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When Stella returned after delivering Tyra Scharf to the Nashville PD, the mood at Nashville’s FBI Resident Agency was as grim as the days that followed Martin Lin’s murder.

Though late, everyone was still there, except for Ander, who Slade had already put on leave.

Caleb displayed the same quiet rage he’d shown after Martin’s death.

He sat in front of his terminal, typing with the force of ten little hammers.

Stacy was ashen. Her hair, usually so neat, was out of place as though she hadn’t trusted her shaking hands to arrange it properly. She clicked her mouse, read, and sighed, then rubbed her temple and sighed some more.

Anja, who’d barely known Alessandra but could read the room, brought a tray of coffees without asking. She might’ve been afraid to ask, afraid to say anything that could’ve potentially broken the atmosphere. Mac sat in her office with the door closed.

Hagen barely spoke, and his silence suited Stella. There was nothing either of them could say that would lift the mood. And she didn’t want to prod. He’d process the news in his own time and in his own way .

Slade walked out of his office and addressed the bullpen. “We lost one of our own tonight.” His voice was low.

Mac came out of her office and leaned against the doorframe.

“Alessandra was one of ours. She was an agent, a scientist, someone who gave us the evidence we needed to identify culprits and bring them in. She was diligent, hardworking, and one of the smartest people I ever had the honor of knowing. And she was a mother and a wife.”

Stella swallowed hard. The choice was that or start crying, and the tears running down Mac’s face were enough for both of them.

Slade continued, his voice rising with his anger. “Alessandra shouldn’t have died. But she had a case. And she never let a case go unresolved.” He lifted his chin. “Well, this needs to be resolved.” He looked around the room. His gaze landed on Hagen, then on Stella.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“I want to know who’s behind all this. They’re threatening my team. Who sent someone to shoot Ander and Hagen on our last case? And who inspired Tyra Scharf to kill Alessandra?”

Caleb growled, “Whoever it is, we’re going to find them. We’re going to bring them in, and we’re going to make sure they pay.”

“We sure are.” Slade nodded. His eye stayed fixed on Stella, though. “Whatever it takes. Get to it.”

Normally, Stella would want to lose herself in the work. But tonight, that meant hunching over crime scene photographs of Alessandra, which she was comparing with those taken from her past two cases. Her chest hurt looking at them.

But it didn’t matter how late it was. Stella and Hagen were determined to file their preliminary report on the investigation of the murder of FBI Explosives Expert Alessandra Lagarde.

After Hagen had asked Tyra Scharf to help them access the Dispatch group, the young woman had clammed up, refusing to speak any further. They’d left her with the Nashville PD, who’d agreed to keep her in custody for the duration of the case.

While Scharf was cooling her heels, Stella and Hagen had returned to their office and immediately gotten to work writing and compiling their report.

The first general step in any preliminary investigation was to verify that the crime actually occurred. In Alessandra’s case, this was relatively straightforward.

Were it not for the presence of those damned cuneiform marks carved into the agent’s stomach, any investigator—Stella and Hagen included—would’ve considered this case closed.

But now Stella couldn’t get the image of Alessandra’s sliced-up stomach out of her mind.

After comparing the images taken by the crime scene photographer with those from the cases of Laurence Gill and Mark Tully in Claymore Township, Pennsylvania, and then with the recent bout of murders in Nashville committed by Trevor McAuley, Stella’s first instinct appeared to be correct.

The marks on the dead bodies in those cases matched those carved into Alessandra’s skin.

Clearly, the answer lay in that encrypted Dispatch chat group, which Trevor McAuley, Maureen King, and the others had been a part of.

And though she didn’t have any proof to support this claim, Stella also knew that whoever had paid Trevor McAuley to commit his murders was still in charge and was baiting their followers, including Tyra Scharf, to commit atrocities .

This case was not closed. Far from it.

After three hours of work, they finished the report and filed it with their field office and in the FBI’s Central Records System. Then they logged out.

When they finally left the building well past midnight, Hagen suggested they drive over to Ander’s house to check up on him.

The house was mostly dark when they got there, except for the living room, from which emanated a dim, pale-blue light. Together, Stella and Hagen walked up the little pathway to Ander’s front door, where the Christmas wreath hung. But they didn’t knock or ring the bell.

Through the living room window, they saw him. Ander lay curled on the couch, one arm cradling Murphy, the other resting protectively across Demetri’s back. Both boys were asleep, tucked against him like they instinctively knew where safety lived—even if safety had splintered.

Demetri’s father would come soon. Of course he would. After everything, there was no way he’d leave his son behind.

And just like that, Ander would lose one more piece of Alessandra.

Stella’s chest clenched so tightly she couldn’t draw a full breath. Grief had a weight tonight, and it was suffocating.

A laptop glowed on the coffee table. From their angle, she could see the slow flicker of a slideshow—photos of Alessandra with the boys, Alessandra laughing, Alessandra holding Ander’s face like she’d never loved anything more.

Beside the computer sat a bottle of scotch, a third already gone.

Ander didn’t move. Just stared at the screen as he held the sleeping boys like they were the last solid thing in a world that had fallen apart.

Stella reached for Hagen’s arm and pulled him back from the window, guiding them both wordlessly toward the car .

Ander didn’t need questions. Or comfort. Not tonight.

He just needed this…his boys, his ghosts, and the dark.