Page 25 of Girl, Unseen

‘And Marcus never mentioned anything else about him?’ Luca asked.

‘Not to me. Though after the break-in attempt, Marcus did request extra security measures for the archive.’ Harper straightened her blazer. ‘I thought he was being paranoid at the time.’

This was it. Ella needed to know everything about Felix Blackwood, stat. She was about to press further when her phone buzzed. Detective Ross' number lit up the screen.

‘Excuse me.’ She stood up. ‘I need to take this. Hawkins, you know what to do.’

Luca gave her a nod as she strafed out into the hallway. She could hear the distant murmurs of lectures in progress.

‘Ross,’ she answered. ‘Just with the dean of NYU.’

‘Well, drop whatever you’re doing.’

Ella froze in place. She might have only met Ross this morning, but she recognized that tone a mile off. It was the same tone used by cops and sheriffs the country over. The kind that meant he'd seen something today that would haunt him tonight.

‘Please don’t say…’

‘Yup. We’ve got another body. And this one is… different.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kensico Reservoir stretched out like black glass under the November sky. It was spread across eighteen miles of Westchester County, supplying a billion gallons of water to New York City's endless thirst. Today, it held one more secret beneath its surface.

Ella had spotted the crime scene from half a mile out. She brought the SUV to a stop, then watched a discarded soda can dance along the gravel path and tumble into the undergrowth where yellow crime scene tape fluttered between trees. The burns on her legs screamed from the drive over, and her mind was still wrestling with Felix Blackwood and those restricted texts. But murder waited for no one, so Ella cut a look at her partner that saidthings are about to get messier.Squad cars had already claimed the shoreline. She counted four uniforms; two plainclothes and what looked like the ME's van.

Luca said, ‘How do we know this is even related? We must be twenty miles from the quarry.’

‘Agreed. New York City sees one homicide a day, but Ross wouldn’t have called us if he wasn’t sure.’

Ella climbed out of the car. The wind hit her like a slap to the face. Out here, ten miles north of the city, winter came early and stayed late. To the west, the reservoir's dam rose like a concrete wall, its spillways gurgling with the last of the morning's rain. The whole scene had that washed-out quality of a black and white photo – gray sky, darker water, and patches of dead grass that looked like God had given up halfway through coloring them in. Detective Ross waited at the perimeter, and his face had that specific shade that only came from seeing something your brain refused to process.

‘Thanks for coming.’ He lifted the tape for them. ‘Dog walker found her about an hour ago. Uniforms confirmed it was a real body and Major Crimes rolled in an hour ago.’

They followed Ross down a muddy path that wound through a stand of trees that had been stripped bare by the season. The path curved around an inlet where the reservoir's arm cut deep into the shoreline.

Ella's boots squelched in mud that probably wouldn't dry until spring. The reservoir had swollen with recent rains, leaving a bathtub ring of debris along the shore - branches, plastic bottles, the usual detritus ofhuman existence. Perfect place to hide a body, she thought. Water had a way of keeping secrets.

‘There.’ Ross pointed.

The body lay half in, half out of the water like something the reservoir had tried to spit back out. Female. Dark hair plastered to a face that was several shades too pale. She wore what looked like designer clothes - a silk blouse now ruined by the water, tailored pants, no shoes or socks. Whoever this was had been attractive in life - high cheekbones, delicate features. Death had bleached her skin to the color of old paper, but it hadn't taken her dignity. No watch. No rings. Ella pegged her in her late thirties, but the water made it hard to tell. It had a way of blurring boundaries, erasing identity. Washing away all the things that made a person real.

No blood though. No obvious wounds or trauma. Just a body that had been in the water far longer than any living thing should.

Ella blew out a breath and tried to stay in analytical mode, but it was a futile effort. She couldn’t help but see this woman, whoever she was, as someone’s daughter, sister, mother, friend, colleague. She took a moment to pay her a silent tribute in death, then looked over at Luca, who was snapping on a pair of gloves. He offered a pair to Ella.

‘I hate to sound like a broken record,’ he said, ‘but what are the chances thisisn’ta homicide?’

Ella threw the gloves n. ‘Suicide?’

‘Yeah. I mean, look at her. No restraint marks, no bullet holes, no defense wounds. She even took her shoes off. You add water to that equation, and the math gets a whole lot simpler. You know how hard it is to drown someone?’

Ella did know. Adult drowning victims usually showed evidence of a fight – broken nails, torn clothing, defensive wounds. The human body had millions of years of evolution screaming at it to survive. It didn't go quietly into dark water.

Ross said, 'Yeah, you'd have a point, but… follow me.' He jerked his head toward a rocky outcrop that jutted into the water, and they picked their way across slippery rocks until they reached the far side of the outcrop.

There, partially hidden by overgrown bushes, five symbols had been spray-painted in precise black strokes. A triangle inside a circle. A spiral that ate its own tail. A maze that spiraled endlessly into itself. Another that showed diamonds locked in impossible patterns. The fifth depicted a ladder ascending into nothing.

The exact same marks from the quarry.

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