This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Detective Sarah Chen had seen enough crime scenes to know when something was wrong with the picture. The rain-slicked streets of downtown Seattle reflected the neon glow from the karaoke bar's sign, casting everything in an eerie pink light that made the pooled blood look black instead of crimson. But it wasn't the victim sprawled across the alley pavement that caught her attention—it was the phone clutched in his dead fingers, still displaying an unfinished text message.

"What do we have, Rodriguez?" Sarah asked her partner as she ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, her dark hair already dampening from the persistent drizzle that seemed to define this city.

Detective Miguel Rodriguez looked up from his notebook, his weathered face grim in the artificial light. "Victim is David Park, thirty-two, works as a software engineer for Meridian Tech. Single gunshot to the chest, close range. No witnesses, but the bar's security camera caught him leaving around eleven-thirty last night."

Sarah knelt beside the body, careful not to disturb the evidence markers that dotted the scene like numbered breadcrumbs. David Park had been young, probably making good money in Seattle's booming tech industry. His clothes were expensive but not flashy—dark jeans, a wool peacoat that had probably cost more than Sarah's monthly car payment. What struck her was how ordinary he looked, how unremarkable. This wasn't someone who lived on the edges of society where violence was a constant companion.