Following that joyous meeting, Lowe had returned to Cuckoo House.

  He spent the next few bells buried in the personnel files from the Bank, flipping through hundreds of pages with a patience that he didn’t actually feel. He wasn’t exactly expecting to find any great revelation buried within all the information Morholt had begrudgingly provided, but he had learned the hard way that sometimes the smallest detail—some forgotten note, a discrepancy in a report—could be the key to unlocking something bigger.

  He’d left Rook with the other folder—the redacted one—and they’d agreed to catch up later.

  Lowe wasn’t convinced there could be all that much to gain from a collection of intentionally vague descriptions, but the Threshold Guardian had been keen to take a look. And, frankly, Lowe couldn’t think of a good reason to say ‘no.’ If Rook wanted to waste his time cross-referencing nonsense, that was his look-out.

  Still, the way Morholt had sweated when Lowe had pressed him about the missing assets lingered in his mind. Something in that folder was important enough that the Warden of the Reserves had all but begged him to let the Bank handle it privately. That meant someone—and very much the wrong someone—had taken something they weren’t supposed to have.

  As Lowe had expected, though, there was nothing in the mound of discarded paperwork growing around him that was ringing his bell. That should have been reassuring. But it wasn’t. Because somewhere, naggingly, at the back of his mind, an itch was developing about all this.

  He felt he had noticed something important and, since he had recently levelled up his Intellect and Wisdom to a significant degree, he figured it would be worth listening to gut instinct.

  Just because his conscious mind hadn’t caught up with things yet, didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  Lowe rescanned his notes, feeling the dull ache of fatigue creeping in behind his eyes. He remembered what his old commander, Cenorth, had drilled into him, the memory of his voice cutting through the years as sharply as it had in the field.

  "Stop looking for what jumps out at you, Lowe. That’s how you get caught up in distractions—half-truths, red herrings, misdirections some bastard planted just for you to find. The real trick? Look for what isn’t there. The details that should be, but aren’t. The story they ‘forgot’ to tell."

  Lowe could still picture him, pacing the length of his dingy office in Cuckoo House, hands clasped behind his back, boots scuffing the floorboards with each deliberate step. There had always been an edge to Cenorth, a simmering, controlled violence beneath the surface, but when he talked shop—when he dissected a case, peeling it open layer by layer—he was something else entirely.

  "Most people think investigations are about piecing things together. They’re wrong. It’s about picking them apart. People try too hard to make things make sense. That’s where they go wrong. When something doesn't fit, doesn't feel quite right? That’s where you start digging. That’s where the bodies are buried."

  Of course, Cenorth had turned out to be the sneakiest of all the bastards. Not only had he tried to set Lowe up for all sorts of bollocks, he’d nearly murdered Arebella and, generally, been a pretty bad guy. Which rather took the shine off all those little pearls of wisdom. Still, a stopped clock was right twice a day. And, attempted murder aside, the advice had been solid.

  Lowe started with Lead Clerk Jaron Whitlow, aged fifty-six. He’d been with the bank for twenty-seven years. A lifetime spent in the quiet, meticulous world of ledgers and balance sheets. From everything Lowe read, Whitlow had been the man who made the Vault run smoothly—not with ambition, but with reliability. He had spent his career quietly correcting the numbers of his betters, ensuring decimal points never slipped, that accounts always squared, that the great machinery of wealth continued its relentless churn.

  There was not a single black mark on his record. No disciplinary actions. Not even a whispered reprimand for lateness. He had never taken a sick day. Never filed a complaint. Never so much as raised his voice in the workplace. By all accounts, he had been someone the Bank hierarchy had liked because he never caused trouble and the kind coworkers trusted because he never let things fall apart. Lowe grimaced at the final page. Whitlow’s pension paperwork had already been filed. Six weeks from retirement. And now he was very, very dead.

  There was nothing else there. No secret debts. No suspicious connections. No reason—no reason at all—for Jaron Whitlow to now be lying in the Vault with his head exploded around a massive fucking grin.

  Lowe paused, letting the info run through his mind. Was there anything in this file that was causing the itch? Anything in that litany of blameless service? No. No he didn’t think there was.

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  Lowe closed that file and turned to a new one. Branch Security Officer Harlen Vost. Thirty-two and a former Soldier. Compared to Whitlow, he had a far shorter amount of service. There was nothing noteworthy recorded in the file about the man’s time in the military. No medals. No dramatic battlefield heroics. No scandalous discharge. Just another young man who had done his time, served competently, and then slipped back into civilian life like countless others before him.

