Shower. Flush the wound. Bind. Dress. That was the order.

He kept the water hot enough to bite, letting it drum against cauterized flesh until the sting sharpened his head. Saline rinse, then iodine, then a careful ladder of steri-strips across the track where the piton had gone in and come out. Fresh gauze, compression wrap snug but not so tight it advertised itself under a shirt. He checked for heat, swelling, the telltale throb of infection—nothing yet but honest pain. Good. He preferred it undiluted.

Clothes came next the way he planned everything: deliberate. Dark, structured layers to hide bulk and pull; a jacket that let the shoulder sit neutral; a shirt that wouldn’t print the dressing. He rolled the injured arm through a slow range, teaching the muscles a new lie: no guarding, no flinch, let the movement live in the scapula and ribs instead of the joint. No sling—slings begged questions. He rehearsed a cover story anyway, something dull and unmemorable if anyone noticed a stiffness: slept funny, helped a neighbor move a dresser, twinged it at the gym. People accepted furniture and gyms; they distrusted poetry.

He’d learned young to starve pain of witnesses. Back then, tied to a fence while boys with farm belts tried to make him sing, he made himself a promise: if he could help it, no one would ever get the sound they wanted. Later, in a bar when a bottle broke across his forearm, he had watched their faces as he plucked the glass out one piece at a time—no gasp, no grimace—just a red shine on his skin and a steady breath. The attacker’s bravado had curdled into something he liked better than fear: confusion.

He buttoned the jacket, checked the mirror for tells—micro-winces, asymmetry, defensive tilt—and found none. Keys. Wallet. A measured breath. He didn’t call in; he didn’t call anything. He stepped out into the ordinary day the way he stepped into an alley: composed, contained, and carrying the quiet satisfaction of a secret that no one around him deserved to know.

A short drive, a shorter walk from the above-ground lot, then the back door’s stiff latch and the familiar breath of the shop—cleaner, warm dust, a faint thread of oil. He slipped inside on the tick of opening routines. The bell at the front chimed once; Tanya glanced up from the register. He gave her the small, ordinary nod that passed for good morning.

Gloves. Apron. The costume of a harmless man. He washed his hands longer than necessary, dried them on the paper roll with the same even pressure each time, and tied the apron strings without favoring the shoulder. The pain stayed where he put it.

He moved through the checklist that framed his days: lights, logbook, intake tray, the alignment marks on the bench jigs, a quick wipe of the surfaces until they passed a fingertip test for grit. Labels straightened. Tools set edge-to-edge, not point-out. A printer coughed up tickets; he clipped them to their jobs and arranged them left to right—oldest to newest—because order was the difference between noise and work.

From the front: Tanya’s soft patter with a customer, the drawer of the till sliding and thunking shut, the hiss of the receipt printer. From the back: the hush of the HVAC, the hum of fluorescent tubes, the quiet patience of objects waiting to be useful. He liked that about the shop—its small, containable rituals. Cameras in predictable corners. Mirrors he could read in a glance. A place where a calm face and careful hands were all anyone ever needed to see.

He did what was expected: turned corpses into commerce—into “artwork,” as close as the day would allow. Not his preferred medium anymore; he’d long since outgrown animals. Still, the work satisfied the part of him that worshiped control. He set a shoulder on the board and let the knife talk—a long, thin whisper under the silver skin, tip lifting a veil with millimeter obedience. Ribs came clean. A chop fell away at an exacting thickness, the marbling centered like an iris. He trimmed a fat cap to an even depth with three strokes, each pass parallel, each curl of white falling identical to the last.

The back room lived at a steady chill, breath fogging in the half-light. The smells were familiar and layered: iron, cold fat, spice, bleach. Tanya’s voice rose and fell out front—upselling sausages, printing receipts—while he kept the tempo in back: break, trim, tie, wrap, label. Twine bit neatly into his gloved fingers as he trussed a roast, knots spaced like stitching. When the bandsaw sang, he fed bone at an angle that spared his shoulder, letting scapula and ribs do the work, not the joint. No winces. No tells.

He salted with a miser’s precision—nothing romantic about ratios, only right and wrong—then slid a rack of bacon into the cure, slabs aligned in strict formation. A sheet of butcher paper breathed across the table; he folded it into tight hospital corners around a stack of chops, then inked a label in tidy block letters that pretended not to care.

An artist is an artist, whether the medium is marble or playdough, he reminded himself, wiping the blade and laying it down edge-safe, handle square. In the glass of the case, the day’s work gleamed pink and white under the lights, docile and perfect. Out front, customers smiled. In back, his knives waited, quiet and faithful as a prayer.

