Night settled over the city like a shroud drawn slow. The quiet wasn’t peace; it was fear—Toronto holding still, waiting to see who the monster would choose next. Vulpes meant to stop it before it chose again.

She’d waited for the sun to slip, put the lawyer away, and pull the mask on. Across rooftops and ledges she moved—a quick shadow, the fox they named her for.

She came to a stop opposite the artisanal butcher shop where Callum worked and knelt at a parapet. Compact binoculars clicked open from her belt. The front lights blinked out one by one. The counter girl locked the door and stepped into the street with an older, heavyset man. They talked, laughed softly, and headed toward the subway. All dark inside.

Callum wasn’t on tonight. Another cutter, then. If Campbell was the Bloodletter, he’d keep work and play separated—clean lines, no bleed.

She slid the binoculars away and tapped her helmet comms. “Wolf, this is Fox. He isn’t here. Going in to see if I can pull a home address for Campbell.”

John’s voice came back, low and dry. “Copy, Fox. Be quick. No souvenirs.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she murmured, eyes on the alley door. “In and out.”

For someone with Vulpes’s training, the shop wasn’t much of a nut to crack. A quick sweep mapped a single CCTV dome—the VHS kind with a blind strip along the awning—plus a keypad by the front, magnetic contacts on the doors, and one lonely motion puck high in the stock hall. Service alley gave her the rest: a newer deadbolt on an older frame and a transom window no one had bothered to reinforce.

She timed the street, slipped into the alley’s hush, and tested the lock. Two quiet minutes with a pick set and the bolt rolled back. She eased the door an inch, rode the chime with a small magnet, and stepped into bleach-cold air. Practically a warm-up. The real work would be what she found—or didn’t—once she was inside.

She tapped her lenses; the world cooled to charcoal and silver, the shop’s hum coming up in her ears—the walk-in’s compressor, a distant streetcar hiss. She ghosted toward the office. The cutting room was immaculate—hooks polished, drains clean, edges oiled. Good practice for food work. Not proof of anything.

The office lock was even less of a challenge. A quick kiss from the pick gun and the tumblers hopped; the door sighed inward.

Paper and stale coffee. A banker’s lamp, a metal filing cabinet, a Rolodex fat with cards. She kept her gloves on, touched only what she had to, and started with what never lies: payroll binders, time cards, applications—anything that might give Callum Campbell a line on a map.

She went straight to the filing cabinet. Drawers whispered open, folders flipping under her gloves until she found EMPLOYEE DATA. A quick page and there it was: Callum Campbell—resume clipped to a W-4, a neat address typed at the top. Townhouse. About an hour on foot from Bloor.

She read it twice, committed the numbers to memory, and put everything back exactly as she’d found it. No copies. No fingerprints. No reason for anyone to know she’d been here.

She tapped her comms. “Fox to Wolf. I’ve got a home address—reads like a townhouse rental, about an hour’s walk from here.” She recited the street and unit.

“Copy,” John said, voice low in her ear. A beat of keys, the soft huff he made when things aligned. “Property roll shows a managed complex. Tenant of record: C. Campbell. Unlisted phone. There’s a rear lane and a shared fence line—good sightlines. Fifteen minutes by car.”

“Good enough,” she murmured. “I’ll do an exterior pass. No entry.”

“Affirmative. Don’t spook him.”

She eased the drawer shut, clicked off the banker’s lamp, and ghosted back through bleach-cold air to the alley. The night took her without a sound, and the fox angled toward a townhouse where the lights would tell her more than any file could.

****

The townhouse was an older build done up for rentals—“cozy retro,” the listing would say. A neat little yard, a narrow walk, a garage that was really a shed a small car might brave if it breathed in first. The place read spartan: curtains plain, porch swept, nothing left out to weather.

Vulpes lowered her binoculars and tapped her comms. “Single-bedroom unit. Shed-sized garage. All it’s missing is a white picket fence. No vehicle in sight, but there are fresh tracks in the drive. Dropping down to eyeball width and depth—see if we’re looking at a pickup.”

“Copy,” John said. “Watch the neighbors.”

She slid to street level between breaths of traffic and crossed like she belonged there. Up close, the rubber told a simple story: two clean pairs, spaced wider than a compact, the front impressions a shade deeper than the rear—nose-heavy. The tread was a common all-season rib, but the outer block showed a small chip repeating every rotation. Older tires, not new. An oil kiss darkened the concrete where a bumper would sit; the stain was narrow, centerline. Pickup or van, light duty.

She measured width with palm spans and a knuckle-marked shoelace, then stepped back as a porch sensor two doors down pinged to life. A dog barked once, reconsidered, went quiet.

“Wolf, Fox,” she murmured. “Track width fits a half-ton. Fronts bite deeper. Center-drip on the pad. Consistent with a pickup.”

“Lines up with our description,” John said. “Any movement inside?”

She glanced at the windows—blank. The mailbox by the door carried a tidy label: C. CAMPBELL in block letters. On the shared fence a work glove hung by a splinter, right hand, the palm worn smooth. She left it where it was.

