Chapter 1: Loot the Corpse, Tame the Detective

　　Detective Sera Voss has shot me through the heart five times this week, and honestly, I’m starting to take it as foreplay. She doesn't remember killing me when the city clock resets at midnight—just like she doesn't remember how breathless she sounded in Loop Four when I pinned her against the interrogation table. Now she’s twenty seconds away from kicking down my door for the seventh time, completely unaware that the dead judge at my feet is about to make me the richest gutter rat in Greyport.

　　I crouched beside Retired Chief Justice Hall, careful not to get his arterial blood on my cuffs.

　　My cheap brass pocket watch ticked loudly against my ribs. Inside the lid, the grayish-blue polarized lens—a reckless little souvenir from my sister Mira—gleamed with six razor-thin cracks of silver frost. Twelve cracks meant the timepiece shattered for good. Six meant I was officially halfway through my lives, and I was done wasting them playing the innocent bystander.

　　"Eleven minutes since you stopped breathing, Your Honor," I murmured, eyeing the pale, milky ribbon knotted tightly around the old man's throat. "Let’s see what you left in your will."

　　I pressed two bare fingers against his cooling carotid artery.

　　The lens against my chest flared blistering hot, searing the old burn mark over my sternum. Then the world violently inverted.

　　Ninety seconds.

　　My throat instantly clamped shut in a phantom spasm, my lungs screaming for air as the judge's final sensory echo slammed into my nervous system. Through his failing, bloodshot eyes, I didn't see a murderer. I saw Hall’s own gnarled hands pulling the silk ribbon taut around his neck in front of the mahogany mirror, staging his suicide to force a cold case onto the front pages.

　　Along with the suffocating agony came the prize—the crystal-clear obsession burning in his dying brain. Account 774-90-B. Vault 13, North Highland Bank. Passcode: Thirteen Minutes. And right before his vision went black, his trembling left hand tucked a scorched brass token beneath the Persian rug.

　　I yanked my hand back, gasping out a ragged breath and rubbing my bruised-feeling throat. The phantom choking faded in five seconds, leaving behind a fifty-million-pound banking cipher and a very convenient piece of leverage.

　　I reached under the rug, scooped up the old playground token—its edges split by ancient heat cracks, its grooves caked with twelve-year-old sulfur soot—and slipped it into my pocket. Then I stood up, poured three fingers of twenty-year-old highland whiskey from the judge's decanter, dropped in three cubes of ice, and counted down under my breath.

　　Three. Two. One.

　　The heavy oak door exploded inward off its brass hinges.

　　Detective Sera Voss swept into the study like a winter storm off the black cliffs, her dark police trench coat flaring. The silver badge on her lapel caught the gaslight, and the modified service pistol in her left hand was already leveled straight at my sternum.

　　"Hands where I can see them, sewer rat!" she barked, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. "Step away from the magistrate!"

　　In Loop One, I had panicked and run; she shot me in the spine on the fire escape. In Loop Two, I had surrendered; her corrupt Deputy Chief executed me in the transport van.

　　This time, I didn't even raise my hands. I just took half a step to my left and held out the crystal glass.

　　"Mind the loose floorboard by the threshold, Detective," I said smoothly. "It’s slick with blood, and that old shrapnel wound in your left knee always stiffens up when the canal tide comes in."

　　Sera’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch. Her boot hit the exact warped plank I’d warned her about. Her left knee buckled.

　　Before her balance even fully broke, I stepped inside her guard. Using my dominant right arm—the one corded with muscle from years of hauling iron grates in the South Bank drains—I caught her around her narrow waist, pulling her flush against my chest. With my scarred left hand, I reached down into the slit of her trench coat, unclipped the snub-nosed backup revolver strapped to the outside of her warm thigh, and slid it out of its holster before she could even intake a breath.

　　She smelled like cold rain, gun oil, and bitter peppermint.

　　"You—" Sera twisted violently, shoving her primary pistol hard under my jaw, her pulse hammering against my ribs. "How the hell do you know about my knee? And how did you know about the thigh holster?"

　　"Same way I know you take your scotch neat when you’re working, but with three ice cubes when you’ve had a migraine since four o’clock," I murmured, looking down into her fierce, furious eyes. I flipped her snub-nosed revolver by the trigger guard and slapped the grip neatly back into her free right hand, before pressing the cold whiskey glass against her knuckles. "You’re fourteen seconds slower than usual, Voss. Traffic bad on the North Bridge?"

