CHAPTER ONE
The gymnasium at Blue Ridge Valley Elementary smelled like every school gym in Virginia - floor wax, dusty basketball nets, and the lingering ghost of a thousand PE classes. But today they'd dressed it up with tinsel and paper stars, trying their best to turn it into Bethlehem.
Ella Dark sat in the back row of metal folding chairs, watching a six-year-old shepherd in an oversized bathrobe clutch his wooden staff like it was keeping him upright. Elias Matthews. He'd grown since last December's performance as one of the three wise men. Back then, his costume crown had kept slipping over his eyes.
Luca Hawkins – Ella’s former partner in the field but current partner everywhere else – sat beside her, and he seemed oddly transfixed by the proceedings. For an FBI agent, he seemed way too invested in whether the innkeeper would find room at the inn this time around. His knee bounced with each scene change, and Ella caught him mouthing along with ‘Silent Night.’
‘What do you think?’ Ella whispered.
‘Shh. I’m invested.’
On stage, Elias delivered his lines without stumbling. Pride swelled in Ella's chest, foreign and familiar all at once. Six years of watching this kid grow up from a distance had carved out a space inside her that she hadn't expected.
The memory surfaced like it always did this time of year. That raid in Bristol nearly seven years ago. Her first case after transferring to the Virginia field office. The Morrison house had looked normal enough from the outside - peeling paint, overgrown lawn, nothing screaming drug empire headquarters . But inside, they'd found enough meth to blanket half the county in a chemical haze.
Jamie and Sarah Morrison hadn't gone down easy. The basement lab turned into a shooting gallery before anyone could blink. When the smoke cleared, Sarah Morrison was bleeding from a shoulder wound, screaming about her unborn baby while Jamie tried to flee and leave his pregnant co-conspirator behind.
Ella remembered the hospital afterward. Sarah handcuffed to the bed, monitors beeping, her belly swollen under the thin gown. The hatred in her eyes when Ella came to take her statement burned hotter than the wound in her shoulder.
She'd told herself it was just the job. The Morrisons had chosen their path. But something about that unborn kid kept nagging at her conscience. She started checking up on Sarah in prison and tracked the pregnancy through visitor logs and medical reports. When Elias was born four months into his mother's sentence, Ella made sure he landed with a good foster family.
The Matthewses had adopted him officially by his first birthday. A same-sex couple that lived near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Elias had two dads, so Ella liked to think of herself as his unofficial mom, even though she'd always kept her distance. She'd only ever met him once, two years ago, when she'd brought a squad car here for the students to gawp at. Elias had sat in the driver's seat and honked the horn with the biggest smile on his chubby face. Elias hadn't known who she was. He just believed – and still did – that Ella Dark was a random policewoman.
On stage, Mary and Joseph found their way to the manger. Elias stood guard with his fellow shepherds, remembered every line. No one watching would guess his birth parents were serving twenty-five to life in separate federal prisons.
‘You okay?’ Luca's whisper pulled her back to the present.
‘Yeah. You?’
He placed a hand on her knee. ‘Loving it. Jesus is about to come out.’
The parents around them shifted forward in their seats with their phones raised to capture the moment. Ella watched the Matthewses in the front row, how one of them dabbed at her eyes when Elias delivered his final lines perfectly. No trace of the shy boy who needed speech therapy until last year.
The final carol swelled through the gym's ancient speakers. Ella had sat through two of these performances now, and this was – according to the headteacher who Ella had to bribe to get in here – their last. After second grade, the nativities stopped, which meant Ella would have to find her way to Little League games or trampolining class or something next year. A part of her thought that she needed to let go of this weird, self-imposed responsibility, but she knew she couldn’t. Because someone should remember where Elias came from, even if he never knew himself.
The applause startled her out of her thoughts. Parents surged forward to collect their costumed kids. Ella hung back and watched the Matthewses sweep Elias into a group hug.
The sight stirred something deep in her chest - not quite regret, but a complicated ache that came with the job. Sometimes, doing the right thing meant breaking things apart to build them back better.
Would Elias have had a good life with the Morrisons? All that drug money could've bought him the best of everything. Private schools. Sports cars on his sixteenth birthday. A trust fund fat enough to choke on. But money couldn't buy the kind of love she saw in the Matthewses' eyes, or the quiet confidence Elias had found with them. Some things were worth more than all the meth money in Virginia.
‘That was wild,’ Luca said. ‘Your kid did good.’
Her kid. The phrase felt odd. ‘Didn’t he? I’m proud of him.’
‘You wanna go talk to him?’
Ella grabbed Luca’s arm and pulled him up as she stood. ‘No. I’m just a stranger to him. Let’s go.’
‘You sure? I don’t see why it would-‘
‘Seriously, Hawkins. We need to go. We don’t have kids here.’
Luca gestured for her to go first. ‘Alright. Lead the way.’
Ella slipped past the parents coddling their children, out of the gym doors and then nodded at the receptionist in the foyer. She unlocked the exit doors, and Ella made her way outside with Luca in tow.
Another year over. Next December, she'd find some other excuse to check in on Elias. For now, though, there was work to do.
***
The December wind cut through Ella’s coat as she stood at Blue Ridge Valley Elementary's front gate. All of the parents were still indoors.
‘Gate’s locked.’
‘You gotta hit the buzzer,’ Luca said.
Ella did. It rang, but no one answered. 'Come on. It's freezing out here.'
