On pure instinct, Liv’s hand went for her shoulder holster—but stopped halfway as her brain caught up to her reaction. If the Vulpes had wanted to attack, she wouldn’t have spoken first. Liv would already be bleeding on the pavement.
Her hand hovered near her coat, fingers flexing once before she forced them to relax. She straightened, steel running into her posture even as her pulse hammered in her ears. The fox-headed shadow stretched long across the sidewalk, sharp ears cutting into the glow of the streetlamp. Vulpes herself stood half in, half out of the alley’s gloom, yellow lenses glinting faintly like animal eyes in the dark.
“Talk?” Liv said flatly. Her voice was cool, controlled—the kind she used on suspects with knives still in their pockets. She wasn’t about to give the vigilante the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.
“About a mutual case,” Vulpes replied with precise calm. She shifted her stance slightly. “But not here. Somewhere more private.”
Liv narrowed her eyes. “Give me one reason why I should discuss an RCMP case with an illegal vigilante. Especially the one I think you’re talking about.”
Vulpes slowly moved a hand to her side and produced a sealed plastic bag. Inside was a slender metal tube, its surface spattered with blood. She held it up so Liv could see.
“Because you have information I need,” she said evenly. “And I have a blood sample for you.”
That made Liv pause. A blood sample. It wasn’t the magic bullet television shows liked to pretend—no instant names popping up on a screen, no convenient “match” within seconds. But it was still gold. A clean DNA sample could tie a suspect to a crime scene with certainty, or rule one out just as decisively. It could flag up matches in the national database if the Bloodletter had ever been arrested under another name. Even without a hit, it could build a genetic profile—sex, ancestry markers, even hereditary conditions. Combine that with the microscopic trace evidence carried in blood—drug residues, signs of illness, chemical exposure—and suddenly the mountain of theory and conjecture she’d been climbing might finally give way to something solid.
Liv tilted her head slightly as another thought struck her like a cold bucket of water. Talking to a vigilante was a legal grey area at best. Working with one—sharing information—that was a career death sentence.
Canadian law had bent around the reality of masked heroes and vigilantes back in the 1950s, after the Masked Hero Law of ’45 established the right of costumed individuals to keep their identities private. That gave capes some legitimacy, but it didn’t make them cops. The RCMP and provincial forces treated vigilantes under the same framework as citizens: they could perform a lawful citizen’s arrest if they directly witnessed a crime in progress, and reasonable force was tolerated so long as it wasn’t excessive. But disclosure of police files? Sharing active investigations with someone outside the chain of command—let alone an unlicensed masked operative—wasn’t just frowned upon, it was grounds for dismissal and prosecution.
There was some precedent, rare cases where vigilantes had been treated as confidential informants. It gave the brass deniability, a fig leaf of legality. But those arrangements were fragile, constantly walking the knife’s edge of oversight. Internal Affairs lived for that kind of thing. If they sniffed out she’d been “consulting” with the Vulpes? Her entire career—everything she had worked for, bled for—could go up in flames.
Liv grimaced, the weight of the choice pressing in. She didn’t think the Vulpes was a bad guy—not in the way real predators were—but she hated that people like her insisted on working in the shadows instead of putting on a badge, joining the force, or registering like everyone else who wanted to be taken seriously. At least then they’d be accountable.
“Fine,” she said at last, her tone clipped but measured. “My office. We can talk. But how much I talk—” her eyes narrowed slightly “—that’s still up for me to decide.”
Vulpes gave a careful nod, the plastic bag with the blood-stained piton launcher vanishing behind her cape and into a pouch with practiced ease. This was more than she’d hoped for when she’d decided to take the gamble of approaching Benoit. Truth be told, she had half-expected the detective to slap cuffs on her right there—she was, after all, a vigilante and a thief. The fact that she only stole from criminals didn’t carry much weight in the eyes of the law.
“Meet you there,” Vulpes said simply, before melting back into the shadows, her outline swallowed by the alley’s darkness until only the memory of her vulpine shadow remained.
Liv stood there a moment longer, watching the Vulpes melt into the dark until even the outline of those sharp, foxlike ears was gone. She exhaled slowly, jaw tightening. Was this really a good idea?
She started back toward the station, footsteps measured but her mind racing. How the hell was the Vulpes going to get into her office without being seen? The station wasn’t exactly a place a masked vigilante could just stroll into unnoticed, and the idea of her slipping through the walls like some phantom made Liv’s skin prickle.
And then the doubts began to bloom, one after the other. What if the Vulpes wasn’t on their side? Rumors swirled about her—whispers of theft, of jobs that blurred the line between vigilante and criminal. What if that bag hadn’t held the real thing? A fake sample would send her chasing shadows, waste precious hours. Worse, if anyone caught her even entertaining information from a vigilante, it could end her career—the career she’d built with blood, sweat, and a stubborn refusal to quit when things got hard.
What if someone found out?
Her gut twisted at the thought of Internal Affairs catching wind of this little “conversation.” Or worse—what if Leblanc found out? He stank of politics already, and if he caught her crossing a legal line he’d burn her to the ground just to make himself look cleaner.
