The Last Cigarette The rain had been falling for three days straight, the kind that didn’t cleanse the city so much as remind it what filth couldn’t be washed away. In his office on the seventh floor of the Wilcox Building, Private Investigator Ray Calder leaned against the edge of his desk, the glow of his last cigarette cutting a thin orange line through the dark. He drew in slow, letting the smoke coil upward like a ghost rising from its grave. The blinds rattled softly in the wind, and he parted them with two fingers, peering down at the streetlights bleeding into the puddles below. The city looked tired. He felt worse. On the desk beside him sat a half?empty glass of bourbon—his “maybe last” drink. He wasn’t sure yet. Maybe he’d finish it. Maybe he’d throw it out the window. Maybe he’d walk out the door and never come back. Every option felt equally possible. The case that had brought him here—this late, this worn, this close to the edge—was supposed to be simple. A missing person. A worried sister. A trail that should’ve gone cold but instead burned hotter the deeper he dug. Now he had names he shouldn’t know, photographs he wished he hadn’t seen, and a target painted on his back big enough to be spotted from orbit. He took another drag, watching the ember shrink. A siren wailed somewhere far off. Tires hissed on wet asphalt. The city kept moving, uncaring, unchanging. Ray exhaled and let the blinds fall shut. He lifted the glass, swirling the amber liquid. It caught the faint light from the street, flickering like a dying flame. “This could be it,” he muttered to no one. “The last drink before everything breaks.” He brought the glass to his lips—then stopped. Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. Slow. Deliberate. Coming closer. Ray set the glass down. Crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. Straightened his coat. If this was the end, he’d meet it standing. The doorknob turned. The door opened he saw a gun with a silencer flash in the night light. This was the end.