　　Her finger whitened on the trigger against my throat. She hated not being in control—it was practically her religion. Every instinct in her razor-sharp brain was screaming at her to pistol-whip me into the carpet, yet she couldn't ignore the terrifying precision of a South Bank canal worker reading her like an open dossier.

　　"Who are you?" she whispered, the barrel digging into my skin. "Noel Venn, twenty-three, third-grade drain inspector. Why are you standing over Chief Justice Hall’s body like you were waiting for me?"

　　"Because in about ten seconds, Deputy Chief Garrow is going to waltz through that doorway and order you to shoot me on sight to cover up a murder," I said, glancing casually at my pocket watch. "And if you let him, you’ll never find out who actually planted the murder weapon on you."

　　Heavy footsteps thundered up the marble stairs outside.

　　Deputy Chief Garrow burst into the study, flanked by two tactical officers with drawn carbines. Garrow’s piggish eyes darted from Hall’s corpse on the rug straight to me. His hand dropped instantly to his holster.

　　"Detective Voss! You caught the killer red-handed," Garrow barked, his voice ringing with rehearsed authority. "He’s reaching for a weapon! Put him down—now!"

　　Sera didn't fire. Her jaw tightened as she sensed the unnatural haste in her superior’s voice.

　　I smiled lazily over Sera’s shoulder at the bloated commander. In Loop Three, I had choked to death next to Garrow after a gas main explosion and spent ninety seconds inside his greedy, terrified skull.

　　"Evening, Deputy Chief," I called out pleasantly. "If you pull that trigger, who’s going to pay off the thirty-two thousand pounds you owe the Iron Pit casino by Friday? Or worse—who’s going to tell the Councilman that the brunette sleeping in your North Highland townhouse right now is his nineteen-year-old niece?"

　　The study went dead silent.

　　Garrow’s thumb froze on the hammer of his revolver. The color drained so fast from his jowls he looked greyer than the dead judge on the floor. "What... what did you just say?"

　　"Account 44-C at the Dockside Clearinghouse," I added softly, taking a sip from the glass Sera was still reflexively holding. "You skimmed twelve thousand out of the Old Harbor Relief Fund last Tuesday to cover your vigorish. Shoot me, and my sister mails the ledger copies to the Greyport Morning Post at nine sharp tomorrow."

　　It was a bluff—Mira was currently missing—but Garrow’s guilty conscience did all the heavy lifting. He swallowed hard, slowly raising his hand off his holster. "Stand down, boys," he rasped, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. "Wait outside. Detective Voss and I will... process the suspect."

　　The two uniforms hesitated, then backed out into the hall. Garrow glared at me with pure venom before retreating to the doorway to guard the corridor, thoroughly neutered.

　　Sera slowly lowered her pistol half an inch, staring at me as if I were a demon that had crawled out of the black canals. "You’re a canal rat. You shouldn't even know the name of the Dockside Clearinghouse, let alone Garrow’s private accounts."

　　"Dead men talk, Detective," I leaned in, letting my lips brush the shell of her ear so Garrow couldn't hear. "And right now, Judge Hall’s corpse is screaming that you’re being framed."

　　"Framed?" Sera scoffed coldly, though she didn't pull away. "I just got the dispatch call six minutes ago."

　　"Check your left trench coat pocket," I whispered. "Right beneath your spare speed-loader."

　　Sera’s eyes narrowed. Keeping her primary gun trained on my chest, she slid her left hand into her deep coat pocket. Her fingers brushed against metal that shouldn't have been there.

　　Slowly, she pulled out a brass children’s game token from the abandoned Old Harbor amusement pier—the exact signature calling card of the vigilante killer the police had been hunting all month. Except unlike the scorched, soot-caked original sitting safely in my pocket, the one in Sera’s glove was gleaming, unblemished stock pulled straight from the municipal evidence vault to frame her.

　　Her breath hitched.

　　"Internal Affairs is already on their way up the stairs with a search warrant for your coat, Sera," I murmured, watching the realization hit her like a physical blow. "In three minutes, you’re going to be arrested as the Old Harbor Butcher. Now—do you want to put those cuffs on me, or do you want me to tell you which one of your father’s men slipped that coin into your pocket?"