CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
The Hudson Valley woke up to death, and Ella had front-row seats. She wrestled her SUV up the winding road to Storm King Mountain, dodging news vans and rubberneckers all eager for a glimpse of tragedy. Besides, Luca hadn't said much since they'd left the hotel, and Ella didn't blame him. Probably still mad at her for last night, and nothing killed a conversation like an unexpected corpse.
Ella hit the brakes. Ahead, the crash site sprawled across the mountain’s eastern face where a hot air balloon had discovered that gravity always wins in the end. Yellow tape fluttered in the wind, like a finish line for a race no one won. She and Luca got out of the car and made their way up the tracks. Ella's credentials got them through the perimeter checks and past the gawkers with their phones up and the reporters trying to look concerned for their cameras.
‘This is what happens when you crash on city property.’ Luca jerked his chin toward the mob of reporters. ‘Imagine if she'd gone down somewhere quiet.’
Ross found them before they took ten steps. He had that shell-shocked look cops got when they'd seen something that would haunt their 3 AM coffee runs.
‘You got here quick.’
Ella's eyes tracked the wreckage. The envelope had collapsed into a nylon puddle a hundred feet across, burying the basket underneath. Tarp-covered lumps dotted the landscape - debris or body parts. It was anyone’s guess which was which.
'Yes, we did. Can you walk us through it?'
‘Not really. I don’t mean to be an ass, but this isn’t your scene. Hell, it’s not even my scene. Once we rule out foul play, Major Crimes are outta here.’
‘So let us help you rule out foul play.’
Ross shrugged. ‘Alright, but the brass are already talking about jurisdiction, so make it quick, yeah?’
‘Quick as you like,’ Luca said.
Ross took out his notepad and checked his notes. ‘Vic's name is Tessa Webster, 32. Commercial balloon pilot. She was transiting this beast to some festival upstate when she dropped off the radar around two PM yesterday. Last known radio transmission had her somewhere over Storm King. Some hikers found her at dawn.’
Ella asked, ‘Cause of death?’
Ross eyed her like she’d just spat in his espresso. ‘Cause of death?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I hate to be Captain Obvious, but she crashed into a mountain.’
‘He’s got a point, Ell,’ Luca said.
‘Yeah but cardiac arrest? Blood loss? What?’
Ross said, ‘We don’t know. I hasn't got here yet.'
‘Can we take a look?’
Ross glanced around warily, then leaned in close. ‘Fine, but don’t touch anything, don’t move anything. I’ve scoured every inch of that wreckage and there are no symbols, alright? Plus, with all these cameras around…’
Ross trailed off, but Ella caught the subtext. A balloon crash was front-page news for a couple of days. A balloon crash caused by a serial killer was front-page news until the media decided it wasn't.
Ella nodded her agreement then moved toward the crash site with Luca in tow. The basket had carved a thirty-foot trench through mountain soil before coming to rest against a stand of birch trees. The impact had twisted its frame, but the wicker construction had absorbed most of the force.
Inside, Tessa Webster still sat exactly as death had found her. No blood, no obvious trauma. Just a woman who'd stopped existing somewhere between earth and sky. They hadn't moved her yet – protocol for suspected medical events.
Ella surveyed the debris field and quickly concluded something wasn't right. Hot air balloons didn't just fall out of the sky. She'd seen crashes before, and they usually involved more fire and screaming. This looked almost peaceful in comparison. Like the pilot had laid down for a nap at a thousand feet and forgot to wake up. A perfectly normal corpse in a perfectly abnormal place.
‘Maybe she just… checked out?’ Luca said. ‘Seizure, heart attack. Could be a ton of reasons.’
Not like this, Ella thought. Not when they fit a pattern.
‘You know anything about hot air balloons?’ Ella asked.
‘Nothing. You?’
‘My dad took me in one when I was about five. That’s where my knowledge begins and ends. ’
She examined the basket's interior. Given the faint mechanical whirs, some of the flight instruments were still functional. Two propane tanks nestled in their brackets and steel thermos had rolled against the sidewall.
Ross came over, tapped Ella on the shoulder. ‘Since you’re so insistent, take a look at this. Found it in the vet's pocket.’ Ross handed over a small notebook.
Ella opened the water-resistant booklet. Maintenance logs, flight records, student notes. She flipped through pages of routine data.
‘Flight log?’
‘Looks like it. All her appointments.’
Ella found the most recent entry. Dated yesterday at one PM.
Then her heart anchored to the pit of her stomach.
13:00 - instruction flight, pax 1 - Hermes C.
Ice walked down Ella's spine.
Hermes.
Just like the book Luca had found. Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus.
'Hawkins, look.' She pushed the book under his nose, but he stared off into the distance. 'The vic’s last appointment was with someone named Hermes.’
‘Ell…’
She turned back to Ross. 'This is too much of a link to be a coincidence. Can we check out the cameras from where the balloon took off? Or the vic’s payment logs? Surely a student would have to pay in advance, so maybe we could-'
‘Ell…’ Luca tugged at her partner’s sleeve but she was too lost in thought, assembling fragments into a picture she didn't want to see. Earth. Water. Now air. This had to be their killer’s doing because one, experienced pilots didn’t just pass out mid-flight, and two, no one born after 1800 was named Hermes.
'No such things,' Ross said. 'Tessa was freelance, but she had to file all her flights with a company called Cloud Nine. They worked as her mission control, but that was all. She dealt with everything herself, apparently.'
A professor, a marine biologist, a balloon pilot. Her unsub had managed to isolate these people and kill them through different means each time – something Ella had never seen before. She couldn’t think of a single historical killer who’d employed a different M.O. for every single victim .