“Well,” she breathed, so low it barely counted as sound, “may as well add a little more breaking-and-entering to tonight’s list of things the RCMP won’t love.” She touched her comm. “Wolf, Fox. Going in while it’s quiet—light sweep for anything that points to an address, employer links, or off-site storage.”

“Keep it surgical,” John said. “Ten minutes, out.”

“Copy.”

She slipped along the fence line, tested the backyard gate—latched but not locked—and padded to the kitchen window. Old wood, newer latch. Two minutes with a thin pick and a wedge, and the sash gave with the softest sigh. She caught the chime with a magnet and flowed inside.

Bleach and dust. A neat, spartan space: two chairs, one plate in the drainer, a bottle of off-brand cleaner under the sink. The fridge held eggs, milk, mustard, a wrapped parcel of butcher’s trim, and nothing else. No magnets, no jokes, no notes.

She drifted through to the living room. Trade magazines stacked square on the end table—Canadian Butcher & Packer, Meat Cutting Quarterly. A metronome sat beside them, dark wood, wound down. On a little pad, a shopping list in two hands—same letters, different slant. Ambidextrous wasn’t a rumor.

She didn’t touch the list.

Down the hall, the bedroom was monk-simple. Iron frame, gray sheets, a crucifix small enough to miss on the wall. In the closet: coveralls laundered and hung, aprons folded, a second pair of gloves—both palms worn smooth. A shoebox held receipt stubs and pay slips. She scanned, memorizing; put everything back.

Office nook, last. A particleboard desk with a cheap lamp and a locked drawer. The pick gun whispered. Inside, order: a wallet-style card case with a Butcher’s Guild membership; a duplicate certificate; a lanyard badge from the Wellington Locker Plant—old logo, deactivated clip. Beneath those, a narrow envelope: WESTERN STORAGE — RENTAL AGREEMENT. Unit B-17. Paid through month’s end. Address on the west side, near the rail spur.

She breathed once, steadying the thrill that wanted to be certainty. Direction, not proof.

“Wolf,” she murmured, “I have a storage unit—Western Storage, B-17, west side near the spur. Old locker-plant badge present; ambidextrous handwriting confirmed. I’m replacing everything and clearing.”

“Copy. I’ll pull site maps and ingress/egress. Do not hit it tonight.”

“Understood.” She closed the drawer, reset the lock, smoothed the nap of the cheap desk with a gloved fingertip.

On her way out she slid past the small garage. The side door stuck, then yielded. Inside: tools hung in strict pairs, a coil of hose, a plank bench scrubbed pale. On a shelf, a dog-eared owner’s manual—’88 Chevy C/K—and a box of all-season wipers. Center of the concrete: a dark, narrow drip line, old and tidy. She didn’t linger.

Back through the kitchen, she eased the window down until the latch kissed home. The yard breathed. Somewhere two houses over, a TV laughed with a studio audience. She vaulted the fence and bled into the alley’s dark.

“Ten minutes on the nose,” John said in her ear.

“Felt longer,” she answered, already angling for height. “Send me everything you can on Western Storage. If Campbell keeps work and play separate, that’s where he keeps the part he doesn’t want to look at.”

She reached the roofline and paused, the city spread out under her like a grid of nerves. Mercy tomorrow. The hunt now.

****

The Vixen rolled to a hush across from Western Storage. Chain-link and razor wire, floodlights on tall poles, a keypad gate that beeped like a metronome—an urban fortress for other people’s secrets.

Vulpes slipped off her helmet, adjusted her lenses, and let her eyes walk the perimeter: four dome cams on the corners, two more inside the yard tracking the main lanes, a manager’s office with a neon OPEN that buzzed like a fly. Newer padlocks on the maintenance gate. No dogs. No guard at the shack—patrol must be on a loop.

She thumbed her comm. “If you hear about a masked woman trying to break into Western Storage, I slipped up.”

John came back dry. “You slip up, I make you take a vacation. Recon only. I’ve got the site map—B-17 is third row in, west side, second unit from the end. Guard car cycles probably every twenty minutes. Last pass was about six minutes ago.”

“Sorry, big guy. No can do on just recon,” she said, already watching the patrol’s taillights fade. “I came this far—I’m not leaving without confirmation.”

A pause. Then the sigh he saved for lost causes. “Three minutes inside. No damage. No alarms. If anything twitches, you vanish.”

She moved along the fence until the light thinned, slid through the maintenance seam she’d clocked earlier, and became one more shadow in B-row. The yard hummed—sodium lamps, refrigeration units somewhere distant. A moth battered itself stupid against a floodlight and fell.

B-17 wore a clean, new padlock. Not a scratch. Not a single lazy nick from a frustrated renter. He’d replaced it recently.

“Guard car passed four minutes ago,” Wolf murmured in her ear. “Three minutes inside. No damage. No alarms. If anything twitches, you vanish.”

“If anything twitches and it’s Bloodletter,” she breathed, “I’m hitting him in the face with a tear-gas pellet.”

