Last Known Address

In every investigation, there is the hunter and the hunted. The question is which one you are.

Last Known Address is the fifth volume in the Nightshade Stories series — ten original short stories of crime, pursuit, and the line between investigator and suspect that is never quite where you expect it. No easy villains. No clean resolutions. Just people doing difficult work in a world that keeps moving the target.

The ten stories inside:

• The Last Fare — Three nights, the same corner, a different address each time. On the fourth night, a cab driver makes a different choice.
• Cold Case — Twenty-eight years. A photograph. A reflection that sent her to the wrong house — before the evidence corrected her.
• The Alibi — Her husband's alibi was airtight. She had spent forty-eight hours making sure of it. He didn't know.
• Negative Space — A forensic photographer finds her own reflection in an evidence photograph from a crime scene she never visited.
• The Informant — She had been running him for three years. She was the last to understand that he had been running her.
• The Gradient — Nine months undercover. The moment she stopped being certain which version of herself was the cover.
• The Profile — The profile was accurate in every particular except the one assumption she had never thought to examine.
• The Trunk — His father kept it for fifty years. His son opened it on a Wednesday evening and called the police anyway.
• The Ransom — The second call came to her direct line. The distortion was gone. She kept talking — and listened for the address.
• Last Known Address — Her last case before retirement turned out to be her first mistake. Thirty-one years between them.

These are not stories about catching criminals. They are stories about the cost of the work — the errors made in good faith, the lines crossed without knowing, and the people who keep going back to the desk anyway, because the alternative is a world where no one does.

Volume V of the Nightshade Stories series by Vale Nighton. Each volume stands alone — no prior reading required. Volumes I through IV are available now.

Perfect for readers who love literary crime fiction, morally complex investigators, and stories where the truth is never as simple as the evidence suggests. Read one. You'll read them all.