The Missing Blueprint

The first thing Detective Jonas Hale noticed was the smell —

burnt plastic mixed with coffee and printer ink.

The second thing was the body.

A man lay sprawled across the drafting table, his hand still gripping a mechanical pencil. The pencil tip had snapped clean off, pressed into a sheet of blue paper smeared with blood.

“Name’s Daniel Kerr, forty-two,” Officer Myra said, flipping through her notepad. “Architect at Eastgate Design & Build. Found by his assistant around seven this morning. No forced entry.”

Jonas nodded, scanning the small office. The walls were plastered with sketches — bridges, towers, subway plans. Everything neat, precise, calculated… except the chaos around Daniel’s last work.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the half-burned blueprint in the trash.

“Fire started here,” Myra said. “Someone tried to destroy it but didn’t finish the job. Sprinklers went off before it burned completely.”

Jonas knelt beside the can and gently lifted the singed sheet. A single word was scrawled across the corner:

“Vault.”

Two hours later, Jonas stood inside Eastgate’s conference room with Lydia Cho, the company’s legal advisor.

“Daniel was working on a government contract,” she said. “The Riverspan Expansion Project — new underground transit tunnels. Highly classified. He was head of design.”

“Anyone else have access to his files?” Jonas asked.

She hesitated. “Two others — his assistant, Mara Klein, and his partner, Graham Lott. But they wouldn’t—”

He raised an eyebrow. “Everyone says that until they do.”

Mara Klein was waiting in the lobby. She was in her late twenties, eyes red from crying but sharp beneath the grief.

“I left last night at nine,” she said quietly. “He was still working. He said he wanted to ‘fix the numbers.’ I thought he meant the stress loads, but…” She trailed off.

Jonas showed her the burnt sheet. “Does this mean anything to you? The word ‘Vault’?”

Mara’s expression changed — surprise first, then fear. “That’s not part of our project. Unless…” She lowered her voice. “Unless he found something he wasn’t supposed to.”

Later that evening, forensic techs finished scanning Daniel’s computer. It was mostly encrypted. But there was one unsent email draft open on the screen, addressed to someone named A. Langley.

“If this gets out, the tunnels aren’t the only thing collapsing. Check the vault specs before they delete them.”

Jonas frowned. “Who’s Langley?”

Myra searched the company directory. “Alan Langley. City planning department. Retired two years ago. Lives north side.”

Jonas grabbed his coat. “Let’s go for a drive.”

Langley’s home was quiet except for the ticking of a clock and the faint hum of a model train set circling the living room. The old man himself sat on a recliner, sipping tea.

“I figured this day would come,” he said after Jonas introduced himself. “Daniel called me three nights ago. Said the blueprints for the transit tunnels were being changed — but not by him.”

“Changed how?” Jonas asked.

Langley reached into a drawer and pulled out a small flash drive. “Safety bypasses. Reinforcement removals. They were replacing concrete with cheaper composite to cut costs. One small quake, and the tunnels collapse. Hundreds dead.”

Jonas stared at the drive. “And the vault?”

Langley gave a dry laugh. “That’s where the original plans are — the real ones. The city keeps them in an underground archive, Building Department, Level C. But good luck getting in. You need biometric clearance.”

By midnight, Jonas was in the archive. The fluorescent lights hummed above rows of steel cabinets. He’d called in a favor — tech access from a friend at City Security.

Inside Vault C-9, he found the folder labeled Riverspan. It should have contained fifty-three blueprint sheets. There were thirty-eight.

Fifteen missing.

Someone had already been here.

When he got back to the station, Myra met him with a grim face.

“Graham Lott’s gone,” she said. “Didn’t show up for work, phone off, car missing.”

Jonas exhaled slowly. “He’s our leak.”

The motive was obvious — money. The construction company was bidding under budget, claiming they’d engineered cheaper but “safe” materials. Daniel had caught it, tried to stop them, and Lott made sure he couldn’t.

But Jonas still needed proof.

At 3:15 a.m., a call came in from highway patrol. A silver sedan had crashed near Mill Creek. Registered to Graham Lott.

Jonas drove out, rain hammering the windshield. The car was upside-down in a ditch, hood smoking. Lott was alive, barely. As paramedics pulled him out, Jonas leaned close.

“Where are the missing plans, Graham?”

Lott coughed, blood streaking his teeth. “Not… me. They… took them…”

“Who?”

He blinked, whispering a name before his pulse flatlined.

“Arden.”

Jonas froze. Arden Developments again. The same company from another investigation years ago — bribery, falsified safety reports, a journalist’s death.

He clenched his jaw. It’s all connected.

Over the next two days, Jonas pieced it together. Arden’s shell subsidiary had quietly purchased Eastgate’s debt last quarter. They’d pressured Daniel and Lott to modify the plans, removing millions of dollars’ worth of safety materials. Daniel refused, tried to warn the city — and paid the price.

With Langley’s flash drive and the surviving blueprints, Jonas finally had enough to build the case. He sent everything to the district attorney.

That night, while typing his report, his phone buzzed. Unknown number.

“Detective Hale, you don’t know when to quit, do you?”

He froze. “Who is this?”

“Check your car.”

Jonas sprinted outside. His sedan sat under the orange glow of the streetlight. On the windshield — a single folded blueprint.

He unfolded it with gloved hands. It was one of the missing fifteen, marked in red ink.

A line ran beneath the subway tunnels… directly under City Hall.

And in the corner, a handwritten note:

“The vault isn’t closed yet.”

That night, Jonas knew the case wasn’t over.

Daniel Kerr’s death was only the first warning.

Whatever was buried beneath the city — it wasn’t just concrete and steel.

It was truth, and it was about to break through.