The next morning. Bozyaka Police Department.
As the sun rose wearily and pale over Izmir, the air in Chief Inspector Selim's office was as cold and tense as a morgue.
Aylin, with a thick white bandage on her arm, bruises on her face, and bloodshot eyes, stood tall across from Selim's desk.
Selim's hands trembled with rage. The files he had thrown on the desk were scattered everywhere. "Have you lost your mind!" Selim yelled, rattling the windows of the office. "For a case that's officially closed with a known perpetrator, you raid a citizen's house without a badge! You chase guys through Kemeraltı like the mafia and get into a shootout! The things you say you found in that house in Eşrefpaşa are all inadmissible evidence, the prosecutor laughed in my face, man, in my face!"
"That man was Yekta Özbek!" Aylin shouted, taking a step forward. "He's the one who killed Hale, and he's the one who sliced up the woman in Kordon. He requested a transfer to Bodrum, he's on the road right now! If you'd just strip away the Izmir police's arrogance and send a fax to the Bodrum Police..."
"Enough!" Selim's voice sliced through the room like a blade. He took a deep breath and slumped into his chair. "The Police Chief is sick and tired of your lawless, undisciplined, and rogue actions. He thinks you've lost your mind over avenging Hale, that you're obsessing over an innocent worker."
Selim held out his hand. There was pity in his eyes. "Leave your badge and gun on the desk, Aylin. You're suspended. You've been removed from the force until the administrative investigation against you is concluded."
Aylin looked at Selim's face expressionlessly for a few seconds. Then she reached to her waist, pulled out her service pistol and the silver badge from her jacket pocket, and placed them heavily on Selim's desk, right on top of that fake file they had closed.
She said nothing. She didn't defend herself, didn't yell. She turned her back and walked to the door.
As she walked down the stairs of the precinct, Aylin was no longer a detective bound by the department's sluggish rules, prosecutorial warrants, or the hubris of her superiors. She had left her badge on the desk, but that hunter's instinct inside her was freer and wilder than it had ever been in her life. She was going to go home, grab her unregistered civilian pistol from under her bed, and a backpack. Bodrum wasn't as far as they thought.
At the same hours, in the back seat of a luxury passenger bus that had passed the Aydın highway and entered the winding roads of Muğla.
Yekta, resting his head against the cool glass of the bus, watched the olive trees glide by accompanied by light classical music playing through his earphones.
Izmir was left behind. That rain, that mud, that neon cloak... They were all props from an old theater play now. He had used a small medical tape for the stitches on his neck and the graze on his shoulder. He was wearing a pristine white, spotless linen shirt. He no longer looked like an "unlucky, pathetic grunt." He looked like a calm, rested, mysterious gentleman going on vacation to the south.
As the bus snaked down the Sakar Pass, the breathtaking turquoise waters of the Gulf of Gökova and the stark white houses of the Bodrum Peninsula appeared on the horizon. The sun danced with golden glimmers upon the sea.
That famous, freezing, and arrogant smile appeared on Yekta's lips.
His right hand slid to the black leather tool bag resting in his lap. He unzipped it slightly and looked inside. That sterilized, razor-sharp, silver-gleaming crescent-shaped pruning knife and a fresh, clear jar of tree paste were right there.
As the bus approached the Bodrum terminal, Yekta looked out the window at the cheerful, bronze-skinned women walking outside, their white summer dresses fluttering in the wind. Hundreds, thousands of flawless flowers; walking down those narrow, bougainvillea-adorned white streets thinking they would never wilt.
Yekta took a deep breath. The smell of iodine mixed with the scent of pine.
"New soil," whispered Yekta, the smile spreading completely across his face. "New orchids."
Izmir's invisible gardener had taken off his cloak, yes. But the spoiled sun of the south wasn't ready to illuminate Yekta's darkness, but to transform him into an even more dangerous masterpiece. And he wasn't the only hunter heading right to the heart of that white paradise.
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and then Add to home screen.