Page 15 of Forsaken

"You're thinking too hard," Derik said softly. His suit jacket was draped over a kitchen chair, his tie loosened—small signs of the trust they'd rebuilt since her release. "I can hear the gears turning from here."

Morgan's fingers found the phoenix tattoo on her forearm, tracing its outline through her sleeve. The first ink she'd gotteninside, a promise to herself that she would rise from the ashes of her destroyed life. The needle's bite had been a welcome distraction from the monotony of her sentence, each session a small act of reclaiming control over her body, her identity.

“It’s not just about the case. Cordell's too quiet," she admitted. The words felt dangerous in the evening stillness, like naming a nightmare might make it real. "After the cemetery, after threatening Mueller... nothing. Radio silence." Her hand moved to another tattoo, this one on her shoulder—a compass rose, inked during her fifth year inside. A reminder that even in darkness, she could find her way.

She thought of Cordell's umbrella in the cemetery rain, how he'd smiled when he'd offered her the choice to run or fight. The memory made her skin crawl, but she pushed through it, the way she'd pushed through countless moments of fear and doubt during her decade behind bars. The rain that day had smelled like her last day of freedom before the frame-up had stolen everything.

"Maybe he doesn't know about this case." Derik shifted slightly, careful not to disturb Skunk. "Or maybe he does, and he's waiting to see what we do."

A car alarm sounded in the distance, making them both tense slightly. Their hypervigilance was matched. They'd developed a new language since her release, one built on shared trauma and cautious hope.

"That's what worries me." Morgan gestured at the files spread before them. "He's planned everything else so carefully. The frame-up, Thomas's murder—nothing happens by accident with him. I want to put all my energy on it, but now we have a killer staging elaborate ritual murders." She picked up another crime scene photo, studying the careful arrangement of flowers around Laura Benson's body. "But I need to focus on them.These staging elements, the attention to detail—it feels familiar somehow."

Skunk's ears twitched in his sleep, his scarred face peaceful between them. Morgan remembered how it felt when Thomas had taken him—another piece of her life used as leverage, another reminder that nothing she loved was truly safe. The pit bull had been her one constant, a thread connecting her past life to her present reality. Even now, his steady breathing helped regulate her own. As traumatic as it had been when Thomas kidnapped Skunk, Morgan knew now that Thomas wasn’t truly her enemy… he never really had been.

"We could still leave," Derik said quietly. The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implications. "Start over somewhere else. Together." His hand moved toward hers, hesitating just short of contact. "Surviving isn't surrender, Morgan."

The apartment's silence seemed to deepen, broken only by the distant hum of the city and Skunk's gentle snoring. Through the window, Morgan could see the Dallas skyline, its lights a constellation of human activity against the night sky. Somewhere out there, a killer was probably planning his next move, while Cordell watched from whatever shadowy perch he'd claimed.

She looked at Derik then—really looked at him. At the man who'd betrayed her before, who'd carried that guilt, who'd stood by her since her release despite everything. The lamplight softened his features, bringing out the green in his eyes that she'd dreamed about during countless nights. The lines around those eyes were deeper now, etched by years of regret and redemption.

"I survived ten years inside," she said finally. "I'm not running now. Not from Cordell, not from this killer—" Her voicecaught as Derik's fingers finally found hers, the touch electric with shared history and unspoken possibilities.

"—and not from this." Morgan's voice softened as she intertwined her fingers with Derik's, the warmth of his hand a stark contrast to the cold metal of prison bars that had defined her world for so long.

Derik's breath hitched, his eyes searching hers with an intensity that spoke volumes. For a moment, the weight of their shared past, the years of separation and pain, seemed to hang suspended between them. Even after finding their way back to each other, sleeping with each other, becoming a couple—Morgan sometimes still worried that she could lose Derik.

The moment stretched, taut with possibility. Morgan felt the familiar pull of hesitation. But something else stirred beneath it—a fierce, defiant spark that prison had never quite extinguished.

Her phone's harsh ring shattered the moment. Mueller's name flashed on the screen, and Morgan shifted to high alert. This late, it couldn't be good news. Skunk lifted his head, his muscled body tensing in response to her sudden change in posture. Even after all these years, the dog could read her better than most humans.

"Cross," she answered, already standing. The pit bull rose with her, reading her tension with the intuition that had made him such a good partner during her recovery. His nails clicked against the hardwood floor as he moved to her side.

Mueller's voice was tight with urgency. "Hannah Smith, thirty-two, reported missing by her sister thirty minutes ago. Owner of the Smith Gallery downtown." He paused, and Morgan heard the sound of sirens in the background, a wailing chorus that made her skin prickle. "Sister found spring flowers scattered outside the gallery. Daffodils and tulips."

Morgan's blood ran cold. Beside her, Derik was already reaching for his jacket, reading the shift in her posture with the practiced ease of long partnership. The leather creaked as he shrugged it on, the sound unnaturally loud in the tense atmosphere. "Time frame?"

"Last contact was a text about breakfast plans, sent around 8:45 PM. Sister went to check on her when she didn't answer subsequent messages. Found her phone and keys on the sidewalk about twenty minutes ago." Mueller's voice carried the weight of knowing what those abandoned items likely meant. "First responders secured the scene, but haven't touched anything. I want your eyes on this."

"We're on our way." Morgan ended the call, her mind already racing through implications. Spring flowers in autumn—their killer's signature. He was escalating, moving faster, growing bolder. The pattern was shifting, like a dance picking up tempo before its final movement.

She grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair, the familiar weight settling onto her shoulders like armor. Skunk whined softly, picking up on her urgency. "Stay," she commanded gently, scratching behind his ears. "Guard the house." The pit bull's tail wagged once in acknowledgment, but his eyes remained alert, watchful.

As they hurried down to the car, the night air carried a hint of winter's approaching chill. Morgan thought of Laura in the river, of Emily in the cornfield, of Hannah somewhere in the darkness, probably already arranged in whatever twisted tableau their killer had planned. The city stretched out before them, a maze of shadows and lights where anything could be happening behind closed doors.

Derik drove with the focused intensity she remembered from their early days together, before everything fell apart. His hands were sure on the wheel as they cut through late-nighttraffic, lights painting streaks across the windshield. Morgan watched Dallas scroll by, its glass towers reflecting the moon like shattered mirrors. The cityscape looked different at night, more threatening, as if the familiar buildings were rearranging themselves into something sinister.

They were running out of time. Their killer was accelerating his timeline, and Hannah Smith's life hung in the balance, as fragile as the spring flowers he'd left like breadcrumbs in the night.

The city lights blurred past as they raced toward the gallery, each second feeling like another grain of sand through the hourglass. She hadn't survived prison and fought her way back to the Bureau just to let another killer slip through her fingers.

Not this time. Not again.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Red and blue lights painted the gallery's modernist facade in alternating waves of color, transforming its clean lines into something more ominous. Morgan's boots crunched on the gravel as she approached.

The wind carried the scent of fallen leaves and exhaust fumes, urban decay mixing with natural entropy. Squad cars lined the street, their emergency lights reflecting off the gallery's floor-to-ceiling windows like fractured rainbows. Each flash illuminated another piece of the scene: the scattered keys still glinting on the sidewalk, the phone face-down on the concrete, the impossible spring flowers blooming in October's dying light. Downtown Dallas loomed behind them, its glass towers dark against the night sky except for the occasional lit office—squares of artificial daylight hovering in the darkness.

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