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[right][sub][color=silver]Staten Island[/color][/sub][/right]

The night air was crisp, carrying the distant hum of the city, but here, on the outskirts where the docks met the industrial district, everything was quiet. I crouched on the rooftop of an adjacent building, watching the warehouse like a cat stalking its prey. It was an all-too-familiar experience, and the nostalgia of hundreds of similar nights and warehouses came rushing back. 

The cold bit at my fingertips through my gloves as I observed the old brick building. Two weeks ago, it might have looked identical to any other structure in this forgotten corner of the city. Still, someone had recently attempted to turn the warehouse into a modest fortress. New security cameras dotted the exterior, and freshly installed, reinforced doors were a clear message to would-be intruders. It was the kind of message I had spent years ignoring.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me.

“Anything on your end?” The voice hummed in my earpiece, steady as ever. 

“Nothing yet,” I murmured, eyes sweeping the perimeter again. “Warehouse is locked up tight. No movement. How about you?”

“Same. Security’s on their usual routes. No sign of anything out of the ordinary.”

About twenty miles north, Daniel Rand was doing the same as me. He guarded another warehouse owned by the same importer—our client. 

It was a simple enough gig. The client, proprietor of Brightly Imports, approached Heroes for Hire with a problem—his warehouses were being hit one by one without any sign of forced entry. There were no broken locks, hacked systems, or a single sign of any physical presence—just merchandise vanishing into thin air. So Brightly requested our services guarding the warehouses, catching the culprit red-handed, and, if possible, returning his stolen goods. 

It was funny, really. If someone had told me years ago that I’d be sitting here acting as security for some wealthy businessman’s property, I would have laughed them right out of the room. Or I would have thought I’d be doing so as a ploy to gain access and take all the goodies for myself. Yet here I was, doing just that, not even for the first time. Between my part-time work with the Heroes and my own private investigation firm, this had become comfortably routine. 

Sometimes, that degree of comfort left me feeling [i]un[/i]comfortable. 

I slipped from my perch, silently dropping to the cold, cracked concrete two dozen feet below. The city’s lights bled into the horizon creating a cozy backdrop to the evening’s biting chill. I began making a slow circuit around the warehouse's perimeter, carefully keeping to the shadows as I maintained my vigil. It was the seventh time I had done so since arriving just an hour earlier, and I was making sure to do so at irregular intervals. I knew from experience that predictable security made for easy infiltrations—I had no intentions of making this easy. 

That is, if anyone did show up as the client feared. Based on the information Brightly provided to Danny, his facilities weren’t getting hit every night. Instead, they had been broken into intermittently over the last several weeks. Though, broken into seemed to be a misnomer given the lack of any damages done. I had made a point earlier in the day to visit the last of Brightly’s warehouses that had been robbed. Much like the building I found myself walking around now, it had seen some security improvements, and I was mildly impressed by the amount of money that had been shelled out. 

Not that any of it had done our client a lick of good. The culprit, whoever they are, never left a trace. Physically or otherwise. Brightly had sent over several hours' worth of surveillance footage to the Heroes for Hire offices, and Danny tasked me with reviewing them for any signs I might notice that others had missed. Yet, even the security cameras directly pointed at the storeroom where the crates of merchandise had been stacked failed to catch even so much as a flicker of activity. Despite this, when inventory checks were done the following day, the crates' merchandise had vanished without a trace. 

My first inclination had been that the theft had taken place previously, before the shipment of goods even arrived at the warehouse. It would be a relatively simple heist to achieve, all things considered, but the client had assured Danny that this wasn’t the case. Apparently, they took daily stock of their inventory and knew for a fact nothing was missing ahead of time.

It was an intriguing puzzle, to say the least.

As I continued my circuit, I cycled through the various settings of my goggles. The lenses shifted from low light to infrared and even ultraviolet light before beginning the cycle again. I could spot the various bright flares of the camera systems easily, even from the shadowed outskirts. The yellow and orange signatures of the guards stood out against the cool purples of the night, and I paused to take in their patrol routes. 

There were six security personnel outside the warehouse. I had been told that this was double what Brightly Imports usually employed, all part of the new and enhanced safeguarding measures. I knew from my initial reconnaissance of the structure that there weren’t additional guards within. 

I tapped my comm. “Danny, what are you seeing on your end?”

There was a brief chirp of static before his voice came through. “Not a thing. If someone’s out here, they’re patient.”

Scanning the building ahead, I suggested that our mystery bandits were watching us watching them. A thought that had crossed my mind several times already. 

“That’s a cheerful thought.” I could hear the grin in his voice. 

I shifted my gaze back to the guards. “Danny, quick question.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the security like over there?” I asked as I once again cycled my lenses through the electromagnetic spectrum. 

“Same as yours, I suppose,” he answered. “Brightly said each of the warehouses got the same security package upgrade.”

“Six guards, all outside?”

“Yep. Competent, too. I spoke with one of them earlier to get a better understanding of the situation from their perspective, and the guy I talked to definitely knew their stuff. They’re a professional security firm, and they were brought on less than two months ago right after the first warehouse was robbed.”

I barely kept the scoff from escaping my lips. Danny blatantly making his presence known was a mistake. I should have expected that, given the usual jobs Heroes for Hire took on. Most of the time, all it took was for the criminals responsible to know there was a costumed do-gooder running around for them to make themselves scarce. The average petty thief would have no interest in crossing paths with Danny Rand, better known as Iron Fist, a man whose glowing hand could shatter steel. There was nothing average about this particular thief, however, and the odds were high that by now, if someone had been casing the warehouse Danny was watching over, any hope of catching them in the act was lost. 

I didn’t bother pointing this out to Danny, though. The subtleties of a stakeout were clearly not a strong suit of his. 

Instead, I brought to his attention something that had been nagging at me for the better part of an hour. 

“You know what doesn’t sit right with me? If they’re worried about thieves, why aren’t there any interior guards? You’d think they’d have sat one or two on top of the goods.”

There was a pause before Danny replied. “Guess they thought more cameras and stronger locks would be the solution. Why? You think that’s significant?”

I didn’t answer. Something caught my attention as I did another infrared sweep across the perimeter—a faint heat signature on the ground along the side of the warehouse. Footprints in orange gradient. Fading fast, but still there. A sign that someone had just passed through that area moments before. Except I had already clocked all the guards’ routes, and none had approached the warehouse from that direction for several minutes.

I narrowed my eyes, the goggles picking up the subtle movement and reacting, the lenses focusing to produce higher clarity. I studied the prints carefully—one step, then another, then... nothing. The last footprint wasn’t complete. The heel and midsection were clearly defined, but the toes faded out. No, not faded. There was no shift in thermal colors. It was cut off—as if the foot had partially sunk into the wall itself, yet there was no indication anything had made contact with the surface. 

I stared at it, my heartbeat picking up. I quickly switched my goggles’ settings to night vision and scanned the wall. I’m not sure what I thought I might find, but there was nothing. No holes, no seams. Just solid brick-and-mortar. 

“Danny,” I said, keeping my voice even. “I think I’ve got something.”