Page 27 of Girl, Unseen

Luca's words hit something in Ella's brain. Not the usual snap of synapses that came with normal thought, but that rare electric surge that felt like lightning in a bottle. The kind that made her hands shake and her mouth go dry. The reservoir, the wind, the murmur of techs processing the scene - it all faded to white noise. Even the pain in her legs disappeared as her mind latched onto something just beyond its reach.

‘Say that again.’

Luca glanced up from the body. ‘What?’

‘What you just said. About consistency.’

‘His ritual?’

‘No.’ Ella's heart started pounding. ‘Before that. The only consistent...’

‘Element?’

Ella didn't answer. She was too busy watching the puzzle pieces reshuffle themselves in her mind. Marcus Thornton in his hole in the earth. Sarah Chen in her watery grave. Two victims killed in completely different ways, connected only by five mysterious symbols.

‘Oh Christ.’ The realization exploded through her consciousness. ‘That's what we're looking at. Elements. Classical elements.’

Luca arched a brow. Ross crossed his arms. Ella barely registered their skepticism because she was too deep in the zone now, in that sacred space where everything made terrible, beautiful sense.

‘Look at the victims. Marcus Thornton didn't just die in the earth - he lived for it. Geology was his whole world. And Sarah?’ She gestured at the body in the shallows. ‘Marine biologist. Someone who studies water.’

The wind whipped across the reservoir, but Ella didn't feel the cold anymore. She was burning up with the force of her revelation. Two victims. Two elements. Ross uncrossed his arms.

‘Back up. What exactly are you saying?’

But Ella was already moving, her mind three steps ahead of her mouth. Because now she understood. Now she saw the pattern written in blood and water, in earth and sky. A pattern as old as human thought itself.

‘These victims weren't just killed by their elements – they embodied them.’

Luca looked at the victim, then back at the symbols. ‘That’s what they represent. The elements.’

‘It has to be.’

‘Whoa, hold up,’ Ross interrupted. ‘This is a hell of a reach based on two bodies.’

‘It’s enough, detective. We usually profile based on what we have, but here we can profile based on what wedon’thave. No blood. No lacerations. Nothing consistent at all. The same goes for the victims. A forty-something man, a thirty-something woman. Serial killers prey on certain demographics, and we’re only two victims in and this guy has already strayed from the path. That means these victims are surrogates. They represent something.’

‘Like?’

Ella stared at the symbols across the way. ‘Elements. And there’ve been five symbols are both crime scenes.’

‘Which means we have at least three more to come,’ Luca finished.

Ross looked between them. ‘Well, we better start searching for answers, because if the press get word of this, they’ve got front page fodder for months.’

‘I think someone's working from a very specific playbook.’ Ella watched another wave lap at Sarah Chen's feet. ‘Ross, I need everything you can get on Sarah Chen. Where she lived, where she worked, who she knew. And I want to know if she had any connection to NYU or Marcus Thornton.’

He pulled out his phone. ‘I'll put a team on it.’

‘Good.’ Ella took one last look at the scene. At Sarah Chen's body, at the symbols that seemed to mock them with their precision. ‘Hawkins, we need to find this Felix Blackwood guy, stat.’

She turned away and headed back up the muddy path, mind already racing toward NYU's basement and whatever secrets waited in those ancient pages.

Because somewhere in the city, someone was collecting elements in human form.

And their collection was far from complete.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

---