The bell over the door chimed—bright, harmless. He usually let Tanya do the smiling while he kept to the steel and cold. Today, the sound found a nerve.

He was moving toward the sink to rinse his knives when he caught her in the corner of his eye. He didn’t turn the tap. He wanted the room quiet enough to hear.

“Fresh from the farm—we do everything in-house,” Tanya sang in her chipper cadence, blonde bun neat as a display.

“Yeah? I heard you’re the place,” came the reply. Not a clip from a press conference, not phone-filtered—her voice, uncurated. Montreal accent ghosting over polished English. Strong, even, a little iron in the rhythm.

He angled his head a fraction, listening.

“Of course, Officer Benoit,” Tanya said. “We always take care of the folks in uniform.”

A soft, polite laugh. “I’m just stocking the fridge. Montreal-style deli, a kilo of bacon, and a pack of honey-garlic pork sausage.”

He let himself steal a glance through the doorframe.

Navy jacket. Brown hair pulled into a no-fuss ponytail. No makeup—skin honest, work-first. Eyes dark and tired in a way that said she carried other people’s nights as well as her own. Detective Olivia Benoit: profiler, RCMP, the woman with her hands on his file.

Something small hitched in his chest. His gloved fingers tightened on the carving knife until the knuckles paled under nitrile. A magnificent hound, he thought—not because she barked, but because she tracked.

As if she felt it, her gaze slid to the back. It passed over him—one beat, two—and for a useless second he wondered whether she could simply see. He made himself smaller in place: shoulders square, face neutral, nothing to notice.

She turned back to Tanya with easy small talk. “So that’s the butcher behind those steaks everyone raved about at the last barbecue?”

Tanya’s smile warmed. “Mr. Campbell? One of the best. Straight from the farm, like the meat.”

“Well, he certainly looks farm-raised,” Liv said, dry humor threading the words.

He put the knife down, flicked the faucet on, did the ritual—gloves off, quick wash, paper-towel dry. When he stepped out front, it was with the affable half-smile he wore like an apron.

“Callum,” he offered, voice steady. He kept a polite distance from the counter—sanitary, friendly, safe. “Welcome in, Detective. Sliced deli—thin, Montreal cut? And bacon: thick for the pan, or standard for the oven?”

Her eyes took his measure the way professionals do—one sweep, nothing obvious. “Thin on the deli, standard on the bacon,” she said. “And the sausages… you make those in-house?”

“Every link,” he said. “Honey-garlic’s mild. Good sear, no split. I can pack the deli by weight, or give you a whole piece to slice at home.”

She considered, then: “By weight is fine. Saves me a fight with the mandoline.”

He nodded and reached for the ticket book, pen scratching neat block letters. He didn’t look up to hold her gaze; he didn’t need to. He already had the things that mattered filed away: the cadence, the way she stood with her weight balanced, the way she clocked exits without turning her head.

“Anything else you recommend?” she asked, tone casual.

“For a fridge stock?” he said, leaning into the persona. “Try the smoked pork chops—double-cured, quick dinner. Or if you like heat, the Calabrese.”

“Next time,” she said. “Tonight I just need uncomplicated.”

“Understood.” He slid the ticket to Tanya with a fingertip and stepped back toward the swing door. “I’ll get you that deli and bacon.”

Back through the threshold, he let the door hush shut behind him and picked up a clean knife. Steel on stone whispered once, twice, purely for show; the edge was already perfect. He set the blade to the meat and let his breath settle. The hound had come to the kennel. He would be nothing but the kindly butcher until the last bell rang.

“Oh—and can you deliver to my apartment? I can’t wait for pickup. Your sign says you do delivery.”

He was grateful his back was to her when she said it. A street name, a building number, a unit—each piece slotted into place like teeth on a gear. He didn’t reach for the delivery pad; Tanya could take it at the counter. He preferred his own method.

He set the deli on the slicer and let the numbers braid with the rhythm of his hands. Street number as the first cut. Floor and unit as the second and third. Postal code mapped to thickness—two millimeters, then one, then two again. To anyone listening, he was only talking yield. To himself, he was building a lockpick out of digits.

“Do we have the address?” Tanya called.

“Got it,” he answered, and meant it. He heard Tanya’s pen scratching the receipt, the chipper ding of the register, the soft exchange of thanks. He kept his eyes on the blade.

