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Stella drove well above the speed limit, trying to understand what the hell was happening. She called Alessandra back twice, but got no answer. No one had showed at the ransom drop. They’d stood around looking like idiots. And Tyra Scharf had returned home? Nothing made sense.

“Did Alessandra say anything else?” She’d asked this question maybe a hundred seventy-two times since they’d gotten in the SUV.

“Ander said she said something was wrong. That was it.”

Stella took the turn into the Scharfs’ neighborhood at speed. Hagen slid against the passenger door but didn’t say anything. She wished they had his cherry-red Corvette right now.

When she reached the Scharf house, she spotted the yellow police tape fluttering in the night breeze. A single police cruiser sat empty, its occupants nowhere to be seen.

“Where are the uniforms?” After they bailed out, Hagen stood next to the cruiser and scanned the area.

Nothing moved. A small copse of trees, perhaps leading to a park, stood beyond the Scharfs’ large house. Neighbors were spread far apart in this area. Stella didn’t see another human being anywhere.

“Something’s wrong.”

“That’s what she said.” But Hagen didn’t crack a smile.

“There’s light in the house.” Stella couldn’t precisely tell where it was coming from, though.

She stepped forward and crossed the lawn as she drew her weapon. Behind her, Hagen informed the team via phone that the uniforms were absent and told them to hurry up. Stella didn’t hear the response.

Alessandra’s Ford Explorer was parked out front.

They approached the house carefully, clearing the exterior before reaching the front door, which stood slightly ajar.

“FBI!” Hagen called out as they entered, his voice echoing through the charred entryway.

The air still carried the acrid scent of smoke, but something else mingled with it now—a metallic, coppery smell that Stella recognized instantly. Blood.

Oh, no. Please, no.

They moved through the ground floor quickly, finding nothing but burned walls and water damage.

“Alessandra?” Stella willed the explosives expert to answer. But the sinking feeling in her gut told her she wouldn’t be hearing Alessandra’s voice again.

They climbed the stairs slowly. The hallway at the top was dark, but light spilled from the burned bedroom at the end. Smears of blood tracked from the master bedroom to Tyra’s charred room.

As they approached, Stella heard a soft scratching sound and what might’ve been humming. She signaled to Hagen, who nodded grimly. They positioned themselves on either side of the doorway .

“FBI! Come out with your hands up!” Hagen was not messing around.

The scratching stopped. Yet the humming continued.

Stella swung into the doorway—weapon extended—and froze at the sight the crime scene floodlights illuminated.

Alessandra hung upside down from one of the scaffolds her team had assembled, her red hair nearly touching the floor.

A large pool of blood had spread beneath her head, staining the burned carpet a deep crimson.

Her throat was slashed open, a clean, precise cut from ear to ear.

Her face was ghostly white between streaks of blood streaming down from her wound.

And standing in the pool of blood, carving something into Alessandra’s bare stomach with a small knife, was Tyra Scharf. She didn’t look up at their entrance, just continued humming and carving.

Humming and carving.

Those familiar cuneiform characters that Stella had hoped never to see again.

“Drop the knife, Tyra!” Hagen’s voice thundered through the room. “Now!”

Tyra finally looked up, her face eerily calm, black makeup smeared around her eyes. She appeared like some demonic entity in the dim light.

“I had to finish the message.” Her voice was oddly childlike. “She wouldn’t stay still for me.”

“Drop the knife.” Stella repeated Hagen’s order, her weapon trained on Tyra as she forced herself not to unload into the young woman. But Alessandra was clearly beyond their help. They needed Tyra to answer. “Put it down and back away from her.”

Tyra sighed as though inconvenienced, then placed the knife on the floor and stood. Her hands and forearms were covered in blood, her black clothes spattered with it .

“Where are the police officers who were supposed to be guarding this scene?” Hagen demanded, moving in to secure Tyra while Stella kept her weapon trained on the woman.

Tyra smiled. “In the trees. They came to help me, you know.” She shrugged. “But I didn’t need help. People see what they expect to see.”

As Hagen secured Tyra’s hands behind her back with zip ties, Stella stepped around the blood pool to check Alessandra, just in case. There was no pulse, and her skin was still warm but noticeably colder than it should have been.

Stella’s throat tightened as she looked at her friend hanging there like some macabre art installation. Alessandra’s eyes were open, staring into nothing, her face frozen in an expression of surprise and pain.

“Why?” Stella turned back to Tyra.

A smile was her only reply.

“Downstairs. Now.” Hagen led their murderer down the stairs and out of the house.

Stella followed, though she didn’t want to leave Alessandra alone. All she wanted to do was pick up the knife Tyra had dropped and use it to cut down her friend.

But she couldn’t disturb the scene.

Sometimes the job was awful.