Liv rubbed at her temple as she walked, the ache of fatigue and tension weighing heavier with every step. She told herself she wasn’t reckless. She told herself she wasn’t naïve. But damned if she wasn’t stepping into something that could either break the case wide open—or break her.
Coraline watched Detective Benoit walk away, her figure swallowed by the streetlamps down the block. The vigilante let out a slow breath, shoulders loosening only slightly as she lingered in the shadows of the alley. This was risky—damn risky—but she knew she couldn’t do it alone. The Bloodletter had to be stopped, and Benoit might be the only person sharp enough, clean enough, to help her lock him down.
With a running start, Coraline scaled the wall in a fluid rhythm of hands and boots, parkour carrying her up to the rooftop like it was second nature. Up here, the city sprawled before her in neon and shadow. Getting into Benoit’s office wouldn’t be hard. Stealth, misdirection, infiltration—that was the bread and butter of the Vulpes. Vents, windows, alternate entrances, disguises, mimicry, gadgets—she had an arsenal of ways to slip past locks and eyes alike. The challenge wasn’t the entry. It never was.
The real weight pressing on her now was doubt.
She liked what she had read on Benoit. The woman was good—a straight arrow in a world where too many bent or broke under pressure. But she was still a cop. And bringing in the Vulpes, putting cuffs on her, might not be outside her wheelhouse if things went sideways.
Worse, Coraline couldn’t stop turning over the consequences in her head. If Benoit worked with her and Internal Affairs found out, it could tank the detective’s career in a heartbeat. The RCMP would lose a genuinely good officer in the field—and it would be Coraline’s fault for dragging her into the shadows.
That thought stung more than the Bloodletter’s blade wounds.
Coraline shook herself free of the spiral and forced her focus outward. Doubts could wait; for now, there was work to do. With a running leap, she cleared the gap to the next building, landing in a crouch as quiet as a cat. From there she climbed higher, until she perched on the edge of a rooftop opposite the RCMP station.
The building loomed solid and severe in the night, its windows glowing in scattered squares of tired fluorescence. Coraline crouched low, cloak draped around her like a second shadow, and studied it. Casing the place was second nature—angles of surveillance cameras, guard rotations, the rhythm of foot traffic in and out of the main entrance. It wasn’t just habit; it was how she calmed herself. Details steadied her mind when emotions tried to tug her in too many directions.
She traced potential paths in her head: the unlit windows on the third floor, the service vents along the south wall, the blind spots in the alleyway where a quick grapple line could take her unseen. Each observation was another way to quiet the nagging doubts, another reason to remember who she was. The Vulpes didn’t hesitate. She adapted. She infiltrated.
Still, as her sharp eyes followed the patrol of a lone constable circling the lot, a thought whispered through anyway: This is her turf. And if I drag her down with me, what good will any of this be?
Liv sat heavily at her desk, the leather chair creaking beneath her as the same thought gnawed at her that was gnawing at the vigilante across the street: What good will any of this be if anyone finds out?
Her eyes lingered on the silent phone as she mulled the consequences. Evidence tied to a vigilante—even one with the Vulpes’ growing reputation—would be suspect the second it came to light. Defense lawyers would shred it in court, cry foul about tampering, chain of custody, professionalism. Even if she bagged Bloodletter tomorrow, the whole case could collapse into a circus once word got out that Benoit had accepted help from a costumed thief. The higher-ups would throw her to the wolves to protect the RCMP’s image, and every hour she’d ever put into the badge would burn down around her ears.
And that wasn’t even the worst-case scenario. Her jaw tightened at the darker thought. What if Vulpes doesn’t just catch him? What if she kills him? The law was clear—murder was still murder, even if the victim was a sadistic killer. Bloodletter was a monster, no doubt, but justice wasn’t supposed to come with claws and fangs. If the vigilante crossed that line, Liv would be complicit just by sitting in this chair and talking to her.
The precedent was there, sure—Canadian law had long since carved out a strange, uncomfortable niche for vigilante assistance. Evidence “incidentally” recovered by masks had held up in court before, provided the chain of custody was documented and the police didn’t look too closely at how it got into their hands. But walking that tightrope was dangerous. One slip, one headline about collusion, and her career—her life—would end in disgrace.
And yet, if working with the Vulpes stopped Bloodletter sooner… how many lives would that save?
Liv pulled open the top drawer of her desk with a faint scrape of wood on metal. Buried among case files and pencils worn down to stubs sat an old, creased photo she’d carried with her through every transfer and posting. She slid it out carefully, as if it were something fragile, irreplaceable.
Her father stared back at her from the frozen frame of memory, dressed in his full RCMP parade uniform on Remembrance Day—scarlet tunic pressed razor-sharp, boots polished to a mirror’s shine, medals catching the sunlight. He looked proud, unshakable, every inch the Mountie the stories always promised. And there she was beside him, barely ten years old, her small hand wrapped around his, beaming up at him like he hung the moon.
