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Charlotte woke up at 3:00 a.m. Monday with Marcus Wade's bullet still burning a hole through her ribs.
Except there was no hole. She slapped a hand to her side anyway, fingers hunting for wet fabric, torn skin, the slick mess of an exit wound. Nothing. Just the thin cotton of her sleep shirt and the hammer of her pulse underneath.
She sat up. Her studio apartment looked exactly like it had Sunday night—dim streetlight bleeding through the blinds, the clock radio glowing red, her jacket slung over the chair by the door. Twenty-one hours before the dock.
She'd died there. She remembered Marcus's face, calm as glass, and the way he'd stepped over her to check her pockets. She remembered the taste of salt water and blood, the deck lights spinning, and then—
Nothing.
Then this.
Charlotte swung her legs off the bed and pressed her palms flat against her thighs. Her hands were shaking. She forced them still. If this was shock, fine. If this was a nightmare, she'd wake up drowning. If this was real—
She checked her phone. Monday, 3:02 a.m. The same text from her old boss sat at the top of her messages, sent eleven hours ago: *Dock 19. Midnight Tuesday. Seven figures. One job. You in?*
She'd already said yes once. Already walked into it.
She opened her recent calls. The last outgoing number belonged to Ivy Chen, the info broker who ran half the underground market in the city. Charlotte had called her Sunday afternoon, right after she'd agreed to the job, looking for background on the client. Ivy had laughed and told her the client didn't exist.
Charlotte hadn't believed her.
She did now.
She stood and crossed to the window. The street below was empty, slick with old rain. A car idled two blocks down, headlights off. It hadn't been there Sunday night. Or maybe it had, and she just hadn't noticed.
She pulled the blinds shut.
Her daughter's face was already starting to blur.
That was the part that made her stomach drop. She could remember the dock, every second of it—Marcus's voice, the way the other eleven had fanned out in a clean perimeter, the cold bite of the water when she'd tried to roll off the edge. She could remember dying.
But Lisa's last words to her, the morning she'd disappeared three years ago, were gone. Just a gap where the memory should be, smooth and clean like someone had cut it out with a scalpel.
Charlotte crossed to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Beneath two folded shirts and a pistol she hadn't fired in five years, she found the small plastic bag. Inside: one pink hair clip shaped like a butterfly, the paint chipped on one wing.
She'd pulled it off the dock planks Sunday night, right before Marcus shot her the first time. It had been lying there in a pool of rust and old oil, twenty feet from where her boss—*former* boss—had told her to stand.
Lisa had been wearing it the day she vanished.
Charlotte closed her fist around the clip. The edges bit into her palm.
So. The job had never been a job. It had been bait. And she'd walked right into it, because the coordinates her boss had whispered—*Dock 19, ask for the manifest, you'll find what you need*—had sounded like the first real lead in three years.
Now she had twenty-one hours to figure out how they'd known that would work.
And why Marcus had looked her in the eye, pulled the trigger, and said, "Sorry, Charlie. Orders."
She dressed fast—jeans, boots, a jacket with interior pockets deep enough for a knife and the compact Glock she kept in the drawer. She checked the magazine. Full. She hadn't fired it yet, not in this version of Monday.
That felt wrong. Like she should already be two rounds down and bleeding.
She locked the apartment behind her and took the stairs instead of the elevator. The car was still idling two blocks down when she stepped onto the street. She turned the opposite direction, kept her pace even, and counted her breaths. If they were watching, they'd expect her to run. She didn't.
She walked three blocks north and ducked into an all-night diner that smelled like burnt coffee and fryer grease. The waitress didn't look up. Charlotte slid into a booth in the back corner, facing the door, and pulled out her phone.
Ivy answered on the second ring. "You know what time it is?"
"You told me the client didn't exist."
"I did. You didn't listen."
"I'm listening now."
A pause. Then Ivy's voice came back, quieter. "Where are you?"
"Somewhere public."
"Good. Stay there. I'll send you an address. Don't go to the dock."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Charlie." Ivy's tone shifted, just a fraction. "Whatever they told you about your kid—"
"They didn't tell me anything. They left her hair clip on the dock."
Another pause, longer this time. Then: "Jesus."
"Yeah."
"You need to disappear. Right now. I can get you a car, a new ID, cash—"
"I need names."
"Charlie—"
"Names, Ivy. Whoever put this together. Whoever took Lisa. I want every name."
Ivy was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was flat. "You're going anyway, aren't you. To the dock."
Charlotte looked out the diner window. The street was still empty. The car was still idling two blocks down, just out of sight.
"Not through the front door," she said.
Ivy exhaled, slow and deliberate. "I'll send you the address. Someone there might have answers. Might. No promises. And Charlie?"
"What."
"If you see Marcus Wade before tomorrow night, you run. Don't try to be clever. Just run."
Charlotte's jaw tightened. "Why."
"Because he's the only one who walked away from the cleanup job you're about to die in. And the word is, he's getting real good at it."
The call ended.
Charlotte set the phone down on the table and stared at it. Her hands were steady now. The shaking had burned off somewhere between the apartment and the diner, replaced by the cold, methodical clarity she used to feel before a contract. She knew this feeling. She'd walked away from it five years ago because it had started to feel too easy.
Now it was the only thing keeping her upright.
The waitress came by and refilled a coffee cup Charlotte hadn't ordered. She didn't touch it. She was too busy trying to remember the last thing Lisa had said to her, and coming up blank.
Her phone buzzed. A new text from Ivy: an address on the south side, near the old warehouses. No name. No context. Just the address and a second message: *Knock three times. Say you're collecting.*
Charlotte memorized it, deleted the text, and stood. She left a twenty on the table and walked out into the predawn cold.
The car two blocks down pulled out thirty seconds after she did.
She didn't run. She turned east, hands in her pockets, and kept walking. They'd follow. That was fine. She had twenty-one hours, and she'd already died once.
This time, she was walking in with her eyes open.
And when she got to Dock 19—and she would get there, because that hair clip wasn't a coincidence and neither was Marcus's face when he'd pulled the trigger—she wasn't going to ask for the manifest.
She was going to burn the whole thing down and see who ran.