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Hagen sat in the meeting room with his team members, waiting for Slade to arrive for an end-of-day debriefing. The day’s investigation had left him mentally drained, and the persistent image of Patrick Marrion’s bloodless body kept replaying in his mind. He drummed his fingers on the table, ready to share what they’d found and move the case forward before another victim turned up.

Slade strode through the door seconds later, his tie loosened and suit jacket bearing the wrinkles of a long day spent behind his desk. Deep shadows beneath his eyes suggested he’d been reviewing case files all day. Despite his obvious fatigue, he carried himself with purposeful energy.

As he sat down, he got straight to the point. “Where are we?”

Hagen spoke first. “Dr. Brennan confirmed exsanguination as the cause of death. The fatal wound was a clean incision on the right side of the victim’s neck. He noted bruising around the ankles and neck. The latter could indicate asphyxiation, but given the lack of deep tissue damage, Dr. Brennan thinks it may have been post-mortem, likely from the positioning of the body.”

“How long was the victim outside?”

“No more than a few hours before it was found.” Hagen leaned forward. “But here’s the interesting part…Dr. Brennan said the cut itself looks like the work of a professional, someone with experience handling bodies. He suggested we take a hard look at morticians.”

Slade gave the smallest of nods. “That sounds promising. Let’s hold that thought for now. Stella, you and Stacy visited the site where the victim’s body was discovered. What did you find?”

The two agents took turns sharing their information. Since the women sat across from each other, the other team members bounced their glances between them like a tennis match.

“The body was found in a stinking alley in the center of town. Just far enough out of the way to drop a corpse without attracting immediate attention. But not so far that the body could lie for long without being discovered. Our theory is that whoever did this wanted us to find the victim and find him soon.”

Stacy’s nose crinkled. She looked like she was reliving the moment too. “There was no blood at the scene. However, we did find a pair of discarded latex gloves. Blue. We bagged those, and I dropped them with forensics when we got back.”

“The gloves might not lead anywhere, but as we worked the scene, the discard location would be consistent with someone throwing away evidence.” Stella marked something in her notebook.

Stacy filled the small gap. “Forensics said they didn’t take any scrapings from the alley wall. The site was clean.” She wrinkled her nose again. “If you count filthy as clean.”

Ball to Stella. “We did find an unhoused individual living in the alley. We’re running some of his DNA, see if anything comes back.”

Slade tapped the table twice. “Okay, sounds good.” He aimed his next question at Hagen and Ander. “How about his roommate? Any intel from him?”

Ander grinned wryly. “First off, that kid is a piece of work. But I suppose that’s neither here nor there. But he did mention that Marrion had a friend who recently arrived in town. Marrion was going to visit him and show him around the day he was murdered.”

Slade straightened. He looked like he’d just found a twenty-dollar bill in the pocket of an old pair of jeans.

“Great. Who’s the friend?”

“We don’t know. It seems like Marrion and his friend had never met in real life. They met online.”

“Okay, so we need Marrion’s computer and his phone. Any luck there?”

“There was no laptop or phone in the room that we could locate.” Hagen shifted his weight. “But we did run into a Rohan Dhar who lives on the same floor as Jake Tripp and Patrick Marrion. He told us Tripp has a bad habit of holding technology hostage.” He went on to describe Tripp’s M.O.

“Could be that Tripp was holding Patrick’s technology hostage.” Ander twirled a pen in one hand. “Could be Patrick took it with him and the tech is at the murder site. Or the killer could have disposed of it. But we should keep an eye on his roomie’s eBay and Craigslist accounts.”

“That’s interesting. Did you get a username?” Mac spoke up from the opposite side of the table.

Hagen rustled through his notebook, though he remembered the handle. “Yeah. It’s ‘trippinballz12.’”

Slade’s eyebrows went straight up on his face. “That kid is a piece of work. Mac, save us for crying out loud. Can you find Marrion’s things?”

Mac nodded, but she seemed a little uncertain. “I tried locating the device, but the last ping came from the dorm building sometime Friday morning. You didn’t find the phone or laptop in his room?”

“We looked everywhere,” Ander confirmed.

Slade nodded. “Okay, Mac, do what you can to monitor that username. Maybe we’ll catch him selling Marrion’s equipment. And be sure to keep checking Marrion’s phone activity or lack thereof. Now, Stella, what about his family? Did they mention any places he frequented? Any friends, like perhaps this mysterious person online?”

Stella cast her gaze downward. “His family seemed to think he wasn’t a gamer and didn’t spend a lot of time online, which doesn’t track with the rest of their info that he kept to himself. Struggled to make friends.”

“Really? That takes effort, especially at that age. Not like he was a middle-aged guy with a family and didn’t have a chance to get out much.”

Slade had three teenage daughters and never joined the team at any of their occasional post-work social events. Hagen figured he should invite him next time. Slade spread his fingers over the top of the table. “So we still need to find where the victim was killed. Ideas?”

The room fell silent. The heating vent hummed. A gust blew past the building, just audible through the double-glazed window panes.

Stella remembered the wind in the trees in Claymore Township. That sound had been so much gentler, a whisper that eased her into sleep every night. Or it did until she’d come to associate it with the creak of a rope and blood on the snow.

Blood.

She lifted her head.

“What about the blood? Bleeding someone out makes a huge mess. We’ve seen it. How would someone hide that in the city?”

“I don’t think it’s that hard.” Anja’s forehead accordioned into a series of furrows, as though the effort of such a thought had shrunk her brain. “Funeral homes just pour blood into the sewage system. The killer could’ve just washed it down a drain. Forensics would find traces, but once the blood has mixed with the city’s wastewater, there’s no reason anyone would know.”