When the bell chimed her out, he allowed the smallest shift at the corner of his mouth—too slight to be seen if someone were watching.

He finished the order, wrapped each parcel with butcher’s paper and twine, and slid the bundle into an insulated tote for the bike run. Then, back in the prep room, he tore a strip from the edge of a freezer-inventory sheet and wrote a harmless list in neat block letters: “2mm / 1mm / 2mm — lane left — south door — 17:30.” To anyone else, it was weights and workflow. To him, it was the address, the approach, and a good hour to watch a building breathe.

He tucked the scrap beneath the magnetic knife strip and washed his hands. The muses did not often knock. Today, they had left a calling card.

****

Liv stepped out into the chill with the door chime snapping shut behind her, butcher’s bag claim ticket folded into her pocket. Delivery meant she could tell her mother—truthfully, for once—that there’d be real food in the fridge and not just coffee, mustard, and a jar of pickles with two survivors left clinging to the glass.

Her mother had called at lunch, the way she always did when a case started chewing through the news cycle. “Ma chérie, you are sleeping, yes? And you are eating real food, not that junk. And don’t you dare tell me you had even one cigarette.” Same script, same cadence, the last line sharpened like a bayonet. Liv could picture her perfectly: five-foot-two of French-Canadian matriarch, apron on, wooden spoon within reach like a general’s baton. A cop’s wife, a cop’s sister, a cop’s daughter, and—God help them all—the mother of one; the woman’s blood ran as blue as the tablecloth she ironed every Sunday. She didn’t wear a badge, but she had command presence, and it carried through a phone like feedback.

“Oui, Maman. I’m sleeping. I’m eating,” Liv had lied lightly, then downgraded it to a technical truth. “And no, I’m not smoking.” That part she meant. Quitting had stuck—barely—and her mother’s uncanny sixth sense for nicotine would catch even a stray whiff across provinces. There had been a time when the wooden spoon tapped the kitchen table in warning; now it just tapped memory, and somehow that was worse.

She checked her phone. Tanya’s text had already landed: DELIVERY CONFIRMED — ETA 18:10. She thumbed back a thanks, then added a mental note to actually eat the bacon with eggs and not straight from the pan at midnight like a raccoon in a suit. Compliance, strategic and limited: enough to keep her mother’s radar from pinging, enough to keep her own engine from redlining.

By the time she hit the corner, the call had shrunk to a familiar echo—love wrapped in orders, the family’s version of a lullaby. Liv smiled despite herself. She could stare down gangbangers and suits from Ottawa, but one “Young lady…” in that accent and she was back at a kitchen table with homework, a glass of milk, and the spoon tapping time. Fine. She’d eat the deli on bread that wasn’t air, and she’d try—try—to log more than four hours horizontal.

Liv was in a holding pattern whether she liked it or not. Blood and DNA don’t magic themselves into answers; best-case on a rush is twenty-four hours for a clean STR profile, more honestly forty-eight to ninety-six once you factor in intake, chain-of-custody checks, quant, amplification, and a human being double-verifying peaks instead of trusting software. And that’s if the sample behaves—no inhibitors from smoke or soil, no mixed profiles, no partials chewed up by heat or time. Tox would ride a separate rail entirely: screens now, confirmations later.

If Jerry’s crew pulled a full profile, it would go against the National DNA Data Bank; she didn’t bet the mortgage on a hit. Most killers don’t come pre-filed. Still—once in a while the universe tossed you a bone: an old arrest that sneaked into the convicted offenders index, a forgotten probation swab, a familial nudge where policy allowed. She’d plan like there’d be no match and be pleasantly furious if one arrived.

Liv pushed through the station doors, nodded to the desk officer—old-school RCMP, gray at the temples, mustache clipped to parade regs. He leaned in just enough to keep it off the record. “Watch your six—the suits from Ottawa are multiplying down the hallway.”

“Of course they are,” she murmured, lifting her coffee like a shield. “If I’m not back in ten, feed my plants.”

She angled down the corridor, tried to ghost behind Leblanc—and nearly made it. The woman he was speaking with pivoted, sharp eyes catching movement the way a hawk catches a mouse.

“Detective Benoit,” she said, voice smooth as glass. “A pleasure to meet you in person. Your work precedes you.”

Liv fixed a polite half-smile in place. If invisibility was a superpower she could requisition, she’d have signed the forms in triplicate. “Doctor Lexington. Didn’t expect you to be in Toronto. Book tour, or did Ottawa send you down to grade our homework?”

