1: A Brief History of Noimoire, by Chris Zinn: The City of Noimoire was founded at the site of the Arena of the Three Fires—the agreed-upon dispute resolution location for the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa tribes. The American army under Bartholemew Kline slew most of the tribes’ warriors at the battle of Buck Hill and seized the arena. A group of American settlers founded Noimoire in the shadow of the fort the army built near the arena. The three tribes have been seeking legislation to have the arena, and its revenue, returned to them ever since the Dakota Accords ended the hostilities between America and most of the north-central American tribes.

“Okay, does everyone understand what we’re doing tonight?” Emmett asked, gripping the steering wheel of the blue-and-rust jalopy they were all sitting in tightly. He was practically a caricature of a washed-up fifties pulp detective as he sat in his stained, brown suit and wrinkled shirt, running his sweaty palms over his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair before returning them to the steering wheel of a car that wasn’t even turned on. He reeked of desperation and cigarettes.

Wolfe didn’t mind the first one so much, but the second one reminded him that he hadn’t had a cigarette in weeks and was fiending for one.

Fiending. An appropriate term. The comforting power of Wolfe’s Infernal and Beast deck was a constant presence in his chest, a feeling of hunger, power, and heat. It reminded him of his calling: to hunt those who preyed on others.

Trying to do that the right way, on the right side of the law, was what had led Wolfe to his current place if life. He was awake at two a.m., sitting in said powder-blue-and-rust jalopy, next to a fifty-year old man who had drunk enough alcohol to be officially considered ‘pickled’ by the FDA, staring at a closed and rundown train station. A huge junction of tracks, old, rusted locomotives and train cars, and huge maintenance sheds, all behind a chain-like fence with razor wire on the top. The center was a cleared space where the tracks met, gravel bisected by the rusting iron lines.

“Can you go over it again?” Bart asked from the back.

Oh, right, we have a third member of our little party. Bart was some aspiring private investigator working with Emmett, trying to earn his three years of associate work—the requirement to go out on your own.

Just like I’m doing, Wolfe thought with a grimace. Becoming a P.I. had involved a few classes, but the real requirement had been practical experience. With his history, Wolfe couldn’t join the police, so this was his only option.

Wolfe hated being in the same position as an obvious mook like Bart.

Emmett sighed and frowned. “We don’t have much time! Okay, listen up. The plan is we’re going to go into the trainyard, and we’re going to sneak up on the people there. Then we’re going to take pictures of what they’re doing. That’s it! Once we’ve done that, we’re going to get out of here. Got it, Bart?”

Bart nodded.

“Got it, William?”

Silence in the car.

“William?” Emmett asked again.

It took Wolfe a moment. Oh, right, my new name. “I’ve got it.”

Wolfe had been born Ethan Madison Wolfe II and gone by his surname because it had made for a solid street name. But ever since he had ‘died,’ he had switched his name and started over. Now he was officially William Madison, no middle name. That little change had cost him quite a bit of the money he had fled the Grimm mob family with.

Wolfe tapped the passenger-side dashboard rapidly, his desire for a cigarette making him jittery. “The real question is: Why do we need three men for a simple photography job? Or is this a bit more than that? Most normal people, even most normal criminals, don’t need an abandoned train station located in the no man’s land between two cities to conduct business. You only need a place like this if you’re prepared to kill people to stop them from finding out what you’re doing. Maybe it’s truly heinous, or maybe it’s just a really huge deal with a lot of money involved.”

Emmett nodded with Wolfe’s words and didn’t appear surprised at Wolfe’s knowledge. “You have some experience with these people, William?”

Wolfe clenched his fist. “My history is just that. Mine. Answer my damn question.”

Rather than answering, Emmett reached underneath where Wolfe was tapping the dashboard and opened his glove compartment. Two Glock-17s, a ‘standard’ police model common throughout the country, each in a hip holster, half fell from the compartment.

Wolfe stared at the guns for a second, then looked at Emmett, his eyebrow raised.

