Chapter 6 Predator’s Wake
PREDATOR'S WAKE
DOMINIC
Ilooked at the mask sitting on my desk like evidence. Black silk, simple cut, the elastic stretched where I'd ripped it from his face.
He'd run. I'd chased. And by the time it came off, he was already moving, face turned away, rain and darkness swallowing any details before I could catch them.
But I had this. And I knew his build, his movements, the exact way he'd climbed that scaffolding like gravity was a suggestion.
The light made it look ordinary. Just fabric and elastic. Nothing that should matter. But I couldn't stop turning it over in my hands, couldn't stop thinking about the man.
My phone buzzed. Dmitri. I answered on the second ring.
“Tell me you found something,” I said.
“Footage pulled. You were right.” Dmitri's voice was clipped. “Same build, same movement pattern. He entered Eden at 10:19 using a stolen key card. Exited at 11:47. No name on file.”
“Where did he go after?”
“Lost him three blocks out. Too many blind spots. But I'm running facial recognition on what we have. Already sent it through to your email.”
“Good. Send anything else the moment you have it.”
He ended the call without ceremony. That was Dmitri.
I opened my laptop and pulled up the message.
The attachment loaded slowly — grainy footage from Eden's exterior camera showing the stranger without his mask.
Poor quality, but good enough. Sharp jaw.
High cheekbones. And eyes that didn't match, one darker than the other even in the black-and-white frame.
Heterochromia. Rare enough to be memorable. Useful for identification if you knew what to look for.
I forwarded the image to Luka with a single line:
Who is this?
His reply came back fast.
Give me an hour.
I spent that hour at Ravenswood's gym, working through routines that usually cleared my head and left me too tired to think about questions without answers.
A barbell loaded heavy enough to make my muscles scream.
Deadlifts until my grip failed. Pull-ups until my shoulders gave out.
Physical exhaustion standing in for the other kind.
It didn't work. I kept seeing those mismatched eyes, kept feeling the moment in the corridor when we'd collided and my instincts had screamed conflicting warnings I still didn't understand.
Luka called forty minutes later, not waiting for the full hour.
“Callahan Mercer,” he said, no preamble.
“Goes by Cal. Private investigator. Former detective, forced out three years ago under circumstances that smell like a frame job. Clean record before that. Decorated, even. Works solo now, takes cases nobody else wants. Reputation for being thorough and expensive. No known criminal associations. No obvious reason to be at Eden unless he was working.”
Private investigator. It explained the surveillance, the way he'd moved through Viktor's wedding like he belonged while watching exits and tracking targets.
It explained Eden, if he'd been following someone.
It explained everything except why his presence made my chest tight and my hands want to reach for things I'd learned not to touch.
“What kind of cases?” I asked.
“Corruption. White-collar crime. He's made enemies in high places. Interesting enemies.” A pause. “I'll send you the full file.”
I showered, dressed, tried to focus on the work Adrian actually paid me to do.
Security assessments. Background checks on potential business partners.
The careful architecture of protection that kept Ravenswood functioning and Viktor breathing and Adrian's empire operating without drawing attention it couldn't afford.
My mind kept circling back to Cal Mercer anyway. He was hunting something. Someone. Whatever it was had led him through Viktor's wedding and into Eden's private rooms with techniques suggesting he'd crossed every ethical line investigators were supposed to respect.
I needed to know why. Needed to understand what he was hunting and whether it posed a threat to the people I protected. Needed to map the shape of this variable before it became a problem I couldn't contain.
Luka called again at 1:17 p.m.
“You're not going to like this,” he said without preamble.
“Tell me anyway.”
“Mercer's been investigating several of the people who attended Viktor's wedding. I cross-referenced his known cases against the guest list. Twelve matches. All of them connected to legal corruption in some way. Sealed evidence. Disappeared witnesses. Cases that closed too fast.”
My jaw tightened. “Is Viktor a target?”
“No. Viktor's clean. But some of his guests aren't. And if Mercer's building a case that involves any of them, he might consider Viktor collateral damage.”
“Not acceptable.”
