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Kensico Reservoir stretched out like black glass under the November sky. It was spread across eighteen miles of Westchester County, supplying a billion gallons of water to New York City's endless thirst. Today, it held one more secret beneath its surface.

Ella had spotted the crime scene from half a mile out. She brought the SUV to a stop, then watched a discarded soda can dance along the gravel path and tumble into the undergrowth where yellow crime scene tape fluttered between trees. The burns on her legs screamed from the drive over, and her mind was still wrestling with Felix Blackwood and those restricted texts. But murder waited for no one, so Ella cut a look at her partner that said things are about to get messier. Squad cars had already claimed the shoreline. She counted four uniforms; two plainclothes and what looked like the ME's van.

Luca said, ‘How do we know this is even related? We must be twenty miles from the quarry.’

‘Agreed. New York City sees one homicide a day, but Ross wouldn’t have called us if he wasn’t sure.’

Ella climbed out of the car. The wind hit her like a slap to the face. Out here, ten miles north of the city, winter came early and stayed late. To the west, the reservoir's dam rose like a concrete wall, its spillways gurgling with the last of the morning's rain. The whole scene had that washed-out quality of a black and white photo – gray sky, darker water, and patches of dead grass that looked like God had given up halfway through coloring them in. Detective Ross waited at the perimeter, and his face had that specific shade that only came from seeing something your brain refused to process.

‘Thanks for coming.’ He lifted the tape for them. ‘Dog walker found her about an hour ago. Uniforms confirmed it was a real body and Major Crimes rolled in an hour ago.’

They followed Ross down a muddy path that wound through a stand of trees that had been stripped bare by the season. The path curved around an inlet where the reservoir's arm cut deep into the shoreline.

Ella's boots squelched in mud that probably wouldn't dry until spring. The reservoir had swollen with recent rains, leaving a bathtub ring of debris along the shore - branches, plastic bottles, the usual detritus of human existence. Perfect place to hide a body, she thought. Water had a way of keeping secrets.

‘There.’ Ross pointed.

The body lay half in, half out of the water like something the reservoir had tried to spit back out. Female. Dark hair plastered to a face that was several shades too pale. She wore what looked like designer clothes - a silk blouse now ruined by the water, tailored pants, no shoes or socks. Whoever this was had been attractive in life - high cheekbones, delicate features. Death had bleached her skin to the color of old paper, but it hadn't taken her dignity. No watch. No rings. Ella pegged her in her late thirties, but the water made it hard to tell. It had a way of blurring boundaries, erasing identity. Washing away all the things that made a person real.

No blood though. No obvious wounds or trauma. Just a body that had been in the water far longer than any living thing should.

Ella blew out a breath and tried to stay in analytical mode, but it was a futile effort. She couldn’t help but see this woman, whoever she was, as someone’s daughter, sister, mother, friend, colleague. She took a moment to pay her a silent tribute in death, then looked over at Luca, who was snapping on a pair of gloves. He offered a pair to Ella.

‘I hate to sound like a broken record,’ he said, ‘but what are the chances this isn’t a homicide?’

Ella threw the gloves n. ‘Suicide?’

‘Yeah. I mean, look at her. No restraint marks, no bullet holes, no defense wounds. She even took her shoes off. You add water to that equation, and the math gets a whole lot simpler. You know how hard it is to drown someone?’

Ella did know. Adult drowning victims usually showed evidence of a fight – broken nails, torn clothing, defensive wounds. The human body had millions of years of evolution screaming at it to survive. It didn't go quietly into dark water.

Ross said, 'Yeah, you'd have a point, but… follow me.' He jerked his head toward a rocky outcrop that jutted into the water, and they picked their way across slippery rocks until they reached the far side of the outcrop.

There, partially hidden by overgrown bushes, five symbols had been spray-painted in precise black strokes. A triangle inside a circle. A spiral that ate its own tail. A maze that spiraled endlessly into itself. Another that showed diamonds locked in impossible patterns. The fifth depicted a ladder ascending into nothing .

The exact same marks from the quarry.

‘Jesus,’ Luca whispered. ‘Identical?’

‘Haven’t got that far yet.’

Ella was about to pull out her phone and load up the photographs she'd taken at the quarry, but there was no need. She'd burned those images into her retinas, and looking at these new symbols, she had no doubt they were identical.

‘They’re the same,’ she said. ‘Down to the last curve.’

Ross said, ‘Her name’s Sarah Chen. Her purse was still on her body, driver’s license was inside.’

‘What do we know about her?’

‘Still pulling records.’ Ross checked his phone. ‘But prelim shows she was a marine biologist. Worked at the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn.’

That detail hit Ella like a punch. A marine biologist found drowned. The coincidence felt about as natural as those symbols painted on that wall behind the overgrowth.

A tech called Ross over, leaving Ella and Luca to examine the scene. The inlet curved like a horseshoe to create a natural cove sheltered by trees and rock. The perfect spot to commit murder – isolated, hard to access by car, with deep water close to shore.

‘Look at her clothes,’ Luca said. ‘Designer labels. She wasn't out here hiking.’

Ella nodded. Sarah wore what looked like workplace attire - the kind of outfit you'd wear to meetings, not wandering around reservoirs. ‘Someone brought her here.’

‘But how? There's no vehicle access to this spot.’

