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Luca Hawkins could sleep through a hurricane, and one time in his youth, actually did. But sleep hadn’t come at all last night, because a different kind of disaster had raged war, and even the clarity that came with eight hours of lying horizontal couldn’t help him make sense of everything.

He reached over and grabbed his phone for the hundredth time since last night.

Nothing. No texts or missed calls from Ella. Her side of the bed remained undisturbed. A perfect crime scene – no signs of struggle, no evidence of presence. Just absence photographed in high definition. The indent in her pillow had long since smoothed itself out, like her head had never rested there at all.

No. She hadn’t come home, because if Luca’s suspicions were correct, Ella Dark was still locked in a room on the top floor of the Hoover Building, and nobody would tell him why.

He hauled himself out of bed, grabbed his blue robe and made for the kitchen. He rested against the worksurface and considered switching on the coffee machine, the heating, the television. Anything for that semblance of normalcy, but doing so didn't feel right without Ella to shout her coffee requirements or pester him to lower the temperature (' it’s not cold enough to be on that high’). So Luca just stood there, chilly and uncaffeinated, while he ran through the events of last night in his head again.

He and Ella had apprehended accountant-turned-serial-killer Lawrence Winters in an old medical museum out in Virginia. Their fight had taken them to an elevated walkway, from which Winters had plummeted twenty feet through a table full of old specimens. Once Winters was in cuffs and handed over to Virginia police, Ella and Luca had begun driving back to D.C., but a text from Director Edis had summoned them to HQ around midnight.

Upon their arrival at HQ, Edis and two cops had ushered Ella into a conference room. Meanwhile, Luca had been taken to a different room, where Deputy Director Marshall had told him not to bother coming into the office tomorrow, because Luca was on leave for the foreseeable future.

Luca had demanded an explanation, and Marshall told him that the Bureau needed to launch an investigation into Luca’s takedown of the suspect earlier that evening. The police report claimed that Winters’ positioning on the table suggested Luca had thrown him off the walkway – a potentially fatal maneuver – and then Luca had admitted to doing just that. Luca had then received a brief lecture in excessive force, as though it was something that could be quantified and measured in neat little units of necessary violence. Marshall reminded him that Luca had a gun on his hip, and that it was easier to justify a bullet to the head than a million shards of glass to the spine.

Any resistance on Luca’s part had been futile, because while he might be a newbie at the Bureau, he knew this missive had come from directly from Edis, and a spot on the director’s shit list was best avoided. Luca thought it was remarkable how quickly he’d gone from golden boy to rogue agent, but at the end of it, Luca wasn’t about to apologize for what he did. If he hadn’t thrown Winters off that walkway, it might have been him or Ella leaving on gurneys instead.

So now Luca had pending administrative leave in his future. For how long? He had no idea. People around HQ said that paid leave was like a lottery win in this game, because you got the money without the risk, but nobody signed up to become an FBI Special Agent for the money.

And really, the biggest question on Luca’s mind was – did Ella’s incarceration have anything to do with this?

He checked his phone again. Checked the last time Ella was online. 11:36 PM last night. He fired off another text.

‘Where are you? Call me.’

The message joined its siblings in digital limbo.

Something was wrong here. Not regular wrong, but the kind of wrong he swore he’d never get himself into. The way those uniforms had blocked him from following Ella into that conference room. The look on Edis's face - not anger or disappointment, but something closer to dread.

Luca mustered up the willpower to switch the coffee machine on, then paced the kitchen while it brewed, though his stomach rolled at the smell. His tactical brain kept circling back to those final moments at headquarters. The way Ella had squeezed his arm before disappearing behind that door. Like she knew something he didn't. Like she was trying to say goodbye without words.

Then three sharp knocks shattered his spiral.

Not Ella – she had keys and wouldn't knock anyway. Not Marshall – he'd have called first, if only to maximize the psychological impact. Probably some fresh-faced agent sent to collect his badge and gun, make his suspension official with all the warmth of a tax audit.

The knock came again. Harder. The kind of knock that said this isn't a social call.

Luca moved to the door and peered through the spyhole.

Three men in suits.

Not the tailored FBI kind, but the off-the-rack variety that state cops lived in. Luca’s stomach performed a free fall. His mind jumped to every scenario possible. What the hell was going on?

Before he could worry himself to death, he yanked the door open.

‘Hi?’

‘Mr. Hawkins?’ the tallest one of the three said. His wrinkles carried the kind of mileage that Luca saw on haggard faces every day at HQ. He noted the usage of mister and not agent.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m Detective Strauss. These are Officers Marty and Curtsinger.’ He flashed his badge. ‘We’re with the Washington State Police.’

‘State Police?’ Luca's mind spun through scenarios like a roulette wheel looking for a winner.

'Yes. We're working alongside the FBI. Could you step outside, please?'

‘What? Why?’

The tall detective produced a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and handed it to Luca. ‘Because we have a warrant to search these premises.’

Luca unfolded it with hands that had lost their usual steady grace. He picked apart the legalese.

WHEREAS, probable cause exists to believe that evidence of criminal activity may be found at the above-listed residence, including but not limited to: electronic devices, data storage media, written correspondence, financial documents, photographs, and any items that may establish a connection to ongoing federal investigations.

Search and seizure authorization, federal court seal, case number. Everything in bureaucratic black and white .

The timestamp said 01:17, a time when most judges were dead to the world. But there at the bottom, authorizing this invasion of his life, sat Director Edis' signature.

Directors didn’t sign search warrants. That was judicial territory. So what was happening here went higher than state police playing jurisdictional games.

‘Don’t make this difficult, Mr. Hawkins.’ Strauss said. ‘Please step outside.’

Luca kept scanning, trying to parse the layers of meaning buried in the legalese. The warrant authorized search of all rooms, storage areas, vehicles. Permitted seizure of computers, phones, documents - basically his entire life reduced to potential evidence.

But evidence of what?

‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Does this involve Ella?’

‘This involves two homicides. That’s all we can tell you.’

Luca felt the world tilt. ‘Homicides? What homicides?’

‘That’s our business.’

His fist found the doorframe before he was consciously aware of it. ‘Like hell it is. I’m a federal agent. Tell me what’s going on.’

‘We’re aware you work for the Bureau,’ Strauss said.

‘So I’ll co-operate. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘Then you won’t mind if we look around your place. You can stay here or we can put you up somewhere while we conduct our search.’

Luca fought the idea, but what choice did he have? Resisting a search warrant was a one-way ticket to a jail cell followed by the unemployment line. He mentally ran through scenarios; Ella locked away upstairs at HQ, Edis signing warrants in the dead of night, state police talking about homicides in that carefully vague way that meant something had gone seriously wrong. The pieces were there, but they formed a picture his brain refused to accept.

He stepped aside and let the officers in. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Strauss said. ‘We'll be a while.’

This wasn't about throwing Winters through that specimen table. This was something else. Something that had Ella locked away in the Hoover Building while state police dismantled their home looking for God knows what. All he could do was wait and watch, try to piece together the puzzle from whatever scraps they left behind.