Nathan Cross hadn’t slept in twenty-eight hours.
His office was a mess of open folders, coffee-stained reports, and newspaper clippings taped to the wall in a constellation only he could follow. In the center was a blurry surveillance still: the man from the bodega. Marco.
He didn’t have a name yet. Just a face.
And a gut feeling that this man was the key to unlocking the whole damn thing.
The logistics firm.
The courier’s death.
The string of disappearances that didn’t follow any gang pattern he knew.
Something was wrong — intelligent wrong.
Someone had built a machine that killed without leaving fingerprints.
Someone smart enough to build a myth around their own absence.
Nathan picked up the dried daisy again, flipping it over in his hand.
He still didn’t know her name.
Didn’t even know why she stuck in his mind.
She was too clean.
Too perfectly forgettable.
The kind of person who should’ve faded from memory the second she walked away—
But hadn’t.
He needed a crack.
A mistake.
Something human.
Something that didn’t fit.
Because the more he thought about it, the more it felt like she did.
Across the city, Eve was writing a ghost.
She sat at a café, laptop open, sipping coffee like any other woman catching up on emails.
But what she was doing was building a lie.
A new paper trail.
Fabricated banking transactions.
A digital identity for Marco — one that placed him in Estonia three days ago.
She would leak it through an “anonymous” IP, give Nathan something shiny to chase.
He was getting too close.
Her fingers danced over the keys, calm and precise. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t nervous.
She was working.
People around her saw a woman in a soft sweater and glasses, typing gently as lo-fi music played through her earbuds.
No one saw the queen of a machine that moved money, drugs, and silence across three continents.
The burner buzzed once beside Eve’s keyboard.
A message flashed across the screen:
VASHA: No sign of Marco. Burned every line. Even the ghosts.
Eve didn’t stop typing.
Her reply came quick, clinical.
EVE: He’ll surface.
A pause. Then another buzz.
VASHA: You sure?
Eve stared at the screen. Then typed:
EVE: No. But if he’s dead, I’ll know.
She hit send.
The script she’d built was already running — Marco’s digital shadow scattered like breadcrumbs across dead accounts and flagged systems.
Nathan would find it.
That was the point.
Nathan found it.
Late that night, cross-checking old records against international watchlists, he found the name “Marko Halvik” — flagged for a bar brawl in Tallinn, tied to an offshore account opened two days ago.
The timestamp hit him hard.
Two days ago — the same day Marco shadowed him at the store.
Too neat. Too perfect.
“Someone wants me to believe this,” he muttered aloud.
That made it useful.
Whoever was cleaning up the trail was getting nervous.
Which meant:
He was close.
Elsewhere.
Marco was alive.
He stood barefoot in a basement apartment, lights off, hands shaking.
He hadn’t eaten in two days. Not from fear — from guilt.
He’d failed her.
He’d gotten seen.
He’d forced Eve to make moves she shouldn’t have needed to.
And yet, a small, bitter part of him burned.
She hadn’t come for him.
Just a one-word text.
Disappear.
Marco stared at the burner phone on the table.
Still no reply from Eve.
Still silence.
He clenched his fists.
He would fix it.
He would make it right.
He would remind her why she trusted him.
That same night.
Nathan went to the flower shop.
It was late — the “closed” sign hung crooked in the window.
But a light was on inside.
He stood across the street, watching.
Eve moved through the back room, sorting small pots of lavender and rosemary. No guards. No locked safes. Just a woman tending plants.
It had to be her.
But there was no angle. No connection. No proof.
He couldn’t touch her. Not yet.
Still… he didn’t turn away.
Something about her kept him there.
That stillness. That solitude.
Like a flame inside glass — not out of reach, just protected.
He walked away, unsettled.
Inside the flower shop, Eve watched him go.
She hadn’t looked out the window once.
Didn’t need to.
She knew he’d be there.
Knew how long he’d stay.
And she knew he’d be back.
Baawa Unfiltered 