“I don’t want trouble, but it could happen. The people we’re dealing with are the worst of the worst, and they’ll kill to keep from being dragged into the light, like the vicious, little cockroaches they are.”

Wolfe chuckled darkly in the sanctity of his own mind. Tell me how you really feel.

Emmett took one of the holsters out, removed the eight-inch gun, checked the magazine, placed it back in its case, and handed it to Wolfe. He repeated the motions for the next one and strapped it on himself. The way that it sat on him, Wolfe was pretty sure Emmett was wearing a bulletproof vest.

Not expecting trouble, hmm?

Wolfe let it go and hefted the Glock-17 briefly and regretted not bringing his own STI International Edge 40 caliber. He didn’t have a license to carry concealed, and Illinois wasn’t an open carry state. Without the protection of the Grimm family and its corrupt connections, a gun charge could land him in serious trouble—which would reveal to Damian, Wolfe’s nemesis, that he was still alive.

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“I don’t have the permits for this,” Wolfe said.

“As a trainee earning your hours under me, you can carry while on the job,” Emmett replied. “Besides, I’m surprised you care about the law.”

Wolfe grimaced and stared down at the police standard gun in his hand. It was reliable, but it didn’t have quite the stopping power that Wolfe’s favorite gun did. Regardless, given the situation and how far they likely were from police, Wolfe decided to risk it. He strapped the gun to his waist.

“Do I get a gun?” Bart asked from the back.

Wolfe turned and stared at the other trainee. The man was about twenty, with sallow cheekbones and slightly black teeth—sure sign of someone using meth, in Wolfe’s experience.

“No,” Emmett said. The old P.I. rooted around in the glove compartment and took a camera from the back of it, heaved himself around in his seat, and held it out to Bart. “You get this.”

Bart stared at it dubiously but took it. “I think I should carry a gun, and William here can carry the camera.”

Emmett glanced over at Wolfe again. “I’m comfortable with my choices—this guy has obviously been in some fights.”

“I’ve been in fights,” Bart protested.

Wolfe was rapidly losing patience with the idiot. “Losing a fistfight to your sister doesn’t count, jackoff. Shut up so we can get this over with—the longer we’re out here, the more chance something can go sideways. I’ve got shit to do before I die.”

“Hey, asshole—” Bart started.

Wolfe pulled the Glock and held it up, turning it in the dim light inside their vehicle.

“Whatever,” Bart muttered, but he shut up beyond that.

Emmett, who hadn’t said anything, let go of the steering wheel. “If you two are done arguing, let’s go!”

He opened the door and exited the vehicle. Wolfe followed out his own side, Bart behind him. Bart was fiddling with the camera as he went and moved slightly forward.

Emmett fell back to walk beside Wolfe. “You do know how to use that, right?”

“I know my way around a firefight,” Wolfe responded.

“Odd for someone whose resume listed ‘lumberjack’ as his only previous work experience,” Emmett commented, but then he held his hands up. “I don’t actually care how you know, as long as you know.”

Wolfe gritted his teeth. “I’ve told you three times now that I can handle a gun, counting that little tiff with numb nuts over there.”

Emmett nodded. “Okay. I just can’t have tonight go wrong. This could make up for everything.”

Wolfe just shrugged at Emmett and followed the man across the parking lot. Wolfe knew there was more to the story. The truth was, however, that he didn’t want to do anything more than to collect a day of supervised training. He needed three years of work before he could be a licensed independent P.I., and the unfairness of sitting backseat to a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears P.I.s before he could do his own work was aggravating him.

He had been the head enforcer for the Grimm mob family for twenty years before Big Man Grimm’s son Damian had shot his father. He could handle a little P.I. work. But mob enforcer wasn’t something you could put on a resume, so…

The three of them ran across the parking lot until they reached the chain-link fence. The portion Emmett to which had led them was already cut, with a pair of metal cutters on the ground next to it. Bart was still fiddling with the camera.

“Prepared for this?” Wolfe asked.

Emmett just nodded, his face tense as he looked toward the trainyard.

