Page 18

The roads shrank the further they drove from the city. Four lanes became two, asphalt crumbled into gravel, and road signs grew sparse until they vanished altogether. Ella checked her phone again – still no bars. Technology had a way of abandoning you when you needed it most.

Old Mill Road stretched ahead. The GPS kept glitching, stuttering between ‘recalculating’ and a blank abyss of digital uncertainty. She had to rely on old-school navigation – landmarks and mailbox numbers and sheer dumb instinct.

'A place like this, even God needs a map,' Luca said. He'd spent the last ten minutes methodically chewing through a stick of gum. His usual frenetic energy had narrowed down to the steady motion of his jaw.

Through gaps in autumn-stripped trees, abandoned farm equipment rusted in forgotten fields. Nature had started to reclaim what man had left behind, wild grass growing through engine blocks, vines strangling old fence posts. The deeper they drove into farm country, the more Ella felt that familiar electric tension building at the base of her skull – the feeling that always came before things went sideways.

A rusted cattle gate marked the entrance to number 442. The name ‘OLD ACRE FARM’ had been welded onto it in letters that might have been artistic once, before rust and weather had their way. Beyond it, a dirt track vanished into a corridor of leafless trees.

Ella killed the engine.

This was the place.

‘Moment of truth,’ Luca said.

Ella didn't answer. Her mind was processing the scene, breaking it down the way Ripley had taught her. Fifty acres of isolation. Three access roads, all visible from the main house. Perfect sight lines in every direction. The kind of place where someone could do anything they wanted, and no one would ever know.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

He didn't answer. His right hand traced unconsciously over his left forearm where the bandages still hid the worst of the burns. Then he locked his hands on his knees. ‘Death waits for no man.’

Now Ella got it. The last time they'd approached a farm building like this, they'd both nearly died. The Scarecrow had been waiting with gasoline and matches and a grudge against the world. The scars on Luca's arms were just the visible damage. Ella knew the rest went deeper.

‘We don't have to do this,’ she said. ‘Ross is ten, twenty minutes out.’

'Yes, we do. Just... give me a minute.'

Ella watched him wage his private war. She understood better than anyone. Her own legs still bore the roadmap of that night's flames, but there was a difference between understanding and helping, and right now she wasn't sure which one Luca needed more.

‘This isn't Oregon,’ she said. ‘Different case. Different farm.’

‘Same shit, different state. I keep smelling smoke.’

Ella had read enough trauma studies to fill a library, but nothing in those pages prepared you for watching your partner wrestle with demons that wore familiar faces. She waited, letting him work through whatever movie was playing behind his eyes. Her hand found his shoulder, then slid down his arm. Luca flinched slightly at the contact, and Ella's stomach twisted. Since when did she need an excuse like burn trauma to touch her own boyfriend?

She said, ‘You stay back. I’ll go in alone.’

That got through to him. Luca blinked, then shook his head like he was clearing cobwebs. ‘No way. We’re a team.’

She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘One sweep. Felix isn’t the Scarecrow. He’s a deluded 21-year-old.’

Luca popped the door. ‘We were all deluded 21-year-olds once. Let’s go.’

Ella followed Luca out but kept one eye on him. Putting trauma aside was the backbone to this job, but Luca had been working the field less than five months. Ripley once told her that trauma was like butter – only digestible if you spread it thin. Outside, the November cold hit her hard. A generator hummed somewhere out of sight. The sound carried on the wind, making it impossible to pinpoint. Old farms were never truly silent – there was always something running, breaking, dying.

She counted structures as they walked. Three barns arranged in a rough triangle around the farmhouse. Curtains in the windows. Satellite dish on the roof. An old Ford pickup parked out front like it was standing guard. There was a chicken coop listing to one side like a tired drunk and what looked like equipment sheds scattered between. Too many places to hide. Too many angles to cover.

‘How many buildings you count?’ she asked.

‘Four. ’

But then movement caught her eye. Second floor, east window. Just a twitch of curtain, but enough. Someone knew they were here.

‘See that?’

‘Yeah.’ Luca unholstered his weapon and checked the clip. ‘So much for surprise.’

They edged across the yard towards the farmhouse. Farm equipment lay where it had died – a combine harvester missing its teeth, something that might have been a hay baler, various implements Ella couldn't name. The whole scene felt wrong somehow, like one of those pictures where nothing quite lined up. Suddenly, a door slammed somewhere at the rear, but Ella couldn’t be sure of the exact location. Her pulse quickened as adrenaline hit her system.

‘Cops?’ came a gravelly voice. Ella spun. A man stood in the doorway of the nearest barn – sixty-something, built like he bench-pressed hay bales for fun. His overalls had probably been blue once, before sun and work bleached them gray.

Ella held up her badge. ‘Special Agent Dark. This is Special Agent Hawkins. We're looking for Felix Blackwood.’

The man strode closer and rested against his pickup. His face hardened into something carved from old oak. ‘My boy? What's he done now?’

‘He’s your son?’

'Yes, he is. Why?'

‘Just need to ask him some questions.’

‘About what?’ The old man's eyes tracked their badges. His hand never left the pickup's tailgate. Ella had interviewed enough farmers to know there was probably a shotgun mounted in the back window. Legal in these parts, but that wouldn't make the holes any smaller.

Ella shifted her weight. The burns liked to remind her they existed whenever she stood still too long. ‘That’s our business. Is he home, Mr. Blackwood?’

The old man's eyes narrowed. Years of dealing with property taxes and bank loans had taught him that authority never brought good news. He planted his feet like he was getting ready for a long siege. ‘Everything on this farm is my business. Including my son.’

Ella watched the father's hands – thick-knuckled, scarred from decades of manual labor. The kind of hands that could break bones without trying. But there was something else in his stance. A tension that went beyond simple farm-owner protectiveness.

He was afraid .

‘Mr. Blackwood, the sooner we speak with Felix, the sooner-,’

But then she felt a tap on her shoulder. The words died in her throat. Ella glanced at Luca then followed his gaze to the farmhouse. There, barely visible in the shadow of a sagging porch, stood a young man. He was built like a strong wind could knock him over. Black clothes, black hair falling in his eyes, skin that had never seen sunlight.

‘Felix Blackwood?’

His head snapped up at his name. Their eyes met across thirty yards of mud and dead grass. He looked nothing like a killer. But then, they rarely did.

For a few seconds, nobody moved. The wind died. The generator's hum faded to nothing. Time stretched like hot glass, ready to shatter. Felix’s eyes darted between Ella and Luca, taking in their badges, their stance, the whole federal package.

Then something shifted in his expression – that micro-second change that Ella had seen a hundred times before. The moment when flight won out over fight. It set off every alarm she owned.

And then Felix bolted.

‘FBI! Stop!’