Page 3 of Girl, Sought

Faceless.

Because the man had covered himself with something that looked exactly like a doll’s face.

Unconsciousness took hold, and the last clear thought Eleanor had was of Thomas. She'd always assumed she'd join him peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by the collection they'd started together.

These perfect creatures would outlive them all, just as she'd always known they would.

CHAPTER ONE

The gymnasium at Blue Ridge Valley Elementary smelled like every school gym in Virginia - floor wax, dusty basketball nets, and the lingering ghost of a thousand PE classes. But today they'd dressed it up with tinsel and paper stars, trying their best to turn it into Bethlehem.

Ella Dark sat in the back row of metal folding chairs, watching a six-year-old shepherd in an oversized bathrobe clutch his wooden staff like it was keeping him upright. Elias Matthews. He'd grown since last December's performance as one of the three wise men. Back then, his costume crown had kept slipping over his eyes.

Luca Hawkins – Ella’s former partner in the field but current partner everywhere else – sat beside her, and he seemed oddly transfixed by the proceedings. For an FBI agent, he seemed way too invested in whether the innkeeper would find room at the inn this time around. His knee bounced with each scene change, and Ella caught him mouthing along with ‘Silent Night.’

‘What do you think?’ Ella whispered.

‘Shh. I’m invested.’

On stage, Elias delivered his lines without stumbling. Pride swelled in Ella's chest, foreign and familiar all at once. Six years of watching this kid grow up from a distance had carved out a space inside her that she hadn't expected.

The memory surfaced like it always did this time of year. That raid in Bristol nearly seven years ago. Her first case after transferring to the Virginia field office. The Morrison house had looked normal enough from the outside - peeling paint, overgrown lawn, nothing screamingdrug empire headquarters. But inside, they'd found enough meth to blanket half the county in a chemical haze.

Jamie and Sarah Morrison hadn't gone down easy. The basement lab turned into a shooting gallery before anyone could blink. When the smoke cleared, Sarah Morrison was bleeding from a shoulder wound, screaming about her unborn baby while Jamie tried to flee and leave his pregnant co-conspirator behind.

Ella remembered the hospital afterward. Sarah handcuffed to the bed, monitors beeping, her belly swollen under the thin gown. The hatred in her eyes when Ella came to take her statement burned hotter than the wound in her shoulder.

She'd told herself it was just the job. The Morrisons had chosen their path. But something about that unborn kid kept nagging at her conscience. She started checking up on Sarah in prison and tracked the pregnancy through visitor logs and medical reports. When Elias was born four months into his mother's sentence, Ella made sure he landed with a good foster family.

The Matthewses had adopted him officially by his first birthday. A same-sex couple that lived near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Elias had two dads, so Ella liked to think of herself as his unofficial mom, even though she'd always kept her distance. She'd only ever met him once, two years ago, when she'd brought a squad car here for the students to gawp at. Elias had sat in the driver's seat and honked the horn with the biggest smile on his chubby face. Elias hadn't known who she was. He just believed – and still did – that Ella Dark was a random policewoman.

On stage, Mary and Joseph found their way to the manger. Elias stood guard with his fellow shepherds, remembered every line. No one watching would guess his birth parents were serving twenty-five to life in separate federal prisons.

‘You okay?’ Luca's whisper pulled her back to the present.

‘Yeah. You?’

He placed a hand on her knee. ‘Loving it. Jesus is about to come out.’

The parents around them shifted forward in their seats with their phones raised to capture the moment. Ella watched the Matthewses in the front row, how one of them dabbed at her eyes when Elias delivered his final lines perfectly. No trace of the shy boy who needed speech therapy until last year.

The final carol swelled through the gym's ancient speakers. Ella had sat through two of these performances now, and this was – according to the headteacher who Ella had to bribe to get in here – their last. After second grade, the nativities stopped, which meant Ella would have to find her way to Little League games or trampolining class or something next year. A part of her thought that she needed to let go of this weird, self-imposed responsibility, but she knew she couldn’t. Because someone should remember where Elias came from, even if he never knew himself.

The applause startled her out of her thoughts. Parents surged forward to collect their costumed kids. Ella hung back and watched the Matthewses sweep Elias into a group hug.

The sight stirred something deep in her chest - not quite regret, but a complicated ache that came with the job. Sometimes, doing the right thing meant breaking things apart to build them back better.

Would Elias have had a good life with the Morrisons? All that drug money could've bought him the best of everything. Private schools. Sports cars on his sixteenth birthday. A trust fund fat enough to choke on. But money couldn't buy the kind of love she saw in the Matthewses' eyes, or the quiet confidence Elias had found with them. Some things were worth more than all the meth money in Virginia.

‘That was wild,’ Luca said. ‘Your kid did good.’

Her kid.The phrase felt odd. ‘Didn’t he? I’m proud of him.’

‘You wanna go talk to him?’

Ella grabbed Luca’s arm and pulled him up as she stood. ‘No. I’m just a stranger to him. Let’s go.’

‘You sure? I don’t see why it would-‘

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