“Hey what’s that van doing up on that hill?”

Daniel’s question drew idle glances from both women, before Juniper responded without looking up from her files, “Oh, they’re just doing something.”

They returned to their reading, documents spread across the dashboard, while Sophia sat forward from her position in the back seat, eyes darting between them with barely concealed exasperation. These two bozos, she thought, wrinkling her nose at the industrial stench wafting through the windows. “Hey, it smells like burnt rubber out here - can we close these?” Her request went unanswered as the other two remained absorbed in their files.

The abandoned logistics warehouse loomed before them, a cathedral of rust and shadows in the dying light. Their car sat half-hidden behind overgrown grass, files strewn across laps and dashboard - three hours into a stakeout that was starting to feel more like performance art than investigation. The loading bays gaped like empty mouths, collecting shadows that seemed to whisper to them to go home.

“So… we just wait for night?” Juniper finally asked, her pen tapping an anxious rhythm against the steer.

Sophia watched Daniel steal another glance at Juniper when he thought no one was looking. God, they’re hopeless, she thought, fighting the urge to lock them both in the car until they figured it out.

The sun’s descent transformed their world in steady steps of blue. Late light caught the warehouse’s metal face, while darkness crept in like a rising tide. A moonlight suede settled over everything - soft and dangerous all at once. Juniper pulled her blazer tighter against the chill, though Sophia noticed how her eyes lingered on the shadows cast by Daniel’s features.