't you going to solve the murder of Senator Rex?"

The detective put her feet solidly on the floor. She called up a series of web browser tabs on her computer with Paul's Facebook page, as well as an album of useless shots from last night's crime scene. The photos were stale. She had captured them herself, returning to the scene of the crime since no one was likely to share with her the way she shared with them.

Over her shoulder, she replied, "Surely the authorities can take care of that one?"

"Yes, but if you solve it, you get the fat load of cash offered by Dexter Mars."

"You take this one, Jimmy. I'll promote you to full partner if you put the cops on the chase." The booted feet went right back up onto the desk, and Jimmy rubbed his hands together. An eager smile made it to his eyes as well.

But he wouldn't be a detective if he didn't wonder why Fog was so relaxed to let him take over the case. He watched her click around on her computer, Google Mapsing the area around the scene from last night and planning an evening of surveillance and grand hijinks.

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, he chose not to say anything but wondered halfheartedly whether Detective Fog had already solved the mystery she was letting him handle, whether this was just a test of his abilities. And he pondered whether he had it in him to solve puzzles the way she could, or whether he wasn't really cut out to be a detective — whether he was just missing something.

Mena Sigler sat in her own office with similar practical black boots on an entirely different desk, an antique teakwood, unlike Detective Fog's scratched dumpster-dived wooden desk.

She, too, had several windows and tabs open, including communications with Sofia Ioana and Hugo Zane and Dan Stamos. She was typing to Hugo with a certain level of fire and anger that she would have reserved even in person, some of it still slightly vague out of habit. Still, her knowledge of the encrypted communication software that she had watched being built gave her confidence. She had ordered it custom. She understood every line of the code, including the coding that deleted the encrypted message within seconds of the receiver's interaction with and thus assumed reading of the text. With confidence in the encryption, she allowed herself to be curt and honest.

The murder of Athena Rex made her very, very angry. And there wasn't even anything incriminating that needed to be encrypted. She wasn't behind the murder of Athena Rex, and that was what had her so pissed off.

The words she typed converted to gibberish in front of her. It was a fun mental exercise to keep track of what she had said. Like writing blind:

Although my primary police contact hasn't uncovered any incriminating evidence yet, I'm sure the Andreous made this look like us. It's sickening. We've extended our hands to them in friendship, given them more than one chance. I'm now more confident than ever that they set up our sweet Ghost to fall. Ghost was Sarah Kasick's codename. Is working with the police their best strategy to wage war? They can't keep up with our business, and they don't have the strength to fight us in the streets, so they have our people set up to be incarcerated?

She wanted to spit on the floor as if she had yelled those words and was now sickened at the thought as she waited for Zane's reply.

A minute later, his gibberish response came through.

Before her eyes, it converted into proper English, a feature she had requested out of a compulsion to see the encrypted text first to be sure it was working correctly. Zane may have disabled it on his end. The time she had to read it before it disappeared depended on the word count, but hitting the space bar would pause the delete feature if necessary.

Zane's words were calming, reassuring. He was sure no insult was meant by the murder that Sarah Kasick had not committed but for which there was substantial evidence to put her behind bars. It had been an accident. And he was sure the murder of Athena Rex was not a repeat performance, was not meant to incriminate anyone in their business.

What an idiot. Spineless. Weak. Naive.

She typed back furiously as soon as the message disappeared. I want to punish them. Today. They don't get to pick a fight with us and expect us not to declare war. I'm not talking about one of their officers or button men. I'm thinking Ari or Lacey. Those were not codenames, but the names of Ariadne and Lacey Andreou, two matriarchs of the family. You have five minutes to object, or I'm setting retribution in motion.

After furious typing, she threw the desk chair back and got up to walk around her office. It was a capacious area, taking up half of the upstairs of Daedalus Bar, intended perhaps for several desks while the other half would be necessary for filing and storage for the bar. Instead, she had commandeered it for a desk the size of a dining table, an even larger conference table with twenty chairs that usually sat empty, and a full and rather impressive bar and liquor collection.

The space had classy lighting, a little on the dark side to go with the bar atmosphere, but with bright designer lamps over the desk and conference table. It was always cold, the way she liked it, and it amused her when on cold San Francisco evenings, those she invited in shivered and resisted asking her to turn on the heat.

It was also plenty of room to pace.

Five minutes passed, and she sat down at the desk, but Zane's message hadn't come yet. The daggers she stared at the blank computer screen would have started a war with her co-boss himself had he been able to see the way she was looking at him.

One more minute passed, and a message so short came that she could almost guess what the words were before they were transcribed: Go ahead.

It didn't do to plan in anger, so Mena meditated for the next five minutes, then poured herself a calming glass of whisky, lit a cigarette, and sent a message inviting Jennifer Makris to come upstairs.

Thank you for reading Detective Fog. This book will update again on Friday.

Any opinions on Mena Sigler? First impressions are important ⭐️

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