And the bigger question right now was: how did he manage to kill Tessa Webster while she was alone in the middle of the sky?
‘Ell!’ Luca said.
She handed the book back to Ross. ‘What?’
‘Look!’
But then she saw his face. That specific expression that meant the world was either too orderly or too chaotic. She followed his gaze past the police line, past the news vans, to where spectators pressed against the tape
And there he stood.
Head and shoulders above the tourists and locals who'd gathered to watch death's aftermath. Long blonde hair caught morning light like spun gold. Tattoos that might have been circuit boards decorated the shaved sides of his head. Six and a half feet of lean muscle.
Ella hadn’t seen him in the flesh herself, but she didn’t need Luca’s commentary to know who she was looking at.
‘Is that…?’
‘Yeah. Two o’clock. Black coat. That’s our ringleader.’
Ezra Crowley. Their prime suspect. Standing in plain sight at his own crime scene.
Returned to mark his symbols. To complete his ritual.
‘Son of a bitch.’ Ella's hand found her weapon. ‘Ross, you seeing this?’
‘The tall dude with dumb hair? Hard to miss.’
‘That’s Ezra Crowley. We need to split up.’ A wall of spectators stood between them and the suspect. ‘Surround him before he spots us.’
‘One problem.’ Ross adjusted his radio. ‘We spook him, he bolts into that crowd.’
'Then we don't spook him.' Ella sized up the terrain. The slope of Storm King Mountain created a natural funnel. A guardrail marked the edge of a forty-foot drop. Two cruisers blocked the north exit. 'Hawkins, take the west side. Ross, go east. Radio your people to block the perimeter, but tell them to keep their distance.'
‘What about you?’
‘Straight through the middle.’
Luca's hand brushed his weapon. ‘Just another fed admiring the view?’
‘Exactly. Box him in quiet. Don’t go full cowboy. Ready? ’
'Ready,' Ross and Luca said in unison and split off. Ella threaded through the crowd like smoke. Her burns throbbed with each step but pain was an old friend by now; it knew when to shut up and let her work.
Crowley stood head and shoulders above the mob. This was her first real look at the man who called himself the leader of the Order of the Quinta Essentia. He stood at the tape line like any other spectator; tall frame outlined against granite and sky. But something in his posture sang wrong notes. Not the satisfaction of a killer admiring his work - something else. Something that picked at the lock of her instincts.
The distance closed. Fifteen feet. Close enough to see more ink crawling up his neck. The crowd shifted and bucked around her; tourists hungry for tragedy, reporters desperate for sound bites, locals who'd come to gawk at death.
Easy breaths. Eyes on the prize.
Ezra hadn’t noticed her yet. He was hypnotized by the wreckage like it held the answers to every question he'd ever asked. Luca drifted in from the right. Fifteen feet from the prize. Ross was coming in from the left.
Then Ezra's head twitched like a wolf catching the first whiff of the snare.
Eight feet.
A news van's generator kicked on somewhere behind them with a mechanical growl.
And Ezra suddenly coiled tight and snapped to Ella. The world flipped to slo-mo as she watched the pieces stack up behind his eyes - the setup, the players, game over in a heartbeat. Something wild broke across his face, the kind of grin that didn't belong outside a cage.
‘FBI! Stop!’ Ella screamed.
The crowd erupted. Bodies collided as people scattered. Phones clattered to the ground. Ella charged after him, but the human tide pushed back, threatening to sweep her off her feet. She glimpsed Ezra's blonde head bobbing through the chaos as he broke for the tree line.
‘Make a hole!’ Luca's voice cut through the pandemonium. The crowd parted just enough.
Ella burst through the gap. Her legs blazed with fresh agony as she hit the rough terrain. Loose shale shifted treacherously under each footfall and the mountain air burned cold in her lungs but she pushed harder, letting gravity and momentum carry her down the slope.
This was it. The final showdown. God, why hadn’t she just grabbed Ezra last night when they had the chance ?
She pushed the regret to one side as she caught Ezra veering onto a maintenance track. Smart move – the packed dirt would give better traction than this unstable scree. But the patch switch cost him precious seconds.
Ella's training kicked in. The mountain's geography unfolded in her mind like a tactical map. The maintenance track switchbacked down the slope, but a steeper route cut straight through. High risk, high reward.
She broke right, charging down a near-vertical section. Sharp rocks bit into her palms as she half-ran, half-slid down the incline. One bad step, and she'd tumble straight down Storm King's face. At the bottom, Crowley mounted the guardrail.
‘Freeze!’ Her gun found center mass. ‘Hands up!’
Crowley froze with one leg over the rail. This close she could see each circuit-board line etched into his skull. Those hands rose slow and steady.
‘Other leg back over. Now.’
He complied. No mystical gibberish. No cryptic pronouncements. Just a man who knew when the game was up.
‘On your knees.’
Luca materialized from the left while Ross closed in from the right. Their trap had worked perfectly. Maybe too perfectly.
‘Hawkins, cuff him.’ Ella kept her aim steady.
Something flickered across Ezra's face – not fear or anger, but something closer to appreciation. Like a chess player acknowledging a clever move.
‘Well played,’ Ezra said. ‘You got me.’
Ella watched Ross radio for transport. Around them, phones recorded everything like digital vultures. Their killer caught; their case closed. Mission accomplished.
But looking at this tall, lean creature of the night, that nagging feeling returned.
Something about this felt too easy.
And in Ella's experience, easy usually meant she was missing something big.