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Dawn crept over Bedford Quarry like a thief, stealing shadows one by one. Ella watched from the hood of her car as a procession of vehicles wound their way up the access road. Police cruisers, forensics vans, and the massive crane they'd need to recover what was left of Marcus Thornton.

It had been nearly eight hours since they’d found the body, but it had taken that long for police to work out the logistics of unearthing a corpse that was sixty feet underground. She and Luca had spent what remained of the night in her SUV, catching fragments of sleep between bouts of restless thinking. They'd had to drive half a mile down Barrett Road just to get enough signal to call it in, then when they’d come back, Ella had half-expected to return and find everything gone – the symbols, the hole, Marcus's body. Like the quarry might swallow its secrets whole.

But everything remained exactly as they'd left it, which somehow felt even worse.

Now, the morning sun did nothing to warm the November air. If anything, daylight only emphasized how deep the quarry walls went, how far a body might fall.

‘Walk me through it again.’ Luca paced beside the car, clearly too wired to sit still. ‘Guy drives out here on a Saturday afternoon. Parks his perfectly good Mustang three levels up – which makes no sense by the way. Why not drive to the top if you're planning to do research?’

‘Maybe the road was blocked.’ Ella rubbed her eyes. Sleep deprivation made everything feel slightly unreal. ‘Or he didn’t know what he was looking for, so he aimed for the middle.’

‘Okay, fine. So he parks mid-level, climbs to the top of the quarry with his rock hammer. And what? Just happens to fall down a perfectly round hole?’

‘People fall.’ But even as she said it, Ella knew she was playing devil's advocate. ‘Even careful ones.’

‘So, it could have been an accident. Marcus might have been drawn to the rocks, didn’t see the hole. The rest is history.’

‘I’m no expert on quarries, but should holes like that exist in a place like this?’

‘No idea. What do you think? ’

‘That’s the million dollar question. We need to consult a geology expert.’

‘Speaking of questions.’ Luca checked his watch. ‘Our flight’s in three hours. Think we could make it?’

Ella nodded, but something kept nagging at her. That same instinct that had driven her to search the quarry in the dark, that told her there was more to this than a simple accident or suicide.

‘Yeah. Once they recover the body, there's not much more we can do here. It's NYPD's jurisdiction.’

A figure in a crisp blazer approached them, badge already out. ‘Agents? Detective Michael Ross, NYPD Major Crimes.’

Ross looked exactly like what Ella would expect from a senior detective - salt-and-pepper hair, eyes that had seen too much, and the slightly rumpled appearance of someone who'd been dragged out of bed at an ungodly hour.

‘Agent Ella Dark.’ She shook his hand. ‘This is Agent Luca Hawkins.’

Ross tucked his badge away. ‘Dark? Saw you on the news a few weeks ago. You put that serial killer down.’

Ella made a noncommittal noise. ‘Yeah, that still feels like a fever dream.’

‘I bet. Appreciate you calling this in, anyway. Though I'm curious what brought the FBI out here in the first place.’

Luca said, ‘We were at NYU. One of the professors pulled us aside and told us her colleague was missing. We traced him here. Two hours of searching later… well, you know the rest.’

Ross scrunched up his face. ‘You tracked him here? How?’

‘License plate. Then got creative.’

‘I see. And what’d you find here, exactly?’

Ella gestured to the scene. ‘This is what we found. Marcus’s car on the third level and his body in a hole.’

‘Those markings near where the vic fell. They were there last night too?’

‘Well, we didn’t put them there. Do you know what they are?’

‘Not a clue. I used to sneak into this quarry as a kid. We used to graffiti this place rotten. Could just be the same.’

A shout went up from the recovery team. The crane had been positioned with its arm extending out over the hole like a metal vulture. Two technicians in harnesses were checking their gear, preparing to descend .

‘I guess your job is done here, but want to stay for the recovery?’

Ella nodded. She needed to see this through, needed to know if daylight would reveal something they'd missed in the dark. Closer to the operation, Ella saw that the medical examiner had set up a processing station. A black body bag lay ready on a folding table.

Showtime.

***

Sixty feet didn’t sound like a lot until you were standing over it. Nothing but a steel cable between you and a bad day.

Ella stood ten feet away while the crane operators worked like surgeons performing a delicate extraction. Three technicians in harnesses had rappelled down into the hole with a rescue basket, and for twenty minutes Ella watched them secure Marcus's body with the kind of care usually reserved for bomb disposal. Their voices bounced up from the darkness, turned weird by the shaft's acoustics.

‘Line secure. Beginning recovery.’

There was nothing romantic about hauling a body from the earth, Ella realized. Just muscle and machinery and math. The kind of operation where one wrong move means you're fishing pieces out of a hole instead of a whole corpse.

‘Subject located. Multiple fractures.’

Subject . That's what death did to you – turned professors into paperwork. Ella remembered Marcus's office with its perfectly arranged specimens. No disorder in death either; guy kept his style right to the end.

The crane whined. Metal cables drew tight. Something pale emerged from the shaft like a ghost through black water.

Marcus Thornton hung suspended between earth and sky. His clothes were thick with quarry dust but otherwise pristine. No blood in sight, and no blood outside meant a lot of bleeding inside. Where it did the most damage. Even from this distance, Ella could tell that his bones splintered on impact. She’d seen enough high-falls to know what gravity did to bone and tissue. Marcus's legs had accordion-pleated on impact, turning femurs into jigsaw pieces. The rest of him hadn't fared much better, but his face remained untouched – almost peaceful, like he'd solved some cosmic riddle in those final seconds of freefall. The poor guy still had his rucksack strapped to his back.