Bart crawled through and headed into the trainyard. Before they could join him, however, Wolfe grabbed Emmett by the arm. “I don’t think I want to do whatever is happening. It isn’t worth a day of training.”

“I need you,” Emmett said. “Bart can barely get his shit together.”

“Well, I don’t need this,” Wolfe said. “I’ve got a lot of my own shit to deal with.”

Emmett turned and placed his hand on Wolfe’s arm. “I’ll make it worth your while, William. I’ll sign a month’s backlog of work cards to just do this. It’ll probably be fine, and you’ll get a month’s work for an evening.”

Wolfe frowned. That would save him a lot of time, despite how his instincts were telling him this was going to be dangerous. “Fine.”

The two of them crawled under the cut fence, Wolfe first, and headed into the train graveyard in the center. Wolfe rounded the corner of a train car, staring down a long, open space between numerous other train cars, toward the center. It was open, and a large van was parked in the center. Wolfe could make out a couple of figures moving around in the moonlight, but he was too far away to see details.

“Bart, get back!” Wolfe hissed, but the idiot was either not paying attention or too far away to hear, about halfway from Wolfe to the van.

Emmett reached into his jacket and pulled out an old-fashioned pair of binoculars and held them up to his face. “They haven’t opened the van yet. They have to open the van before we take a picture!”

Wolfe reached over and grabbed the binoculars, and Emmett let him take them. Before Wolfe could put them to his face, he heard a car approaching. He looked up to see a sportsy, black convertible with the Ferrari logo on the front pull up with a squeal in the gravel of the trainyard—Wolfe was surprised they’d even gotten close to off-roading it with a car like that, much less entered the trainyard. Infernal Realms, he was surprised they’d let it out of their yard.

He put the binoculars to his face and stared through them.

The people came into focus. Three guys Wolfe didn’t recognize were waiting with obvious gun bulges beneath cheap suits, along with a fourth guy Wolfe did recognize: Piper.

“Son of a bitch,” Wolfe said through gritted teeth.

Piper had been one of the Grimm family men and had worked with Wolfe once. Until he’d disappeared without a trace during a job that had nearly gotten Wolfe killed. Wolfe hadn’t even known he’d survived, or what had happened to him.

“You know them, William?” Emmett asked.

The use of his new name floored Wolfe for a moment but stopped him from revealing anything. “No, just upset about the damage they’re doing to that car.”

“Fuckers deserve everything that happens to them down to the road grit,” Emmett ground out. “That car is a Ferrari Mythic 2024, worth almost half a million. They bought it with blood.”

Wolfe ignored the hyperbole and stared at the people exiting the car. One was a tall, slender man in his late twenties dressed in a perfectly tailored white suit—completely inappropriate for night-time shenanigans. The other… he was just under six feet tall, with pale-white skin and black hair. He dressed in a black hoodie and equally black skin-tight jeans, and he had a stylized skull ring on his finger.

Wolfe cussed again.

“What?” Emmett asked.

“I know the guy next to the suit,” Wolfe said, pointing and passing the binoculars back to Emmett. “That’s Tracy d’Ordinii. A deckbearer who will ‘remove’”—Wolfe held his fingers up in air quotes, despite Emmett staring through the binoculars—“problems that the powerful crime lords have. No offense, but we need to leave. Now.”

Emmett wisely didn’t ask how Wolfe knew these things. “I need to get evidence! Incontravertible evidence of their wrongdoing. Evidence that the police can’t ignore.”

Wolfe pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re going to get dead, not evidence. Then you’ll fail whatever obnoxious quest is driving you. Live to fight another day.”

Emmett lowered the binoculars, his pasty face even paler in the moonlight, and Wolfe could smell the sweat and fear on him. He stared at Wolfe for a moment, then his shoulders drooped. “Let’s get Bart.”

Just then, there was a flash of light from the train cars near the van. Wolfe stared, dumbfounded, at Bart. He had decided to take a picture and obviously forgotten to turn the flash off.

Two of the mooks ran over to Bart, who held his hands up.

With no hesitation whatsoever, one of the mooks raised his gun and shot Bart in the head, then stomped on the camera, hard.