Stella dropped back into her seat and whispered under her breath, “Morticians…”

Blood flowing through city drains. A river of gore under the sidewalks. It was a horrible thought. Hagen blinked to get the image out of his head.

Stella sat upright in her seat. She pointed at the screen behind Slade. “Can you bring up the picture of the victim again?”

Slade took a remote control from his pocket and pushed a button. The screen took them back to the dirty downtown alley. Patrick Marrion sat by the wall, head lolling, elbow propped on a rail.

Stella pointed at the cut on the victim’s neck. “When my brother died, we spoke to a couple of funeral homes. One of the morticians explained how they’d preserve bodies and why we wouldn’t see their work. He told us how they’d cut the carotid artery and internal jugular vein, pump out the blood, and replace it with something like formaldehyde. Once that’s done, they sutured everything off and use…what did he call it…a trocar to remove fluid from organs.”

Why in the hell would a mortician tell a family member something so horrible?

Instead of asking, Hagen focused on the case. “That would line up with why Dr. Brennan said we should be interested in morticians. A mortician could be very precise. They wouldn’t need to slash a throat?—”

“Because they’d know exactly where to do the most damage,” Stella finished.

Slade straightened his shoulders. He looked like someone had just taken an overloaded backpack from his back after a hike up a steep hill.

“Right, I want you matching the names of registered morticians with criminal records, connections to Central Tennessee State, or connections with dirty downtown alleys. Anything that gives us a link to the victim. Could be our guy. Go statewide if you have to. Our victim was seeing someone from out of town, remember?”

“And we could be looking for a killer and their accomplice. Both don’t need to be out-of-towners.” Hagen looked at Stella, and she seemed to be on the same page.

It was hard work stringing up a body.

“We very well could be.” Slade gathered his papers and frowned when they didn’t move. “What are you all waiting for? Go.”

As he was collecting his things, Hagen considered how the body had looked so different compared to the victims in Pennsylvania. The small cut on the neck was nothing like the wild slashes that killed Laurence Gill, Mark Tully, and Sheriff King.

The strange writing was absent, too, unless the abrasions on Patrick Marrion’s scarred back were caused by more than a scrape against a brick wall. Right now, the only possible link between this murder and the victims in Claymore Township was that, in every case, the corpses had been completely exsanguinated. It was a weak link.

Stella’s report of her visit to the Marrion family only reinforced their impression of the victim as a lonely young man who spent most of his time in books and online. He had few friends but no enemies either.

Stella slid into her coat, and they left.

On the way out, they passed Mac’s office, and the door was open. Anja sat next to the cyber expert, who was showing their newest team member how her one-woman department worked. Stella wished them a good evening as they passed. Mac waved from the top of her monitor and Anja called after them. “Bye, Stella. Bye, Hagen.”

Hagen hunched his shoulders. Anja had emphasized his name just a little more than Stella’s.

Once outside, they drove out of the parking garage.

The resident agency receded in the rearview mirror. Their first day at work after their leave was fading behind them, and dinner lay ahead. He’d cook Korean again. He always had time for Korean.

Stella stretched her legs in the passenger seat. “So…anything you want to tell me about the newest member of our team?”

Hagen stiffened. He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel but kept his eyes on the road.

He knew what she was asking. There was no way anyone as observant as Stella would have missed the awkwardness of him seeing Anja this morning. “Anja?”

“Yes. Anja.”

Hagen considered how to answer.

“Do you want to tell me about her?” Stella pressed.

The only way out was through. “We dated for a couple months when we were stationed in San Francisco. We worked a drug-trafficking case together and got…close. The relationship lasted two or three months and ended when I transferred here.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he realized Stella was trying not to smile. His tension eased. She knew. And she knew, too, that Anja Farrow from San Francisco was no threat to her. “You had a thing with her, huh?”

He relaxed into his seat. “Yeah, yeah. We had a thing. Briefly. Very briefly. Really not my type.”

“But enough of your type to…” She huffed. “Have a thing .”

“Well, I…”

Damn, he loved the sound of Stella’s laughter.

He relaxed. “You know, one day, one of your old mistakes will come bubbling into our life, and I’m going to roast the heck out of you. Consider yourself warned.”

Stella laughed louder. “I don’t make mistakes.”

“Is that right?”

She linked her fingers through his. “You better hope so.”

Hagen did hope so. The twist in his gut told him he hoped so very much.

They pulled up outside the town house. From the other side of the door, Bubs barked, welcoming them home. Hagen watched as his dog jumped on Stella, bouncing on his remaining back leg to lick her face. This was home.

Stella pushed Bubs down. “What do you think about ordering pizza tonight?”

Managing not to groan, but barely, Hagen shut the door behind him.

Bubs ran back to his spot on the sofa with no more than a sniff in his general direction.

Hagen had meant to make tteokbokki . He had the black bean sauce all planned out. He could almost taste the kimchi he’d have on the side.

Stella flopped onto the sofa and brought out her phone. “Yeah, pizza. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I don’t want to wait.” The screen already displayed the website of a local pizza chain. “And I definitely don’t want to spend the night washing dishes after you’ve cooked. I want to order pizza and eat from the box.”

“But I could just?—”

“Order pizza.” Stella lifted her phone and added mushrooms to the toppings. “Do anything, and you just might be making a mistake. Another one.”

“Right.”

Everything had a price. For the return of an old flame, mushroom-topped pizza instead of Korean rice cakes was pretty cheap.

Hagen dropped onto the sofa next to her and told her to put black olives on his half.

He was ready for the day to die.