The Hollow Hours
Mira Vance has stopped pretending she can pay the rent. Three days of rain have bled the ink on her eviction notice into mush, and the ceiling above her desk won't stop dripping onto the only piece of paper that still demands her attention. When the case arrives , a missing detective whose last voicemail is nothing but breathing and a name Mira doesn't recognize , she has no good reason to take it, and no worse reason than the one she already has: she needs the money, and nobody else wants the trouble. What begins as a favor for a grieving widow threads through city council recordings, late-night radio static, and a web of quiet favors owed between a powerful developer, a vanished councilman, and a judge who would prefer her name stay off the record. Each witness Mira finds is half a step ahead of her , recorded, referenced, or already gone. Eli Marsh's last voice on a tape. Adrian Calderon's assistant who never quite says yes. A councilman's widow whose gravel voice won't return calls. The hollow hours , that stretch of city time between the last bar closes and the first commuter wakes , have always been where things go missing. People. Receipts. Bodies of evidence. Mira has worked them for years, long enough to know the difference between what's lost and what's been quietly buried. Now she has to find which one this is, before the rain stops and the paper finally dries.