-part 1-: Kristy Gabres

"Exposed and then un-exposed," Kristy said. "What do you want?"

The rain over Portland wasn't the kind that cleansed. It was the kind that seeped—into coat seams, into old brick, into the cracks of a person's resolve. Kristy Gabres watched it streak down her apartment window, turning the city lights into bleeding gold smears. Inside, her living room was a museum of what she used to be: a framed press pass from the Oregon Herald , a dusty trophy for Investigative Journalism, and a single photograph of her late father, Frank Gabres, a beat cop who'd taught her that the truth was worth a bloody nose. Kristy Gabres -Part 1-

"Gabres," she answered, her voice flat as week-old soda. "Exposed and then un-exposed," Kristy said

She hung up, walked over, and picked it up. Inside was a single photograph: a blurry shot of a painting hidden inside a shipping container, half-covered by a tarp. And taped to the back of the photo was a handwritten note in shaky script: Kristy Gabres watched it streak down her apartment

Kristy leaned against the windowsill. She knew the piece. Seventeenth-century Flemish, a grotesque masterpiece of a king eating a feast he couldn't see, surrounded by laughing courtiers. It had vanished from a private vault in Brussels in 1999 and resurfaced once—on the black market, then gone again.

Part 1 ends as Kristy steps into the night, not knowing that the blind king's supper is already being served—and she's the guest of honor.