Annapolis, Maryland

Karne Parker stepped into the hallway of the Wineland Building, hugging her notebook to her chest as the last of the fluorescent lights buzzed and faded to a sickly hum. It was just after eleven, the hour when Annapolis shut its eyes and assumed nothing important would happen until morning. The building had emptied hours ago, leaving only the hollow echo of her footsteps and the raspy wheeze of the old HVAC system struggling in the ceiling, making a sound too close to breathing.

Through the glass pane behind her, her desktop monitor still glowed with the spreadsheet that had unraveled her entire night. She had stared at those numbers until her eyes burned, at first trying to convince herself she was tired, then realizing she wasn’t mistaken at all. 

Karne loved patterns.
Not the flashy kind—no riddles in the paper, no puzzle apps buzzing her phone. The quiet ones. Columns that balanced the way they were supposed to. Ledgers that told the truth if you listened long enough. Most nights having her cat curled against her leg, a library book on the couch, and the steady comfort of knowing the world still made sense in small, measurable ways was enough.

Tonight, it seemed different.

She’d caught the first inconsistency by accident—an allocation mistake, a decimal nudged just enough to pass a glance test. Anyone rushing would’ve missed it. Karne hadn’t. She followed it the way she followed footnotes in dense novels, one reference leading to another, then another, until the margins filled with penciled arrows and quiet questions.

The deeper she went, the stranger it became. Transfers that canceled each other out. Appropriations were routed through committees that never touched transportation. Names she recognized—not junior staffers or placeholders, but people whose signatures meant stability. People she’d seen testify. People who smiled at press conferences and talked about stewardship.

Her first instinct was to stop. To close the file, shut down the system, and go home.

Her second instinct—the one that always won—was to confirm.

By the time she finished cross-checking, her hands were shaking—not from fear. From certainty.

This wasn’t a mistake.
It wasn’t sloppy accounting.
It was deliberate.

Karne folded the page carefully, the way she did with passages she wanted to remember. Whatever this was, someone in authority had helped orchestrate these errors.

Pretending she hadn’t seen it would be worse than being wrong.

She couldn’t report it directly to her supervisor. Mistakes this big had to involve several people and Karne didn’t know for sure who. But she knew who she could trust, Samantha.  So, she had printed the single page that mattered. It now sat inside her notebook, folded twice, still warm. She pushed through the main doors of the building and into the cool, empty night.

The State House dome glowed white above the tree line, serene and watchful. Only forty yards separated her from the State House entrance, a quick trip to the second floor, place the page on Samantha’s desk, then home. Minnie would be waiting, probably curled against the door. Karne wanted nothing more than a blanket, a book, and the quiet safety of her condo.

Her heels clicked on the uneven brick pavement as she crossed the walkway. The breeze carried the faint, briny smell of Spa Creek. The oaks and maples lining the circle rustled overhead, their branches blotting out most of the lamplight. This was the silent side of the State House especially at night, no lobbyists, no tourists, no lingering staff.

Just her.

And the dark.

She tightened her grip on the notebook and quickened her pace. Halfway across the walkway, something shifted in her peripheral vision. A flicker. A smear of movement behind the nearest tree.

She stopped cold.

There was a slight drizzle of cold rain and the wind hissed through leaves. A stop sign creaked somewhere behind her. The shadows remained still.

Get a grip, she told herself. Go.

She forced herself forward., 

At the base of the hill, a dimly lit path curved toward the Maryland Avenue entrance, the least used door in the entire building. During the legislative session, interns used it. The door was closed, its security light flickering like a dying candle.

Karne stepped under the canopy of the largest oak. The air here felt colder, heavier. She adjusted her notebook, her pulse pounding high in her throat.

Something exhaled behind her.

Not the wind—too slow, too close.

She spun.

A shape peeled away from the darkness, silent and deliberate, like it had been waiting for her to turn.

Karne lurched backward. 

A hand seized the back of her coat. The notebook slipped from her hands, slapping onto the brick walkway.

Another clamped over her mouth.

Her scream died against a calloused palm.

“Don’t fight,” a low voice breathed against her ear. His breath was warm and steady. “We just want you to stop digging.”

She thrashed—kicking, clawing, trying to twist free—but the man was impossibly strong. His arm locked around her waist, lifting her partially off the ground as he dragged her backward toward the slope leading down to the Maryland Avenue side of the circle—where the lamps didn’t reach and the trees grew close together.

“Please…” she tried to say, but her voice was smothered to a whimper.

“Quiet.”

The word was not a threat. It was a command—cold, practiced, and final.

The trees swallowed them whole.

Her notebook lay abandoned on the bricks, pages splayed like broken wings. The folded sheet, the anomaly she had uncovered, slid free and fluttered across the concrete. A stray breeze nudged it toward the State House steps, catching at the base of the marble where leaves always collected.

Above, the dome glowed serene and perfect. 

As though nothing bad could ever happen beneath it.

But something already had.

And something worse was coming.