Paddy's Wake
Chapter 14
Dark Patterns
The city pulsed with an undercurrent that Paddy could feel more than see. It wasn’t the sirens, the screaming, or the never-ending drone of chaos that bothered him—it was the quiet.
Too quiet.
Back in the squad room, Sal stood over a table layered with crime scene photos, maps, and hand-scrawled notes. Paddy dropped a black coffee beside her. “There, we’re even, for now.”
“Still digging through Cain’s flash drive?”
She nodded. “It’s deeper than we thought. There’s a pattern, but it’s... not normal.”
“Not normal is our new normal.”
Sal tapped a section of a crime map. “Look at these. Kray wasn’t working alone. His known associates, the ones Cain marked as ‘cleared,’ all turned up dead. Heart attacks, overdoses, suicides. All within six months of the original warehouse op.”
“They were tying up loose ends,” Paddy muttered. “Which means someone’s cleaning house.”
Sal clicked on a set of crime scene photos. Paddy recognized the location—one of the burned-out buildings from the East Side. A body charred beyond recognition, with only one eye intact.
She turned to him. “They weren’t random killings. They were sacrifices.”
Paddy stared at her. “You mean ritual.”
“Yeah. And the timing of each one matches the lunar calendar. Full moons. Solstices. Cross-quarter days.”
He sighed. “Jesus, Marry and Joseph.”
Sal said, “Why does that always come out sounding like just one word?”
“It is, in Irish.”
She looked up. “You still believe all this?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“I believe in evil,” he finally said. “And I believe it wears a lot of masks. One of them looked at me once through the eyes of a killer confessing to a room full of cops. Called himself a servant of the devil. Thought I could smell sulfur on his breath.”
Sal looked shaken but didn’t flinch. “You ever tell the department shrink that?”
Paddy snorted. “Yeah, and get reassigned to traffic? No thanks.”
Her phone buzzed. Text message. One word: Basement.
From an unlisted number.
She glanced at Paddy. “You get one too?”
He pulled his phone. Same message.
Basement.
Without a word, they headed down the stairs of the precinct. The basement was old, barely lit, musty. Once used for storage, now mostly forgotten.
At the far end, a light flickered. Someone had left an old evidence board up—covered in red string, crime scene photos, and notes written in a hand neither of them recognized.
“Jesus,” Paddy muttered. “It’s like a conspiracy theorist’s fever dream.”
“No,” Sal said. “It’s a warning.”
Pinned to the center of the board was a blown-up scan of one of the Ash Circle’s symbols—the same eye-within-a-triangle that had shown up in Kray’s safehouse.
Only this time, written beneath it in Latin:
In tenebris, illi dominabitur
“In the darkness, they reign,” Sal translated.
She stepped back, breath catching.
“What?” Paddy asked.
She pointed.
At the bottom corner of the board, barely visible beneath layers of paper, was a grainy photo.
Two figures, grainy, but unmistakable.
Paddy. And Sal.
Watching the crime scene. From two weeks ago.
Paddy grabbed the photo, heart pounding. It wasn’t a photo of them—it was a photo from their perspective. As if someone had been watching them from behind, unseen.
His voice was low. “They’ve been tracking us.”
Sal didn’t move. “Or guiding us.”
A door creaked behind them. They spun—but there was no one there.
Only the sound of wind in the old ventilation ducts. And a slow, steady drip from a rusted pipe.
Then the lights went out.
Total blackness.
Paddy’s instincts kicked in—he drew his Glock, pressed his back to Sal’s.
She whispered, “Paddy—”
“I know,” he said. “They want us afraid.”
From the shadows came a low voice. Not a shout. Not a threat. Just a whisper that slithered across the walls.
“The mirror breaks from within.”
The lights flicked back on.
The board was empty. The photo—gone.
Paddy looked at Sal. “You still think this is just a case?”
She shook her head. “No. This is a test.”
They didn’t know who had sent them the message. But they knew this much—
Whatever force was at play had just let them know they weren’t in control anymore.
And somewhere in the darkness, it was watching. Waiting.