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Decapitation was more than just murder, Ella realized. It was erasure. Identity lived in the face. Without a head, Diana had become an anonymous form. This unsub had not only taken her life, but he’d taken her personhood too.

She stood in Diana Jewell’s basement while the crime scene machine worked its magic.

Yellow markers dotted the floor. One technician inspected the blood stains on the stairs while another photographed the loose bulkhead door.

The team had fished Diana’s body from the koi pond thirty minutes ago.

Two sheriff’s deputies had waded in with a body bag and emerged with something that weighed about eight percent less than it should have.

And at Ella’s feet was that silver cufflink. The anomaly that brought this whole grim picture into focus.

Ella tried to impose order on the chaos in her mind.

The case had shifted beneath her feet. What seemed like an isolated vendetta against Frank Sullivan now revealed itself as something more elaborate.

This wasn’t a grudge coming to a head in the most horrific way possible. There was something much more to this.

Two members of the White Whale Club – a group dedicated to researching unsolved cases – had been killed in perfect recreations of the cold cases they’d obsessed over

She pressed herself flat against the wall as two more CSIs descended into the basement carrying equipment cases.

The space grew smaller with each new body, and even the regular rhythm of the rain hitting the bulkhead door couldn’t mask the growing tension.

Everyone in this house – and the garden – were working under the assumption that they might just stumble upon a severed head.

But police never found the heads of the original Ferryman’s victims, and if Ella’s new working theory was anything close to accurate, they’d never find Diana Jewell’s head either.

‘Agent Dark.’

Ella turned to find a soaking wet Sheriff Bauer heading in her direction. Rain dripped from the brim of his hat like miniature waterfalls.

‘Sheriff. Any luck with the canvas?’

‘Nothing yet. This neighborhood’s spread out.

Houses set back from the road. Storm didn’t help matters.

Most people were battened down inside.’ He removed his hat and shook water from the brim.

‘We’ve got officers circling a five-mile perimeter, but with this weather and the darkness, it’s a losing game. ’

She knew what he meant. This wasn’t like canvassing apartment buildings or downtown streets.

This was Florida wilderness with houses dropped into it.

‘Our killer couldn’t have been gone long by the time we got here.

I was on the phone to the victim twelve minutes before I arrived here. Doing what he did takes time.’

‘I’ve got guys searching the perimeter for anyone suspicious.’

‘Thanks. Any signs of forced entry on the front or back doors?’

‘Negative. The back door was locked too. The only entry point was-’

‘The bulkhead door. It’s loose as hell.’

‘Yup. There’s some damage to the lock area on the exterior, but we’re not sure if that was already there.’

‘Got it.’ Ella gestured to the cufflink at her feet. ‘Do me a favor, Sheriff? Get that cufflink bagged and sent for inspection ASAP. If there’s one thing in here that our killer definitely touched, it’s that.’

Bauer squinted at it. ‘How do you know?’

‘Trust me.’

Bauer didn’t argue. ‘Very well. Leave it with me.’

‘Appreciated. Do you know where Ripley is?’

‘In the garden. She doesn’t look well.’

‘I’ll go check on her.’

‘Avoid the stairs.’ Bauer gestured behind them. ‘Don’t need footprints in the blood.’

Ella navigated around the markers and made her way out of the bulkhead door.

She found Ripley standing at the back of the garden, just past the pond where Diana had taken her final swim.

Ripley was staring out into cluster of trees beyond the fence.

The storm had passed now. All that remained was the smell of rain.

‘You want to go somewhere less wet?’ Ella asked.

Ripley turned and stared at the pond. ‘What the hell is going on, Dark? This woman, Diana, was a cop, wasn’t she? Spent her life helping people, and this is how it ends. Headless in a koi pond. She was barely my age.’

When Ripley got introspective, it meant things had gone from bad to worse. She didn’t do soul-searching unless shit was hitting the fan sideways. Luckily, Ella knew exactly what gutter Ripley’s mind had gotten stuck in. She was seeing her own fate mirrored in that pool.

‘No, this isn’t how it ends for every retired cop.’

‘When we find this asshole, I’m going to kill him.’

Ella doubted Ripley was being literal, but she had to admit that she’d never seen her partner in this state before. It was rage-meets-introspection. Potentially a lethal cocktail.

‘We need to find him first.’

Ripley spun. ‘I mean it, Dark. I’ll kill him. I’m talking bullet-in-the-head, unmarked-grave dead. Frank and Diana, they gave their lives to make the world a better place, and someone does this to them. It’s not right.’

‘No it’s not, but let’s look at this as a whole. The White Whale Club. We have a connection now. Two victims of that club are dead. The question is: why? ’

‘No, the question is who? I don’t care why they’re doing it. I just want their head on a stick.’

‘We need to track down all the members of this club, and anyone who knows they exist.’

‘It has to be someone within that group, Dark. Frank and Diana were both killed by…’ Ripley trailed off, probably unsure how to articulate it.

‘By the same M.O.s of the cases they were obsessed with. ‘

‘Yeah. And what are the odds someone outside their stupid little group would know about the cases they were obsessed with? Especially the little details.’

Ella thought back to the cufflink. There had been only one piece of solid evidence in the original Ferryman case. A silver cufflink, left behind at one of the victim’s houses. This unsub had gone to lengths to recreate the scene as accurately as possible.

She had a theory why, but she didn’t think now was the time to get into this killer’s psychological weeds. Ripley didn’t seem very responsive to behavioral analysis right now.

‘Let’s get to the motel, Dark. I need to sleep this off.’

‘Yeah.’ Ella took one last look at Diana’s garden. ‘We just need to get some cops outside Sarah Webb’s house. She’s a potential target.’

‘Same goes for Ramsey Cole. He’s not in the group, but he has links to Frank.’

‘I’ll speak to Bauer. You go and… do whatever you need to do.’

‘Find me when you’re done. I’ll be in the car.’

Two cold case investigators dead in twenty-four hours. Both murders had been reflections of the cases that haunted them. The pattern was clear now, but that clarity brought no comfort.

Tomorrow, Ella needed to dig deeper into the White Whale group, because somewhere in Palm Harbor right now, another member of that group was going about their evening, unaware that they might be living their final hours.

And Ella couldn’t help but wonder what unsolved horror from their past would provide the template for their death.