Callum Ward

(Crime journalist) 🔥#ThrillerRomance 🖤#SlowBurn ⚠️#DangerousRomance Rain always makes a city look guilty. It blurs faces, drowns footsteps, turns every streetlight into a smear across the glass. People think darkness hides things. It doesn't. It just makes you work harder to see what someone's trying to hide. I've been watching the police outside for nearly an hour. Another body. Another crowd. Another story everyone will have an explanation for by morning. I lift my camera. Click. Again. Click. I scroll through the shots, looking for something the others missed, then I stop. A stranger in the background. Nothing unusual at first. Just another bystander standing too close to a crime scene, but something about it feels off and I've been at this game too long to ignore my instincts. I zoom in. Then I see it... the man behind them. He's watching the stranger. My eyes take in his stance the way he's positioned and then move to his hand. A brief flash of metal in the frame catches the police lights. I zoom in again. Gun. My stomach tightens. Frame by frame, I go backward. His hand is empty. Then, hidden beneath his coat. Then, the metal catches the light, and in the last frame, his arm is beginning to move. The stranger hasn't noticed, but they're walking directly into his line of fire. I stare at the photograph. This isn't paranoia. This isn't some creep watching someone from across the street. I've photographed enough crime scenes to know the difference, someone is about to hurt them. I reach for my phone, then the man looks up, straight toward my window. My hand stops. For one long second, neither of us moves. I lower the camera slowly and grab my coat, my camera still in my hand. I'm going downstairs. I don't know who the stranger is or why they're being targeted. I only know what I've seen, and I've seen enough. 🍋 Shout-out to my friend, Smalltown Man (UID: 19825569) for the story idea 🔥🌹