The bar was dim, a red neon sign flickering outside cast a restless glow across stained tables and worn-out faces. Jake Reed sat in the corner, nursing a scotch that barely masked years’ worth of secrets. He wore a crumpled fedora pulled low and coarse glasses that perched awkwardly on his nose, scratching against the lines etched deep into his face.
Beth slipped in quietly, her steps more a whisper than a footfall. Feathered light from the street highlighted russet curls and quick eyes that noted Jake with terse amusement. “Still squinting through those, are you?” she said, sliding into the seat opposite him.
Jake grunted, adjusting the glasses like a knight shrugging off a too-small suit of armor. “They see what they need to,” he replied. Words were measured, pragmatic—a habit from years on the force before the case that took everything but his stubborn will.
“You’re looking for the whereabouts of Albright.” Beth made it not a question, but a statement of fact, sharp and poised.
“Maybe so,” Jake responded, tracing the rim of his glass. The alcohol did little to dissuade the shadows lurking at the corners of his mind. “You’ve got ears everywhere. What are they humming?”
Beth shrugged, a slight movement, delicate but full of unspoken weight. “Rumors are like whispers in a storm, Jake—they come and go. But there’s truth if you know how to sift through the noise.”
Jake didn’t press. Silence held more weight than words could in a world tangled with misdirection. Even those ‘粗略的glasses’ of his sometimes glimpsed truths others preferred to sidestep.
The bartender moved in slow, practised motions, sliding them another round before tending to the jukebox’s lonely tinny song. “Where’s this lead?” Jake finally asked, voice rough, fingers turning a creased picture under thumb.
“Old docks,” Beth offered, casual but intent. “A place like that doesn’t keep secrets long. Could be Albright’s nest—could just be rats.”
Jake leaned back, wrestling with trust and old habits. Easy solutions weren’t his bag. Solutions came through grit, through things inching into alignment over whiskey nights and black coffee mornings.
“And you, Jake?” Beth leaned forward, mirroring a challenge barely veiled. “Where do you stand now with all your knowledge and those broken specs?”
Jake laughed, a coarse bark, echoing in the hollow of glass and memory. “Right here, squaring up to the past and whatever’s next.”
Beth matched his laugh with a smile, knowing the fierce heart beneath Jake’s pragmatic skin. “One way or another, maybe Albright put it all there for you to find, right? In pieces you need to solve.”
Her cryptic note lingered as she disappeared into the night, a spirit as elusive as the truths they’d touched.
Jake stayed, letting thoughts flow under the steady gaze of his battered lenses. Those coarse glasses, a symbol of all blurred between clarity and chaos—what seemed a handicap, was, in essence, his strength, focusing not on immediate clarity but on the tenacity of each one’s journey toward understanding. But the real clarity lay beyond the material—hidden in plain sight and always reaching for more profound reflection.
As the bar closed, Jake stood, setting the glass down gently. Through thick lenses, the world still seemed vague, but meaning pooled in shadowed corners, waiting just like him.