‘Hell of a thing,’ Luca said. ‘Still got his backpack on. ’

‘Which means he died quickly. Small mercies.’

‘A soldier’s death. Die with your boots on. At least this is more interesting than giving lectures.’

Ella shot him a look. ‘Shut up, Hawkins.’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Maybe don’t just say. We’ve got a dead body ten feet away.’

Luca raised his hands in surrender. ‘Alright, sorry.’

She loved the guy, but he couldn’t read a room to save his life. The man would have cracked a joke in Auschwitz given the chance.

The recovery team laid Marcus on a steel gurney like they were arranging a museum piece. Up close, death had a way of shrinking people. Marcus looked smaller now, fragile in a way that living flesh never did. His limbs were splayed at angles that instantly made Ella’s burns feel like a minor sting.

The medical examiner descended on the body while her team photographed Marcus from every angle. She called out her observations into a digital recorder. ‘Male, approximately forty-five years old. Multiple compound fractures to both legs. Severe trauma to the thoracic cavity.’

Ross lit a cigarette and offered one to Ella and Luca. They both declined. ‘What's your take on this, agents?’

Ella was still wrestling with that question. One side of her said accident, another that there was something more at play here. ‘I’m on the fence. You?’

‘Honestly? Looks like suicide to me.’ Ross exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘Guy drives out to the middle of nowhere. Climbs to the top of a quarry. Maybe he just couldn't face Monday morning.’

‘What about the hole?’ Luca asked.

‘What about it?’

‘It's perfectly round. Like it was cut into the rock.’

‘People get creative when they're desperate.’

Ella watched the ME's team work. They'd stripped Marcus's clothes, revealing the full extent of the damage. His torso was a watercolor of bruises, internal bleeding frozen in time. ‘Desperate people leave signs. Depression, anxiety, changes in routine. Everything we know about Marcus says he was stable. Organized. The kind of guy who color-coded his geology samples. And what about those symbols carved into the wall?’

‘Looks like gibberish to me. My guess is that our subject thought he’d stumbled upon something big. Then got a bit too close for comfort. ’

The ME finally stepped back from the body. Her team bagged Marcus's clothes and prepared him for transport.

Ella needed to get closer.

‘Mind if we take a look? Before they zip him up?’

Ross pulled out two sets of gloves and passed them across. ‘Sure. Just make it quick. The ME’s got a schedule to keep.’

Ella and Luca applied the gloves and approached the gurney. Up close, Marcus looked older than forty-five. Maybe it was death that aged him, or maybe it was the weight of whatever brought him to this hole in the ground. His eyes were half-open, glazed with that thousand-yard stare that came with checking out of the mortal coil.

The backpack caught her attention. Black nylon, weather-beaten but sturdy. It hung off his shoulders at an awkward angle, twisted by the impact but otherwise intact.

‘Mind if we check the contents?’

Ross nodded. ‘CSU already photographed everything.’

Ella shot Luca a look. ‘You want the honors?’

‘This one’s all yours. You’ve got steadier hands.’ Luca stepped back to give her room. Ella moved in and worked the backpack straps with careful fingers. Inside, everything had its place. The rock hammer nestled in its own pocket. Sample bags arranged by size, each one labeled in precise handwriting. A steel flask. A first aid kit that might have saved his life had he been a little luckier.

‘As organized as ever,’ Luca said.

‘More than organized.’ Ella lifted out a leather-bound notebook. ‘Look at this.’

The pages were filled with neat columns of data. Rock types, mineral compositions, coordinates. Each entry is dated and time-stamped. The last entry was dated two weeks ago, mentioning an unusual rock formation in Peak Mountain in Connecticut. The rest was blank, waiting for observations that would never come.

Luca reached into the bag and pulled out three protein bars. ‘Just a working man’s lunch. No note.’

He was right. No dramatic farewell to the world. Nothing to suggest Marcus had climbed up here planning to die.

A side pocket yielded more treasures. A small digital camera, probably containing photos they'd never see thanks to the impact damage. A magnifying loupe for examining minerals. And beneath it all, a manila envelope that looked out of place among the specialized gear.

‘Hello. What’s this? ’

Ella eased it out. The paper was good quality, the kind you'd find in a university department. No labels, no markings. Just a simple flap tucked into itself.

‘Careful,’ Ross warned. ‘Evidence.’

‘That's why I'm wearing gloves.’ She opened the envelope and removed its contents. A stack of photographs slid into her palm, along with what looked like a single printed email.

The photos made her breath catch. Crisp, professional shots of the same rock formation they'd found last night. But these showed details their flashlights had missed - the precise geometry of the carvings, the way different rock types seemed to flow into each other like marble in a cake mix.

And then she saw the email.

Strange symbols discovered in quarry outside city. Unlike anything I've seen. Thought you might be interested, Dr. Thornton.

Ella's pulse spiked. The pieces slammed together in her head like a door being kicked in. These weren't just photos of a geological anomaly. They were a breadcrumb trail.

‘Hawkins,’ she said, ‘looks like we’re not going home today.’

‘Why’s that?’

Ella looked at Marcus one last time. The poor guy had followed a non-existent mystery right to his grave. ‘Because this was no accident. Marcus Thornton was murdered.’