The phone rang at 6 AM, and Rick Forsyth knew someone was dead.
He answered with whiskey still burning in his throat. The calendar on the wall read January 25th — the anniversary of his father's murder. He'd been trying to drink that memory into silence. It hadn't worked. It never did.
"Fourth body." His partner Scott's voice was flat, the way it got when things were very bad. "Club 21. Throat cut. Same signature."
Rick closed his eyes. Four ATF agents dead in thirty days. All participants in a classified operation called Thunderbird. All killed with military-grade weapons that didn't match the guns left at the scenes.
Someone was hunting them. Someone who knew exactly who they were.
"There's something else," Scott said. "The killer left a message this time. Written in the victim's blood."
"What did it say?"
A long pause. Rick could hear Scott breathing.
"It said your name, Rick."
Rick made it to Club 21 in fourteen minutes. The crime scene was still warm.
Agent Jack Brown lay in a private booth, his throat opened in a precise horizontal line — the Burton brothers' signature. The Burtons were ghosts from Rick's past. Fifteen years ago, they'd killed his father. The case was never solved. Rick had joined the ATF because of it.
But this wasn't a simple revenge killing. The four murder weapons were escalating backwards — from Thompson submachine gun to shotgun to pistol to knife. Getting more personal. More intimate. As if the killer wanted to feel the life leave.
Rick crouched beside the body. His photographic memory was already cataloging: the angle of the wound (left to right, slightly upward — a tall killer or the victim was seated), the absence of defensive wounds (Brown knew his killer), the expensive bourbon still sitting on the table (two glasses, both used).
Brown had been drinking with whoever killed him.
"The forensics don't match," Scott said behind him. "Again. The knife at the scene isn't the murder weapon. The real blade was thinner, surgical."
Rick stared at the blood message on the wall. His own name, written in letters that dripped toward the floor like red fingers reaching for something.
"Rick." Scott's voice had changed. Quieter now. "There's a pattern I haven't told you about."
Rick turned.
"All four victims were on the Thunderbird team," Scott said. "Every single one. And Rick — you led that operation."
The room felt suddenly smaller. The music from downstairs suddenly louder.
"You're saying I'm next."
Scott didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Rick's phone buzzed. Unknown number. He answered.
A woman's voice, low and urgent: "Agent Forsyth. The Burton brothers are holding a gathering tonight at this club. Nine PM. They're going to kill the fifth agent."
"Who is this?"
"Someone who's been inside their organization for three months." A pause. "And someone who needs your help getting out alive."
The line went dead.
Rick looked at Scott. "Did you trace that?"
Scott shook his head. But something in his expression — a flicker, barely visible — made Rick's instincts fire. Just for a moment.
He filed it away. He shouldn't have ignored it.