“Just don’t start a fight you aren’t ready to win. Last time he tagged you, and that wasn’t on his home turf.”

Vulpes smiled without humor. “Copy.”

Two breaths. A tilt. Click. The shackle eased. She raised the roll-up door just enough to slip under without making it sing.

Cold dust and chemical clean hit her first. Bleach ghost. Rubber. Old canvas.

She froze.

There—ankle height, an almost invisible line stretched taut across the opening, tied to the inside rail. Not wire. Clear monofilament. The line ran to a wooden block and a crude bracket. Her gaze tracked the geometry and found the mouth of a short-barrel twelve-gauge jammed low behind a stack of plastic storage tubs, muzzle set to catch anyone ducking in.

“Cute,” she whispered.

She slipped a slim pry from her belt, eased forward on her stomach, and pinned the shotgun’s fore-end with her knee so the action couldn’t cycle. Left hand fished a rubber wedge from her kit; she slid it up under the trigger guard, then clamped the monofilament with a tiny binder clip before cutting the line. The block dropped; the trigger didn’t move. She cranked the safety on for good measure and exhaled.

“First trap’s a door popper,” she murmured. “Neutralized.”

“You’re burning time, Fox.”

“Moving.”

She rose into a room built from obsession and lists.

A workbench stood dead center, clean to surgical. To the right: a pegboard wall of blades—boning knives, skinners, fillet knives, hatchets, even a trench knife polished to a mirror. Every edge honed, every handle oiled, each tool placed with the kind of symmetry that comes from reverence. Next to it, a narrow shelf held a row of dark glass jars. She didn’t let herself look long enough to confirm what floated inside.

Left wall—shelving. Banker’s boxes with labeled tabs. Binders. She stepped to the nearest, put on nitrile, and cracked it open.

Notes. Not rambling manifestos; neat block letters, diagrams, arterial maps traced in red pencil. Phrases underlined: “artery first,” “drain clean,” “composition > chaos.”

Another binder—scrapbook. Headlines clipped with immaculate margins and taped dead straight. BLOOR BLOODLETTER STRIKES AGAIN. Beneath the gore-porn: a second column, familiar orange ink. The Vulpes Myth or Menace? Artist renderings of a fox in motion, a blown-out still from a rooftop cam.

He’d been collecting her almost as long as he’d been carving the city.

She flipped once more and her mouth went dry. New page, new theme. Detective LIV BENOIT, the name slashed from a headline to fit the page’s edge. Handwritten notes in that same precise block: shift patterns, a partial license plate, grocery day. A photo from a charity run, cropped tight around Liv’s face and the corner of her badge.

“Fox?” Wolf. “Status?”

“Working. You’re not going to like it.”

Corkboard at the back. A laminated map of Toronto under a grid of pins and strings. White pins for sites she already knew; black for something else—staging locations? Dump sites? She skimmed fast and found the red. Not many red. Red meant intent. Red meant next.

A bright thumbtack jammed into a narrow street in midtown. She knew the building. It was right there in his notes on Detective Benoit—her home address.

Her pulse hitched and then evened, flat and cold. “Wolf,” she said softly, “we have a problem.”

“What am I hearing?”

“Targeting. Benoit.” She traced the red string with one finger, followed it to a Polaroid tucked under a clip—Liv leaving her building with a coffee, head down and hair unbound. Not press. Personal.

“Jesus,” Wolf said. “Get pictures and get out.”

She was already moving—camera up, flash dead. Click—map. Click—pins. Click—Liv’s page, the Vulpes spread, arterial diagrams, tool wall. Floor sweep? Not tonight. A thin second line hugged the baseboard to a cheap piezo buzzer under the bench. Not for her—his “someone’s been here.” She stepped wide and didn’t waste the seconds to rerig anything.

“Thirty seconds,” Wolf said. “Guard car’s turning the—”

“Doesn’t matter.” She slammed the binder shut, dropped it where it lived, and went for the door.

No dainty exit. She ducked, rolled the door down hard until the seal kissed, snapped the lock, and ran. Gravel. Chain link. Palms. Up and over. She hit the alley at a sprint and the Vixen answered with a raw-throated bark.

“What’s going on, Fox?” Wolf’s voice spiked. “You’re quiet.”

“He’s got a red pin through Olivia Benoit’s address,” she said, throttling out, back tire chirping as it bit. “If I don’t move now, we lose a good cop.”

“Sending the fastest route. I’ll place an anonymous to Homicide—welfare check on Benoit.”

“Do it.”

She dropped her visor and carved through the night. Red lights became calculations, not commandments. She leaned the bike into gaps that weren’t there until she made them, hopped a curb to skip a bottleneck, shouldered past a taxi’s offended horn. The city streaked into clean lines and heat.

“Fox—”

“No damage, no alarms,” she snapped. “I heard you. If it’s him, he goes down. Period.”

“Then kick his ass so hard he regrets ever picking up a knife.”

She went—streetlights strobing across her visor, engine wound tight, the route in her ear, and a narrow midtown street burning in her head like a brand.