Shawna Lexington tipped her head a degree. Dark hair pinned in a clean bun, tailored suit that said consultant not cop, hazel eyes that missed very little. “A bit of both. Ottawa has me on Specials-adjacent matters—supervillains and masked vigilantes.” Her mouth quirked. “I leave mobsters and garden-variety killers to the experts… until they get theatrical.”

Liv filed the barb with all the others. She’d read Lexington’s book—the one that treated masks like a diagnosis and capes like a symptom. Neat theory, if you squinted from a podium.

Leblanc stepped in, palms open in that practiced, emollient way. “Dr. Shawna Lexington is joining us in a consultative capacity. Given the vigilante involvement and the offender’s staging, Behavioral Sciences wants a tight loop.”

“We don’t have theatrics,” Liv said evenly. “We have victims.”

“Victims arranged for an audience,” Lexington countered, not unkindly. “Curation is communication. Offenders like this respond to myth-making—and to interference that feeds it. Masked interdictions can accelerate cycles.”

Liv kept her face neutral. In her head: Or they keep two people alive who’d otherwise be toe-tagged. Aloud: “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Lexington’s gaze skimmed—eyes, posture, the faint grind of sleeplessness. “If you’re willing, I’d like your working profile and scene notes. I’ll send my own model through channels—no surprises.”

Leblanc nodded. “Access is being cleared. Quietly.”

Fantastic, Liv thought. The woman who wrote Masks as Pathology gets a front-row seat to a fox problem. “I’ve got calls to return and a lab to harass,” she said, stepping back. “Doctor. Superintendent.”

“Detective,” Lexington said, with a small, measuring nod.

Liv slid past them toward her office, smile gone the second the doorframe started to swallow the opening.

Liv had the door halfway shut when a heel and a palm wedged the gap. Lexington—hawk eyes, wolf timing.

“I’d also like your personal opinion on Toronto’s vigilante ecosystem,” she said, smooth as poured glass. “Specifically the Vulpes.”

Ah. There it is. Liv wished she’d shaved three nanoseconds off that turn of the knob.

She’d read Lexington’s book; she knew the cadence. Masks as pathology. Heroics as symptoms. Case studies carved up until all that remained were diagnoses and footnotes. The part that rankled wasn’t the rigor—it was the certainty.

“I’m elbow-deep in work,” Liv said, keeping her tone level. “But—tell you what. You give me some free consulting on The Bloodletter, I’ll give you a high-level read on the local cape scene. Off the record for now, on the record after your office clears the paperwork. Fair?”

Lexington weighed her in a heartbeat, then let the door swing wider and stepped just inside—uninvited, unruffled. “I can offer preliminary behavioral observations,” she said. “They’ll remain general until I’ve reviewed your full case materials.”

“General works,” Liv said. “Fire.”

“The offender is highly ritualized and self-narrativizing,” Lexington said without looking at notes. “He curates scenes—poses, drains, removes specific elements—so he’s not killing impulsively. He plans, then indulges. He also responds to interference as provocation. A masked interdiction last night? Expect a compensatory escalation: a bolder venue, a symbolically loaded target, or an attack designed to humiliate a perceived rival.”

A sliver of ice slid down Liv’s spine despite herself.

“Further,” Lexington went on, “if he was injured—and he likely was—there’s a window where pain, medication, and ego interact. Some men retreat; some rush back to reclaim the stage. He reads like the latter. Whoever he sees as ‘audience’ or ‘critic’ is now in scope. That includes law enforcement faces attached to the case and any vigilante who drew blood.”

Liv kept her expression still. “Appreciate the cautionary. Now your turn: the ecosystem.”

Lexington’s mouth made the faintest not-quite-smile. “On the record, Detective.”

“Then on the record: Toronto’s vigilante footprint is small and skews pragmatic,” Liv said, slipping into her driest briefing voice. “They trend local—organized crime, trafficking, corruption cases with high public impact and low patience for red tape. Some register and work within the Act; some don’t. Vulpes falls into the latter. Competent. Target-focused. Minimal collateral in the events I’ve reviewed. She’s a force multiplier on certain nights and a complication on others.”

“And her psychology?” Lexington asked, too lightly.

“I’m not her clinician,” Liv said. “I’m a cop. I can tell you behavior: disciplined, prepared, contact-competent, selective in when she shows. I don’t speculate beyond that.”

