The rain in Los Angeles didn't wash anything away; it just turned the grime into a mirror. I sat in my office, the neon sign of the diner across the street blinking like a dying heart. My name is Miller. I'm a private investigator, which is a fancy way of saying I get paid to find things people want to stay lost.

Chief Gordon walked in without knocking. He smelled of expensive cologne and cheap morality. He threw a folder on my desk. "The Moretti family lost a shipment of 'special' assets—unmarked bills, about two million. They want it back. I want it back. You have seventy-two hours, Miller. If the money isn't on my desk by Friday, I'll leak that little incident in Tijuana to the DA. You'll be trading this office for a concrete box."

I didn't like Gordon, and I hated the Morettis, but I liked staying out of prison more.

I spent the first two days drinking rye and staring at the ceiling. I knew the Morettis. They were greedy, but they were paranoid. Paranoia is a lever if you know where to push. I leaked a tip to a low-level Moretti soldier that the bills had been intercepted by a rival gang and were being held at the old pier 14.

On the third night, the rain turned into a deluge. I waited at the pier, hidden in the shadows of a rusted crane. I didn't have an army; I had a small, portable radio and a series of timed firecrackers.

When the Moretti recovery team arrived, I triggered the noise. In the blinding rain and the chaos of the explosions, I played the role of the "intercepting" gang, using the radio to shout contradictory orders and create a sense of an ambush. The Moretti men, convinced they were walking into a slaughter, panicked. They did the only thing their training told them to do in a compromised zone: they dumped the assets into a pre-arranged "dead drop" box to save them from the "attackers" and retreated.

I walked over to the box and picked up the money. It was a clean win. A perfect play.

But as I turned to leave, I heard a sound that didn't belong in the rain. A wet, gurgling gasp.

I shone my flashlight toward the crates. There lay Benny. Benny was my assistant, a kid with too much heart and not enough sense. He had been my lookout, the only person in this city who actually trusted me. He had been caught in the crossfire of the Moretti retreat. A single bullet to the chest.

I knelt beside him, the rain washing the blood into the cracks of the concrete. Benny looked at me, his eyes wide and confused, and then they went flat.

I stood up and looked at the money in the box. Two million dollars. It felt heavy, like it was made of lead. I had the resource. I had beaten the clock. I had saved my own skin.

But as I walked back to my car, the neon lights of the city felt colder than the rain. I had the money, but I had paid for it with the only thing in my life that wasn't for sale.

***