“Agreed. Which is why you need to find out what he's hunting before he drags Viktor into it.” A pause, weighted. “Mercer's last partner died three years ago. Same week Mercer lost his badge. Official report says accident. Mercer filed seventeen complaints saying otherwise. Nobody listened.”
“He thinks it was murder.”
“He knows it was murder. Difference being he can't prove it. And that kind of certainty without proof makes men dangerous.” Luka's voice carried a warning I recognised.
“Be careful with this one, Dom. He's not a civilian playing detective.
He's a professional who stopped caring about rules when the rules failed him.”
“Understood.”
I ended the call and sat with the file Luka sent me. Callahan Mercer. Thirty-eight years old. Former detective. Current ghost. Hunting corruption through London's elite with the focus of someone who had no intention of stopping.
I understood that focus. Lived it myself. The difference was I knew my sister was dead and I was looking for truth. Mercer's partner was dead and he was looking for revenge dressed up as justice.
Unpredictable. Willing to cross lines I'd respect under different circumstances and couldn't afford to tolerate when they threatened people under my protection.
I needed to talk to him. Face to face. Somewhere without witnesses or cameras or the careful protocols that governed places like Eden.
I just needed to find him first.
I found him at a coffee shop in Clerkenwell, three blocks away from a storage unit Luka's file flagged as his secondary workspace.
He sat at a window table with a laptop and coffee that had probably gone cold an hour ago, looking different in daylight — less polished than he'd been at the wedding, more real than he'd seemed in Eden's staged atmosphere. Just a man in dark clothes, working.
Except he wasn't as oblivious as he looked. His gaze flicked to the window every ninety seconds, scanning the street, checking approaches. He sat with his back to the wall and clear sight lines to both exits, posture that looked casual but could transition to movement in under a second.
He knew someone might be watching. The general awareness of prey who'd learned predators existed.
I waited across the street, patient. Patience was a weapon I'd spent years honing. I could hold position for hours if necessary, tracking movement, learning patterns, understanding the architecture of a target's routine until I knew where they'd be before they did.
When he left, I followed at distance — two car lengths back when he walked, staying in traffic when he caught the Tube. He moved through London with purpose and no hesitation, until he didn't.
His pattern shifted somewhere past Liverpool Street.
Small changes: an extra turn, a doubled-back route, the adjustments of a man who'd clocked a tail and was testing whether it was real or paranoia.
I stayed back, let him think he'd lost me, watched from doorways and reflective windows and the thousand small hiding places a city offered people who knew how to use them.
He led me east, into the maze between Shoreditch and Spitalfields where old buildings pressed close and alleys cut through blocks like veins. Foot traffic thinned, cameras grew fewer, the streets narrowing into something less forgiving.
Then he turned into an alley. Narrow. A dead-end visible thirty metres in.
I stopped at the mouth of it, calculating. This was deliberate — he'd chosen this ground, created the conditions for confrontation on his own terms.
Trap or invitation, I couldn't tell. I entered anyway.
He stood halfway down with his back to the dead-end wall, hands loose at his sides, weight balanced and ready to move. Those mismatched eyes tracked me as I approached.
“You're persistent,” he said. Voice steady. No fear. “I'll give you that.”
“You made it easy.” I stopped three metres away. “Almost like you wanted to be followed.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I was curious what kind of man spends his afternoon tailing a private investigator through London.”
“The kind who doesn't like mysteries on his territory.”
“Eden's not your territory. Neither is this alley.” He shifted slightly. “But here we are anyway.”
“Here we are.” I moved closer, one step, testing. “You going to tell me what you were doing at Eden? Or do I need to make this uncomfortable?”
“It's already uncomfortable. You're just deciding whether to make it violent.”
The alley pressed in from both sides, the dead-end boxing him in behind, the grey London sky doing nothing to relieve the pressure building in my chest.
“What's your name?” I asked.
“You already know my name. You've been digging into my background since last night.” His mouth curved. “Callahan Mercer.”
“Dominic Rourke.”
“I know.” He smiled then, sharp. “Adrian Calloway's enforcer. Viktor Volkov's friend. The man who doesn't exist in any database but leaves shadows everywhere. You're careful. I respect that.”
“Respect doesn't explain Eden.”
“I was working.”
“Working on what?”
“What I do is none of your concern.”