Lexington studied her a beat—eyes flicking to the untouched chair, the neatly squared files, the coffee ring ghosting the blotter. “I don’t ‘hate’ vigilantes, Detective,” she said at last. “I dislike what masks do to systems of accountability. They invite myth, and myth invites escalation. That’s not a moral judgment; it’s a risk assessment.”

“And my assessment,” Liv returned, “is that two people are breathing today because someone in a mask interfered. I can juggle both ideas until we have a name in cuffs.”

A small nod—score it as professional détente. Lexington slid a card across the edge of the desk. “My direct line. I’ll send a formal request for your working profile and scene logs. In return, I’ll circulate a structured risk advisory for your team within twenty-four hours.”

“Good,” Liv said. “I like advisories that keep my people vertical.”

Lexington stepped back into the hall. “One more thing,” she added, tone clinical, not dramatic. “If he’s the sort who curates, he’ll also scout. Vary your routes, Detective.”

The door closed the rest of the way. Liv stood a second longer than she meant to, then set the card down face-down, exactly square to the blotter. Vary your routes. As if she didn’t already sleep with that mantra.

She exhaled, sat, and reached for the phone. Labs to harass. Maps to reprint. And now—thanks to Ottawa’s favorite profiler—a fresh reason to keep her head on a swivel.

She made her calls, pushed paper, and still couldn’t shake the shadow Lexington had left behind. The woman had a way of turning people into case studies—good deeds flattened into “presentations of self,” courage relabeled “risk-taking behavior.” Liv wasn’t a cheerleader for unregistered masks, but Lexington treated them like frogs on a tray: pin them open, label the organs—trauma here, narcissism there—then declare the whole animal a pathology.

It rankled because it shaved off context. A vigilante pulls two bleeding strangers back from the brink? In Lexington-speak, that’s “interdiction that accelerates cycles.” A cop who bends a rule to keep a victim breathing? “Systemic erosion.” There was truth in the cautions, Liv knew that. But certainty was dangerous. It made you miss the messy middle where most people actually lived.

She tried to file the irritation where it belonged—under “background noise from Ottawa”—and refocused on the job. Lab follow-ups. Patrol camera pulls along Bloor. A fresh route plan for the next seventy-two hours, because she didn’t need a consultant to tell her a curator would scout his audience. She squared the stack on her blotter until the corners lined up and let the work, not the commentary, set her pulse.

Just another day in the life of Liv Benoit, she told herself, and signed the thought like a receipt she hadn’t wanted. She could curse whoever shipped Lexington down the 401, but she couldn’t hang it on Leblanc—not after that tired, unguarded moment in the break room. Annoying as it was, it had nudged him off the cardboard cutout labeled SUIT and into the column marked Human Being. She hated when that happened. It complicated the narrative that kept your temper steady and your guard up.

Admitting a suit was on the side of the boots felt like heresy. The chain of command existed to keep fingers clean and headlines tidy; Ottawa did air cover and optics while the ground took the bruises. But every so often you got a suit who remembered what the bruises were for, and that cracked the cynicism just enough to let daylight in. Uncomfortable, but true.

She filed the irritation with the rest—Lexington’s cool stare, the lab’s clock that never ticked fast enough—and reached for the next task. Coffee, then camera pulls, then route maps. Let Ottawa play chess with narratives. She’d keep moving pieces on streets, where the board bled if you were slow.

She blew out a breath and dragged her cursor back to the case file, bribing herself with the thought of dinner: a proper Montréal smoked-meat sandwich when she finally made it home. That was what she missed most—well, that and bagels that tasted like they’d actually met boiling water. Toronto, for all its shine, was a well-tailored lawyer; Montréal was his French cousin who sold used cars, told lewd jokes, and somehow made you grin anyway.

If the delivery landed on time, she’d build it right: warm rye, a shameless pile of pepper-crusted meat, a rude stripe of yellow mustard, maybe a couple of half-sours on the side. Real food, the kind her mother called “proof you’re not living on coffee and spite.” And she did make a mean sandwich when the mood took her—careful hands, clean lines, corners tucked like hospital corners on butcher paper.

Promise of dinner banked, she rolled her shoulders and got back to it. Justice still had to eat—and eating well was easy to justify. Good food was morale; morale was energy; energy was health. Even the coldest logic couldn’t argue with that chain of custody.

No graveyard shift tonight. She’d go home on time, build a real sandwich, sleep like a civilized mammal, and come back to the case with a full tank. Fingers moving over the keys, she let herself grin. If they thought Liv Benoit was good now, they should see her when she doesn’t feel like hell warmed over.