The image hit her harder tonight than it usually did. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat, thumb brushing the edge of the photo. “What would you have done, Dad?” she whispered.
The silence of her office offered no answer, but she could almost hear his voice in memory—firm, steady, that mix of warmth and iron that had defined him. He’d taught her that the badge meant service, meant sacrifice, meant doing things the right way even when it was the harder way. But he’d also taught her that protecting people came first, always.
That was the knife’s edge she stood on now.
“The Mounties always get their man,” she said quietly to the empty room.
It wasn’t really the motto of the RCMP—not officially. That had been born of dime novels and Hollywood Westerns, a romantic myth stitched into the red serge by people who’d never ridden the prairies or frozen their lungs on northern patrols. But it had stuck, damn it. Stuck hard enough that her father had said it with pride when he told her bedtime stories about the old North-West Mounted Police. Stuck hard enough that it still carried weight all these years later, a kind of fairy tale promise that Mounties didn’t quit until justice was done.
“Maintiens le Droit,” she murmured after a beat. The real words. The official motto etched on the crest. Uphold the right.
She rolled the phrase over in her mind, the way her father had made her memorize it as a kid. But what was the right? Was it the law, rigid and unyielding, every line in the Criminal Code followed to the letter? Or was it something deeper—protecting people, stopping harm, bringing down the kind of predator who cut down lives like weeds in a field?
Her lips tightened. Uphold the right, even at any cost? Uphold what is right, even if it skirts what is lawful? Was there a line, and if so, where the hell did it fall?
The photo on her desk didn’t answer. Her father’s eyes, forever locked in that captured moment of pride, seemed to dare her to decide for herself.
Her eyes drifted from the photo to something tucked deeper in her desk drawer: a necklace chain, worn smooth with years of handling. Hanging from it was an old brass rifle round, dulled with age but still solid. Her father had given it to her the day she joined the force, pressing it into her palm with a quiet smile.
“A good luck charm,” he’d called it. Said it had once belonged to Sam Steele himself. Smoothbore Sam—the legendary Mountie, the rifleman who made his mark in an age when six-gun fighters and pistol men were writing their own bloody legends. Her dad had sworn Steele had carried it as a reminder: that a Mountie’s duty wasn’t the quick draw, it was the steady aim. Patience. Relentlessness.
Liv rubbed her thumb across the dented casing, feeling the history it pretended to hold. She’d already asked herself what Steele would have done, back in the days when the RCMP was closer to cavalry than modern police. He wouldn’t have sat behind a desk staring at data until his eyes bled. He would’ve saddled up, gathered a crew of men, brought along trackers and dogs, and ridden out like a military operation. They would have hunted Bloodletter down through grit and snow and silence—and they would have brought him back in for a coffin.
That was the myth, anyway. The kind of story her dad loved to tell. The kind of story that gnawed at her when she thought about how slow and complicated justice had become in her world of reports, warrants, and endless procedure.
She smirked faintly as she held the charm up by its chain, the dull brass catching a glint of her desk lamp. She’d long since learned the truth—how the “Sam Steele bullet” was just another tall tale her dad spun to make history feel alive. The round was a fake, a trinket dressed up as legend. But the older she got, the more she realized the story mattered more than the metal. The meaning had meaning, even if the details didn’t.
Her thumb brushed the dent in the casing, and her voice dropped to a whisper, as if she were speaking to him across time. “You wouldn’t have turned down her help, not if it meant putting a man like Bloodletter away, would you, Dad?”
She let the bullet swing slowly on its chain, thinking about both mottos—the official Maintiens le Droit and the Hollywood-fueled “Mounties always get their man.” Maybe one was law and the other was myth, but in the end they pointed to the same thing: justice wasn’t clean, and sometimes you had to bend in the right places to hold true to the spirit of it.
Holding the charm, she found herself almost convincing herself aloud. This wasn’t betrayal of the badge. This was honoring it.
A soft breeze stirred the papers on her desk, and Liv’s head snapped toward the window—then to the office door. It was easing shut, the latch catching with barely a click. Somehow, impossibly, the Vulpes was already inside.
Liv’s brow lifted a fraction. She forced herself to keep her expression neutral, but she couldn’t help the thought that slipped through: damn. A woman in a cape had just ghosted her way into an RCMP station—into her office, no less—without so much as tripping a camera or drawing a curious glance. That wasn’t theatrics. That was skill.
The vigilante stepped forward, quiet as a shadow, and set the sealed evidence bag on the desk. The blood-speckled piton launcher gleamed faintly under the lamp’s light. “No matter what choice you make,” Vulpes said evenly, “the sample is yours, Detective.”
Liv nodded once, slow, deliberate. She slid the photo of her father back into the drawer, then, on instinct she couldn’t quite name, looped the brass bullet charm over her head and let it rest against her collarbone. The weight was small but grounding.
“Alright, fox,” she said, her voice steady despite the churn of her thoughts. “You’ve managed to sneak into the kennel. Least this hound owes you is a few words.”
The two women locked eyes—cop and vigilante, law and outlaw—neither moving, the silence between them sharp as a fresh razor
