Losing Ground

The night bled into the early hours of morning, and still, Nightingale prowled the streets. Her boots hit the cracked pavement with quiet determination. She’d been chasing down a lead on a weapons drop linked to the Supplier.

It had taken her two weeks of sleepless nights, burned favors, and missed dinners with Finn to get this close. A contact named Vicks, mid-level smuggler with ties to the Supplier’s delivery network, had agreed to meet under the bridge near Shipyard Lane. He was scared, paranoid but he was talking. He might’ve had something real.

But when she reached the location, the stench of blood hit her before the sight did.

Vicks was slumped against the concrete wall, throat cut clean through. A pool of red spread across the damp ground, soaking into the crumpled papers he'd probably meant to hand over. Nightingale cursed under her breath, crouching beside the body. It was clean. Surgical. Professional.

Whisper.

Again.

This was the third time in ten days. Every trail she found, every name she unearthed, Whisper was always one step ahead and left nothing but corpses in her wake. Leads vanished like smoke. Nightingale had worked weeks on the Supplier case, but in no time at all Whisper had torn through it with reckless efficiency, obliterating anyone who could talk.

Rikki’s fists clenched at her sides. She wasn’t just losing ground. She was being humiliated.

Her emotions were overwhelming, she made sacrifices in her civilian life so that she could be a good hero. Now she wasn’t even doing well as Nightingale, she felt like a failure.

She took a long breath to steady herself before activating her comm-link and calling the body in. There’d be a half-assed cleanup by local police, if they didn’t just pin the **** on a rival gang, but there was nothing else she could do here.

She turned away and vanished into the alley shadows, frustration simmering just beneath her skin.

Later, back at her apartment, Rikki stripped off her suit and dropped heavily onto the couch. The apartment was cold and quiet. She hadn’t seen Finn in days. Missed another night out with Lisa. Her inbox was full of unopened case files and unreturned texts from people trying to keep her tethered to a civilian life she could barely remember.

Her chest ached—not from injury, but from sheer exhaustion.

She was trying so hard to do the right thing. But every lead ended in blood. Every mission put her a step behind a woman who didn’t care about rules or redemption.

Whisper plays dirty and wins. I play by the code… and lose.

The thought disgusted her. She needed a drink and someone to make her feel good.

Rikki changed out of her outfit and headed to the kitchen for a glass of wine. She looked down at her phone, scrolling through her contacts. She wasn’t in the mood for all of Finn’s emotions, she didn’t need a close connection right now. She didn’t need the wild attitude of Laura who’d probably want to go out. She just needed someone who could make her feel good and forget about her problems.

She finished her glass and poured herself another. She finished her second glass before finally working up the courage to send the message to the one person she wanted to see right now.

Rikki: Been thinking about you. You want to come over?

Devin replied almost immediately.

Devin: Sounds good

Rikki sent him the address and put the phone down, finishing another glass as she did. A nervous excitement built up in her at the thought of Devin coming over. Something inside her craved her young parolee and she wasn’t going to fight it any longer.