## **CHAPTER 1: THE ROSE ON THE RAILS**
**1**
The mist that morning didn't roll in—it *slithered*.
Detective Alex Carter crushed a cigarette under his boot as he stepped over the rusted railroad tracks, the iron groaning under his weight like a tired old man. The air smelled of damp metal and something sour beneath it, something rotting.
*Death always leaves a calling card.*
"You're late," Detective Julia Moreno called from up ahead, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. She stood silhouetted against the crime scene's floodlights, arms crossed, her dark ponytail whipping in the wind. "Higgins already called dibs on the best jokes."
Carter smirked. "What's the punchline?"
Julia didn't smile. "Dead girl with a rose on her chest. Real poetic."
The smirk died.
**2**
The body lay sprawled across the tracks like a broken marionette, arms outstretched, as if she'd tried to catch herself mid-fall. Auburn hair fanned out in a tangled wave, half-obscuring her face—but not the eyes. Wide, glassy, frozen in something between surprise and accusation.
*You were supposed to save me.*
Carter crouched, gloves snapping against his wrists. "Strangulation?"
"Bingo," Higgins said, kneeling beside him. The coroner's breath fogged the air as he pointed to the mottled bruises circling the girl's throat. "No defensive wounds. Either she knew the killer, or he got the drop on her." He nodded to the rose. "That's fresh. Placed *after*."
Carter didn't touch it. Not yet. The petals were too red, too *perfect*, like wax under the crime-scene lights.
Julia snapped photos, the camera flash bleaching the scene in stark bursts. "No purse, no ID. Just this." She held up an evidence bag—inside, a crumpled slip of paper, the edges torn as if ripped from a journal.
Carter read the scrawl aloud, his voice flattening to hide the chill in his veins:
*"He knows. I'm running out of time."*
Julia flipped the bag over. On the back, a single phrase, smudged in what might've been lipstick or blood:
***Sub rosa.***
"Latin," Julia muttered. "'Under the rose.' Means secrecy."
"Since when do you speak dead languages?"
"Since *someone* failed to cover my lunch shift last week. Had to entertain myself." She jerked her chin at the rose. "That's not just a prop. It's a signature."
Higgins cleared his throat. "You'll wanna see this." He lifted the girl's left hand, turning her wrist to the light.
There, inked in delicate script:
*A tiny rose. One thorn.*
Carter's pulse kicked. "Our girl had secrets."
Julia's phone buzzed. She scanned the screen, then went very still. "ID just came through. Charlotte Greene. Nineteen. Student at Ridgewood U." A beat. "Daddy's James Greene. As in *the* Greene Roses. Billion-dollar flower empire."
Carter exhaled slowly. The pieces clicked: the perfect rose, the Latin phrase, the girl with thorns in her skin.
This wasn't a murder.
It was the first move in a game.
And the killer had just handed him the rules.