The footage of the officer's house burning spread through the city overnight. At first it was just another clip, shared, reposted, slowed down. By morning, it had turned into something else. People watched the roof collapse again and again, pausing at the exact moment the fire swallowed the frame. Everyone searched for something wrong. A trick. A cut. Someone to blame.
And everyone landed on the same name.
The Gentleman.
When people said it out loud, their voices dropped without realizing it. Conversations slowed. Even laughter felt out of place.
The department needed someone who could work through that silence instead of being crushed by it. They called Mr. Huraira.
Huraira had been called many things over the years. The papers liked "myth with a badge." On the street, people just said his name and nodded. He had sharp features softened by age, silver creeping into his hair, eyes that didn't stare, but read. He arrived at the burned-out house wearing an old long coat and the kind of patience that only comes from surviving too much.
The place still smelled like smoke and wet wood. Cameras hovered nearby. Reporters whispered. Huraira ignored all of it. He crouched in the grass and dragged a gloved finger through the mud.
Footprints.
Faint. Careful. As if whoever left them had tried not to exist.
The pattern was clear enough.
Forty-two.
Huraira photographed them, measured the stride, studied the soil. He didn't smile. The forensics van hummed behind him, steady and dull. People watched him like he might suddenly explain everything.
He didn't.
He followed the prints outward, step by step, until they disappeared into pavement and camera coverage. Inside a van, he replayed the footage frame by frame. A broad shouldered man. Calm. Deliberate. A hand lifting a small device. A click.
Then fire.
The man never looked back.
The face was useless, half lost to smoke, the rest washed out by headlights. Huraira paused the frame anyway. Stared longer than he should have. Something about the jaw. The angle of the cheek. He sketched what he thought he saw, knowing full well how unreliable that instinct could be.
He sent the sketch out.
Nothing came back.
Next came the part he hated.
Shoe stores.
He walked them all, new, old, forgotten. He showed clerks the sole pattern and watched them frown, flip catalogs, shake their heads. The shoe wasn't common. It wasn't custom either. It lived somewhere in between. Made to disappear.
A ghost shoe.
While Huraira chased footprints and fragments, a young constable followed him through the days. Off-white uniform. Cap pulled low. Quiet questions. Useful hands.
His name was Fahad.
Huraira noticed him the way you notice a good shadow, only when it's gone. The boy was respectful, observant, eager without being loud. Everyone liked him. The press barely noticed him.
They didn't know what he carried under that uniform.
Fahad watched Huraira closely. Not with fear, with attention. He studied how the detective scanned rooms, how he noticed things no one else bothered with. To Fahad, it felt like watching a master work. He blended into the background easily. Authority made him invisible.
When Huraira stepped back into the burned house, drawn by a faint hissing sound, Fahad stayed behind.
Inside, the structure groaned softly. Ash floated in the beam of Huraira's flashlight. He reached for his gun.
Paper.
He froze.
A folded note sat neatly inside his holster.
Huraira unfolded it without shaking.
"Gentleman is watching you."
That was all.
The house felt smaller after that. Huraira turned slowly, checking corners, windows, the street beyond. Nothing. Just wind, distant traffic, shadows doing what shadows always do.
Someone had taken his gun.
Someone had done it cleanly.
Huraira stepped out of the house like a man leaving a funeral, quiet, controlled, deeply angry. He didn't make a scene. He memorized the insult.
Across the city, Fahad closed his apartment door and leaned against it for a moment. Then he moved with ease. He took down an old photograph, him and Farooq, smiling once, a long time ago. He pinned a new picture beside it.
Huraira.
Under the photo, Fahad drew a small crosshair. In the corner, he wrote:
42
He didn't label it "enemy." That felt unnecessary.
Instead, he wrote three words in careful, emotionless handwriting:
WILL.
DEATH.
MAN.
He opened his leather notebook. The pages smelled faintly of smoke.
I put kerosene already, he wrote.
I just need to set on fire.
And the story will be end.
He read it once, closed the book, and leaned back. Sleep came slowly. Not peaceful. Just functional.
Outside, the city kept talking. Sharing. Guessing.
Inside, the Gentleman rested between acts.
And somewhere, beneath a crosshair pinned to a wall, a detective waited for morning.
To Be Continued.