‘What’s the rush, Ell? It’s not like we’ve got anywhere to be.’
It had been three weeks since Ella and Luca had caught the killer the press were now calling the Alchemist. Amelia Blackwood, a student of New York University, who'd tried to invoke some ancient alchemical ritual to heal the scars on her face. Today was the first day since her capture that Ella hadn't seen a story about her in the news, with all the front pages opting for something festive instead. Coca Cola using artificially-generated images in their new commercial, scalpers buying up the hottest toys and selling them on secondary markets. Apparently, even occult serial killers were no match for Christmas hysteria.
‘I’m just cold.’
Luca eyeballed her with suspicion. ‘You’re never cold. You’ve got the warmest blood in the DMV.’
‘It’s my age.’
‘You’re just worried about someone busting you. What’s a childless FBI agent doing in a school?’
‘They’ll ask you the same thing.’
Luca pushed the buzzer again. ‘I just tagged along.’
And since the Alchemist case, Ella and Luca had made a joint decision; to not pursue any more cases together. From now on, they were strictly personal, no business. The decision hadn't been made lightly, given their success rate, but watching Luca nearly burn alive in that barn in Oregon had changed something fundamental in Ella. The image of him stumbling out of those flames, skin blistering and lungs full of smoke, still visited her in nightmares. She couldn't be objective anymore, couldn't separate Agent Dark from the woman who woke up in cold sweats checking if her partner was still breathing beside her.
Not to mention that once you broke down that barrier between personal and professional, it was a one-way ticket to resentment. Every crime scene became a minefield of competing instincts - the need to protect him warring with the need to let him do his job. She'd started second-guessing his decisions, questioning his judgment, treating him more like a liability than a partner. That was when your partner’s quirks became annoying habits, when those cheesy grins tickled your knuckles instead of your heartstrings. Ella couldn’t let it come to that. She loved the guy too much.
Her finger hovered over the intercom again when a voice cut through. ‘Miss Dark?’
She spun and saw Mrs. Dhaliwal, the headteacher, striding in her direction. She moved with the particular grace of someone who'd spent decades herding children without ever letting them see her sweat.
‘Mrs. Dhaliwal, great to see you.’ Ella shook her hand. ‘Thanks for getting me in. Not many headteachers would bend the rules to let a fed on the premises.’
The headteacher waved away the praise. ‘Nonsense. You’re always welcome here. This your partner?’
Not anymore, she thought. ‘Yes indeed. This is Agent Hawkins.’
‘Good to meet you.’ Mrs. Dhaliwal extended a hand. ‘Miss Dark here came in a few years ago and talked to our students. Brought a squad car, too. If you ask some of our children, it was the best day of their lives.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Luca said. ‘I’d have loved that as a kid.’
‘Children and vehicles. It’s a bond we still don’t understand. Miss Dark, I suspect you came for one student in particular?’
At last, the gate clicked open. Ella pulled it ajar. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘Elias? Flourishing. Top marks in reading and science. His speech therapy's complete ahead of schedule.’ Mrs. Dhaliwal's eyes crinkled. ‘You saw him in the play.’
‘He remembered all his lines.’
‘Unlike last year's crown incident.’
The memory of that tilted plastic crown made Ella smile. She'd sat in the back row then too, watching it slip over his eyes during ‘We Three Kings.’
Parents began filtering out of the building towards the gate. Amongst them were Elias’ parents. As they passed, Ella fought the urge to make conversation. To tell them everything. About Bristol. About Sarah Morrison bleeding in that basement. About all the strings she'd pulled to make sure their adoption went through smooth as silk.
But what good would that knowledge do? Elias had two parents who loved him. A stable home. A future that didn't include meth lab explosions or prison visiting hours. Sometimes the kindest truth was silence.
So she just held the gate and smiled as they passed. Luca’s phone began to ring. He waved it at Ella and then excused himself.
Once all of the parents had passed by, Mrs. Dhaliwal said, ‘I better get back inside, but if you ever want to give another talk, you’re always welcome.’
'I'd like that.' Ella meant it, too. 'I could come back in a couple of weeks? Just before they finish for Christmas?'
‘Please do. You’ve got my number.’
Ella nodded her goodbye as the headteacher made her way back towards the school. Luca ambled back with his eyes glued to his phone screen. He had that look. The one that said their peaceful Monday on medical leave was about to get shot to hell.
‘You alright there, Hawkins?’
Luca made his way out of the gate. Ella followed him. He was still staring at his phone.
‘Earth to Luca. You got next week’s lottery numbers on that cell?’
‘Director called.’
‘Lucky you.’ Ella checked her phone cell but had no texts or emails from the director. If there was a new case, then the big man had chosen Luca over her to check it out. The knowledge stung a little.
‘Yeah. He wants to talk about something.’
‘Cryptic as ever. You know we’re hours away from the office, right?’
Luca said, ‘He wants to do a video call.’
Ella grabbed a wall for support. ‘Edis? A video call?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘He doesn’t know how to turn his out-of-office on. I just can’t imagine him being so tech-aware.’
Luca fished the car keys from his pocket. ‘He’s the FBI director, Ell. He must do a hundred video calls a day. Am I driving?’
'Yes, please.' Ella unlocked her cell and scrolled to the most recent name on her calls list. Julianne Cooper. 'I've got to try and call my old landlord. She's been dodging me for days.'