‘They could have parked up top and walked her down.’ Ella studied the muddy path they'd taken. ‘Though we won't find tracks after the rain.’

They worked their way around the body while the techs documented everything. Ella was no pathologist, but the discoloration of the body suggested this poor woman had been here longer than 24 hours, which meant their unsub was already one step ahead of them. The revelation sent a new wave of dread through her stomach.

‘Jesus, Hawkins, our killer had already racked up two bodies before we’d even found one.’

‘I’m getting Long Island Serial Killer vibes here. How many more are there that we haven’t found?’

Luca had a point. They had to consider that maybe the victims predated Marcus Thornton .

‘Still think it isn’t a cult?’ he continued.

Ella ignored the absurd question. Cults didn’t exist, least of all ones with multiple corpses to their name. Three men could only keep a secret if two were dead.

‘No signs of sexual assault,’ Ella noted. ‘Clothes are intact, just water-damaged.’

‘What about drugs? Could she have been sedated?’

‘ME will check, but water tends to wash away evidence of injection sites.’ She crouched by the body, ignoring the protest from her legs. ‘Though that would explain the lack of defensive wounds.’

The symbols drew her attention again. Five marks that seemed to writhe in her peripheral vision, like they were trying to tell her something just beyond her grasp.

But before she could dwell too deeply on them, Ross returned with a grim expression. ‘We found drag marks up by the road. Looks like the body was brought down from the parking area.’

‘Any tire tracks?’

‘No. Rain washed them away.’

Ella looked back at Sarah Chen's body and tried to see this whole thing with an analytical eye. Two bodies. Inconsistent victimology. Disparate pre and post-death modus operandis. Marcus Thornton was lured to his death, but Sarah Chen probably wasn't because Ella didn't know anyone who'd walk into a reservoir of their own free will. Two different dumpsites. On paper, this could have been the work of two separate offenders.

Luca must have been thinking along the same lines, because he said, ‘It’s lucky our killer left those symbols behind, or we’d never know these were connected.’

‘Yeah,’ Ross said.

‘That’s the only consistent element. His ritual.’

Luca's words hit something in Ella's brain. Not the usual snap of synapses that came with normal thought, but that rare electric surge that felt like lightning in a bottle. The kind that made her hands shake and her mouth go dry. The reservoir, the wind, the murmur of techs processing the scene - it all faded to white noise. Even the pain in her legs disappeared as her mind latched onto something just beyond its reach.

‘Say that again.’

Luca glanced up from the body. ‘What?’

‘What you just said. About consistency.’

‘His ritual? ’

‘No.’ Ella's heart started pounding. ‘Before that. The only consistent...’

‘Element?’

Ella didn't answer. She was too busy watching the puzzle pieces reshuffle themselves in her mind. Marcus Thornton in his hole in the earth. Sarah Chen in her watery grave. Two victims killed in completely different ways, connected only by five mysterious symbols.

‘Oh Christ.’ The realization exploded through her consciousness. ‘That's what we're looking at. Elements. Classical elements.’

Luca arched a brow. Ross crossed his arms. Ella barely registered their skepticism because she was too deep in the zone now, in that sacred space where everything made terrible, beautiful sense.

‘Look at the victims. Marcus Thornton didn't just die in the earth - he lived for it. Geology was his whole world. And Sarah?’ She gestured at the body in the shallows. ‘Marine biologist. Someone who studies water.’

The wind whipped across the reservoir, but Ella didn't feel the cold anymore. She was burning up with the force of her revelation. Two victims. Two elements. Ross uncrossed his arms.

‘Back up. What exactly are you saying?’

But Ella was already moving, her mind three steps ahead of her mouth. Because now she understood. Now she saw the pattern written in blood and water, in earth and sky. A pattern as old as human thought itself.

‘These victims weren't just killed by their elements – they embodied them.’

Luca looked at the victim, then back at the symbols. ‘That’s what they represent. The elements.’

‘It has to be.’

‘Whoa, hold up,’ Ross interrupted. ‘This is a hell of a reach based on two bodies.’

‘It’s enough, detective. We usually profile based on what we have, but here we can profile based on what we don’t have. No blood. No lacerations. Nothing consistent at all. The same goes for the victims. A forty-something man, a thirty-something woman. Serial killers prey on certain demographics, and we’re only two victims in and this guy has already strayed from the path. That means these victims are surrogates. They represent something.’

‘Like? ’

Ella stared at the symbols across the way. ‘Elements. And there’ve been five symbols are both crime scenes.’

‘Which means we have at least three more to come,’ Luca finished.

Ross looked between them. ‘Well, we better start searching for answers, because if the press get word of this, they’ve got front page fodder for months.’

‘I think someone's working from a very specific playbook.’ Ella watched another wave lap at Sarah Chen's feet. ‘Ross, I need everything you can get on Sarah Chen. Where she lived, where she worked, who she knew. And I want to know if she had any connection to NYU or Marcus Thornton.’

He pulled out his phone. ‘I'll put a team on it.’

‘Good.’ Ella took one last look at the scene. At Sarah Chen's body, at the symbols that seemed to mock them with their precision. ‘Hawkins, we need to find this Felix Blackwood guy, stat.’

She turned away and headed back up the muddy path, mind already racing toward NYU's basement and whatever secrets waited in those ancient pages.

Because somewhere in the city, someone was collecting elements in human form.

And their collection was far from complete.