  Vost’s transition into security work had been predictable. Ex-military types gravitated toward jobs like this—low-risk, steady pay and work that required discipline but rarely called for real danger. He’d taken the job at the bank three years ago and, according to his appraisals, had done it pretty well.

  His personnel file was dry, almost painfully so. Two commendations for diligence, both from supervisors who had praised his attentiveness and steady hand. A single minor note about an altercation with a drunk customer, though it had been ruled justified—Vost had done nothing excessive, had followed protocol to the letter. There was nothing in his record that suggested he might have been involved in what had happened.

  Just a man who had signed up to guard a bank and ended up dead inside it.

  Lowe could feel his frustration rising. He picked up another of the files he’d already gone through. Senior Account Manager Ellise Drennan.

  A forty-something widow with one daughter, currently studying at the University of Soar. That had interested him, initially, and he’d spent a bit of time tracking her down. For all the good that did him. She was a promising student from what little information Lowe could find, studying Manatechnical Finance, likely seeking to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Although probably not all the way to the exact same conclusion . . .

  Drennan had worked at the Vault for nearly two decades, steadily rising through the ranks. Not because she had been a careerist, not because she had played cutthroat politics or courted favour with the right people, but because she had been good. Steady. Trustworthy. Someone clients didn’t just rely on but confided in. She had handled high-value clientele—those who preferred their assets unlisted, their transactions discreet, and their records conveniently opaque. That didn’t mean she was involved in anything illegal—at least, there was no sign of it—but it did mean she had been trusted. He bet she’d have been able to tell him what was on the list Morholt had passed over.

  She’d been the quintessential safe pair of hands. Another reliable employee. No complaints against her. No whispers of scandal. No cause for grudges Lowe could see. Nothing in her file suggested enemies. Nothing at all.

  Lowe sighed, closing the file and picking up another as he continued reading.

  Several junior clerks. Three interns. Six accountants. All with similar profiles. All ordinary. All people who had come to work that day expecting it to be like any other. Nothing jumped out to suggest there was anything unusual in them.

  And yet, they were all dead.

  And then there was Elias Stern.

  Lowe flipped through the personnel file, his fingers drumming lightly against the edge of the page.

  Elias Stern. Fifty-five years old. Nearly twenty years with the bank. No significant promotions, no disciplinary actions, and no flagged transactions. A quiet, steady career in the way only an Accountant’s could be. His gaze dropped lower. No military background. No history of mental instability. No ties to radical organisations. No unusual purchases. No large debts.

  Activating Grid View, Lowe reviewed the man’s last few moments. The way he had looked. His expression, the tremor in his voice, the sweat gathering at his temple. The way his hands had shaken—but not with fear. With something else.

  Resignation.

  And then the growing grin. The explosion. The moment of silence before his head—his whole skull—had torn itself apart in a flash of blood. The way his body had collapsed inward, leaving nothing but ruin.

  Lowe’s head was starting to ache. He’d been sitting here too long. He wondered if Rook was having more luck with his folder of redacted info. He certainly couldn’t be doing any worse.

  Lowe’s eyes drifted back to Stern’s personnel file. He scanned the page again, as if rereading the same words would suddenly give them new meaning. His fingers hesitated over a line in the report.

  Elias Stern, Fifty-Five.

  Fifty-five.

  The number caught in his head, snagging on something just beyond reach.

  Fifty-five.

  Lowe’s frown deepened.

  He sat back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment, letting the memory settle in properly.

  The man he had spoken to in the Vault—the one who had looked him in the eye, named the Black Knight, and then self-destructed—hadn’t been old. He hadn’t had thinning hair or the slightly stooped posture of someone who had spent two decades hunched over ledgers.

  He fucking well hadn’t been fifty-five.

  Lowe turned back to the file, flicking through the pages with fresh intent, looking for an image. Of course there wasn’t one. There wasn’t in any of the files. He retriggered Grid View. The Accountant he had seen, the man who had murdered an entire bank floor’s worth of people, had been younger. Mid-thirties at most.

  That wasn’t Elias Stern.

  Which meant the killer—the one who had executed his colleagues, whispered Lowe’s name, and turned his own head into a firebomb—had been someone else.

  Someone using Stern’s name. And able to spoof his profession and level.

  Who the fuck had murdered those people?