CHAPTER 8: GHOSTS IN THE STATIC

The Riverside burglaries were a dead end, and Julian knew it. For the past week, he had dutifully gone through the motions, interviewing victims and collecting evidence for a case he couldn't care less about. It was penance, a smokescreen to satisfy Captain Davies while he worked his real case in the shadows.

His real case was hitting a wall. A solid, ten-foot-thick wall of steel and concrete named Kian Huo.

Every official channel was a closed door.

Subpoena requests for Sterling Dynamics' financial records were "pending review" indefinitely.

His request to interview Elara Meng as a potential witness was denied on privacy grounds by a team of high-priced lawyers from Huo Enterprises.

He was locked out.

Worse, his own surveillance efforts were being actively countered. The two unmarked cars he'd assigned to tail Kian's convoy reported the same thing: professional, evasive maneuvers, routes changed at the last second, and occasional periods of electronic static that scrambled their communications.

It was the work of a top-tier corporate security team, likely with government-level training.

He was sitting in his car, parked across the street from the Orion Grand Hotel, watching the preparations for the Phoenix Foundation gala. Banners were being hung. Security teams in sharp black suits were sweeping the perimeter. It was being turned into a fortress.

His burner phone buzzed. A message from Marco, his contact in Tokyo.

They're onto you. Full counter-surveillance protocol activated. Head of security is ex-Mossad. Name: Nico Ren. Nasty piece of work. He's got your photo, your car, your apartment. Pull back. You're a target now.

Julian felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. He wasn't the hunter anymore. He was the prey. Kian wasn't just defending; he was actively hunting the threats to his kingdom.

He couldn't continue like this. A direct approach was impossible. An indirect approach was being suffocated. He needed a new angle. He needed someone who knew the world of corporate shadows and whispered secrets, someone who wasn't afraid of the Huo name.

One name came to mind. A long shot. A dangerous, unpredictable variable.

Celeste Vaughn.

She was an investigative journalist, a predator of a different kind. Two years ago, she had written a scathing exposé on a subsidiary of Huo Enterprises involved in an illegal data-mining operation. The story was explosive. And then, it had vanished. Retracted. Celeste was fired from the Harbor City Chronicle, and a lawsuit from Huo's lawyers had buried her in legal fees, nearly bankrupting her. They hadn't just silenced her story; they had tried to silence her.

She worked freelance now, writing for obscure online blogs from a small, cluttered apartment in the Old Town district, a place of brick walls and fire escapes that the city's glass towers had yet to swallow.

He found her there twenty minutes later.

The air in her apartment smelled of old books, fresh coffee, and a lingering trace of cigarette smoke.

Maps and charts covered the walls, a mirror image of his own corkboard, but her red strings connected politicians to corporate donors instead of murder victims to suspects.

She didn't look surprised to see him. Her eyes, sharp and intelligent, assessed him from behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

"Detective Zheng," she said, not bothering to get up from her desk. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Did a billionaire finally trip and fall out of his ivory tower?" Her voice was laced with a dry, cynical wit.

"I need your help, Ms. Vaughn," Julian said, getting straight to the point.

"Help?" She gave a short, humorless laugh. "The last time I tried to 'help' the public good, Kian Huo's legal team chewed me up and spat me out. The Harbor City police weren't exactly rushing to my defense then. Why should I help you now?"

"Because you were right about him," Julian said, his voice quiet but intense. "And because he's involved in something far worse than data-mining. It's connected to Sterling Dynamics. It's connected to the death of my mentor. And I think it's connected to a girl he's holding prisoner in his penthouse."

He saw a flicker of something in her eyes. The old fire. The instinct of a journalist who smells a real story, the kind of story that could burn down an empire.

"His prisoner?" she repeated, leaning forward slightly. "Who?"

"Elara Meng."

Celeste's face went blank. She stood up and walked to a filing cabinet, her back to him. She pulled out a drawer, rummaged inside, and came back with a single, worn manila folder. She dropped it on the desk between them.

The label on the folder read: LIANA MENG. 2014.

"I started looking into her mother's 'accident' right after my story was killed," Celeste said, her voice low. "I got anonymous tips. Whispers about a cover-up. About a 'project.'"

"But I never found anything solid. They buried it too deep."

She looked at him, her cynicism replaced by a sharp, calculating focus. "You're not the first cop to look into this, Detective. You're just the first one to come to me."

"The others were warned off," Julian admitted. "Just like I was."

"And you're not backing down." It wasn't a question. It was an observation.

"I can't."

Celeste was silent for a long moment, her eyes seeming to weigh his soul.

"Alright, Detective," she said finally, pushing the folder towards him. "You want my help? You've got it. But we do this my way. No badges. No official channels. We work in the dark. And when we find the truth, we don't give it to the police. We give it to the world."

She held out her hand. It wasn't the gesture of a source. It was the gesture of a partner.

Julian shook it. The wall he had been hitting was still there, but now, he had someone who knew how to find the cracks.