As Hagen escorted Tyra to their SUV, Stella tried not to replay the grisly scene from upstairs.

But she needed to document everything before the forensic unit arrived.

The cuneiform characters carved into Alessandra’s stomach matched the ones from the murders in Pennsylvania and recently in Nashville.

It wasn’t over.

Tires shrieked outside. Stella turned as Ander’s car skidded to a stop, his door flying open before the engine fully died. He was out and running, his entire focus locked on the house, panic written in every movement .

Hagen had barely gotten Tyra into the SUV, leaving Stella as the only one between Ander and the horror upstairs.

She stepped into his path. One thought pulsed through her— don’t let him see . No one should have to carry that image. No one deserved that.

“Ander. No!”

He didn’t slow. His pace barely faltered as she cut in front of him, boots crunching on gravel, arms out.

“Alessandra!”

He surged forward, halfway to the porch.

Stella grabbed his shoulders, holding on to him with all her strength. “She’s…upstairs. But you can’t go up there.”

He whirled on her, his hands curled into fists. “What are you talking about? Alessandra!”

She grabbed bigger handfuls of his shirt. “She’s gone, Ander. You can’t?—”

“Gone?” His face flushed deep red, blotches blooming across his cheeks. His chest heaved. For a second, she thought he might throw up right there in the yard. “What do you mean gone?”

She didn’t let go. Not yet. Her fingers dug in. “She’s dead.”

Ander lunged forward.

Stella managed to keep ahold of his shirt, but buttons popped off as he forced himself through her grip. She’d never tried to stop Ander from doing anything physically before. He was strong, with grief and adrenaline making him unstoppable.

Hagen managed to get ahold of Ander’s upper arm, and between them, they slowed him down. Barely. “You don’t want to see her. Please. You don’t want to remember her like that.”

Before Stella knew he was moving, Ander whirled on Hagen, his longtime friend, and punched him in the jaw. Hagen went down at the bottom of the staircase. The whole time, Stella held on to his shirt, but maintaining a grip was like trying to grasp onto a single thread.

Ander shook hard, and she fell. He ran up the staircase.

Stella left Hagen on the ground and chased her friend. Her drive went beyond the need to preserve a crime scene. She couldn’t let Ander see his wife like that.

But she wasn’t fast enough to stop him.

He paused at the bedroom doorway, his momentum carrying him forward another step before his brain processed the horror before him. His wife, suspended upside down, blood pooled beneath her. The symbols carved into her flesh.

The sound that came from Ander wasn’t human—a guttural, primal howl of anguish that made Stella’s skin crawl and tears flood her eyes. He lunged toward his wife.

Hagen appeared behind them. He launched himself at Ander, grabbing him around the chest and pulling him back.

“Don’t, Ander. Don’t look.” Hagen shifted him so they were face-to-face, forehead pressed to forehead. His voice broke as he struggled to restrain their friend. “Look away. Please don’t look.”

“Let go of me!” Ander roared, fighting against Hagen’s grip with desperate strength. But Hagen managed to secure him in a bear hug. “That’s my wife! That’s my wife!”

Stella moved between Ander and the scene, trying to block his view. “Ander, please. Let us handle it. We’ll take care of her. You can’t be here.”

But Ander wasn’t hearing them. He continued to struggle against Hagen, tears streaming down his face, his eyes fixed on Alessandra’s body.

“Who did this?” he demanded, his voice raw. “Who did this to her?”

“We have her in custody.” Hagen’s words carried a guttural quality as he continued to restrained him. “Tyra Scharf. She was still…here when we arrived.”

Ander went still, his eyes widening. “Tyra? The kidnapping victim?” The words were barely out of his mouth when rage flooded his features. “Where is she? Where the hell is she?”

Stella grabbed his shirt again. “She’s secure.” She wasn’t sure the words even registered. “But right now, we need to take care of Alessandra.”

Something in Ander broke. His knees buckled as if the floor had been yanked out from under him. Hagen caught him just in time, lowering him with the slow, practiced care of someone handling something fragile and already shattered.

Ander curled in on himself, chest heaving.

Not just sobbing… howling . The kind of grief that scraped up from the bottom of a man’s soul.

Stella crouched beside him, resting a hand on his shoulder, unable to stop her own tears.

His skin burned under her palm, his whole body trembling like it couldn’t hold the weight of what had just been taken.

She needed to get him out of here.

“She called me,” he choked out between sobs. “She said Tyra was here. Something was wrong. I should’ve gotten here faster. I should’ve…” Ander muttered things they already knew, trying to make sense of the unfathomable.

Stella glanced back at the horrific tableau in the bedroom. The cuneiform symbols. The ritualistic positioning.

Outside, sirens wailed as backup arrived. Stella heard Slade’s deep voice downstairs, demanding to know what had happened. In moments, he would see this scene, and everything would change.