CHAPTER FOUR

Twenty minutes later, Ella and Luca barrelled into HQ in tandem. Ella caught a few curious glances coming their way as they moved through the halls, although she guessed most of them were eyeing up the new face at her side. The place was a buzzing, seething mass of suits and pencil skirts, all scurrying to their designated corners. Another day, another dollar in the Fed factory.

Usually, Ripley would be leading the charge, but today it was just Ella and the new kid. Or not so new anymore. Somewhere between the shared coffee and the crime scene banter, Luca had wormed his way past her defenses. Into her orbit, her space. The Mia-shaped hole in her life.

Ella shook it off. No time for a pity party, not when there was work to be done.

‘Think he"s gonna ream us for that stunt with the Laughingstock guy?' Luca asked.

Ella jabbed a finger at the elevator call button. ‘The breaking and entering? Maybe.'

‘Got the job done, though.' The elevator dinged, doors gliding open like silver jaws. They stepped inside and aimed for the top floor.

‘It did. And I"m sure Edis"ll thank you for keeping him neck deep in paperwork and ass coverage for the next month.'

Luca leaned against the mirrored wall. "If you want an omelet, you gotta break a few eggs."

Ella eyed him from top to bottom. Always with the lip, this one. The boyish charm, the easy wit. Lethal combo for a girl with a weakness for pretty things with sharp edges. ‘Listen to you, Hawkins. You crack one case and think you're Sherlock.'

He shot up straight and smoothed a crease on his jacket. ‘Kidding. I'm just praying that Edis likes me enough to let that little oversight slide.'

Ella rolled her eyes so hard they threatened to pop out of her skull. The sad part was, he wasn"t wrong. Luca Hawkins could charm the habit of a nun, and their resident bulldog of a boss was no exception. From what Ella had seen so far, the man had a real soft spot for his blue-eyed protégé. Used to be Ella in that position, but she guessed even people had their shelf lives. She couldn"t deny that it stung a little.

The elevator shuddered to a halt, doors sliding open to reveal the top floor in all its wood-paneled glory. Edis" lair, the inner sanctum. Where cases were made and broken, where careers lived and died on the whims of a tiny tin god with a receding hairline and a chip on his shoulder.

Ella squared her shoulders, lifted her chin. Beside her, Luca straightened up, game face sliding into place. The cocky rookie subsumed by the keen-eyed professional, a lawman to his core. It still surprised her sometimes, how easily he flipped that switch. The competence, the drive, hidden behind a mask of easy smiles and aw-shucks charm.

She had a feeling she"d barely scratched the surface of this kid – a thought both exciting and terrifying.

No more time to dwell. Edis" office loomed at the end of the hall. Ella marched forward, reached the door, and didn't bother knocking. Edis was expecting them, and hesitation was a trigger for his contempt.

‘Sir,' Ella said. Luca echoed the greeting behind her.

Edis glanced up from the open case file on his desk. His watery eyes narrowed behind rimless glasses. He looked every inch the bureaucratic warlord, from his power tie to his overstuffed office chair. The proverbial bull in a china cabinet, and this was his personal shop.

‘Agents,' he gruffed, waving them towards the chairs in front of his desk. A summons, an order couched as an invitation.

Ella sank into one, Luca into the other. Edis wasted no time, sliding two casefiles across his desk. Manila, thick enough to choke a horse.

‘We got a situation. A bad one.'

Ella accepted the folder and began leafing through. She skimmed the overview on the front page.

Name: Ricky Toledo.

Gender: Male.

Age: 45

Location: Liberty Grove, Virginia.

Liberty Grove, Ella thought. Barely twenty miles from where she grew up in Abingdon.

‘Ricky Toledo,' Edis continued. ‘A local councilman in Liberty Grove – a place I'm sure you're familiar with, Miss Dark.'

‘I am, sir.' Liberty Grove was a town in purgatory. A country town to the bone, but some people wanted to drag it into the 21st century and give it a suburban makeover. Liberty Grove was a man who couldn't decide if he wanted to retire in peace or dye his hair and go full mid-life crisis. And that made for some big disagreements amongst the Liberty Grove faithfuls.

‘Good. And not only was Ricky a senate in the making, but he was a buddy of mine.' Edis retained a straight face, even delivering the details of his so-called friend's demise. What a lifetime in law enforcement did to a man.

‘I'm sorry to hear that, sir,' Luca said.

Edis waved off the sympathy. ‘We've always had a great relationship with the councilors in Virginia, and Ricky was my number one.'

Ella looked up, fixing Edis with a hard stare. ‘Not to be blunt, sir, but this seems like local PD"s problem. What"s our angle?'

‘Ricky wasn"t just some PTA blowhard,' Edis rumbled. ‘Boy had his eye on a Senate seat and probably the White House someday. Local PD alerted me this morning, and because there might be a political angle here, I promised them I'd send my best.'

Ella went back to the case file and flipped to the 8x10 glossy photos paperclipped to the inside cover. There he was. Ricky Toledo. Sprawled face-down in a muddy field. Limbs akimbo, head lolling at an unnatural angle. She held them closer, looking for abrasions, bruises, bullet holes – anything that might suggest how this man died.

Nothing jumped out at her, apart from the fact that Ricky Toledo was soaked from head to toe.

Luca beat her to it. ‘What"s with the water damage?'

‘PD don't know. Ricky was discovered in a field, nowhere near any bodies of water.'

‘Rain water?' Luca asked.

"It"s August in Virginia, too," Edis said. He aimed for stern but it came off comical. Ella benched the few ideas that cropped up. She wanted to hear Luca"s thoughts before she penciled in any likelihoods of how this dead man ended up soaking wet.

‘This case is political dynamite, and I need my A-team on it. You two up for the challenge?'

And just like that, the focus shifted. The bait dangled, and damned if they weren"t hooked like a couple of prize bass.

‘I want you two on the next flight. Hit the ground running, start pulling threads. Rick's got enemies, and they'll be all too happy to shut this investigation down if it doesn"t fit their narrative.'

‘The feds coming to the rescue, is that the play?' Luca asked.

‘The play is justice, Agent Hawkins. I want the son of a bitch who did this squirming on a hook for all to see. I owe Rick that much.'

Ella closed the file with a snap. Top brass playing hot potato with a headline-grabbing homicide, a tale as old as time. But orders were orders, and the faster they cracked this case, the sooner she could get back to her regularly scheduled dumpster fire of a life.

She pushed to her feet, Luca rising with her like they were attached by strings. ‘We"ll jump on it, sir. Anything else we should know before we hit the road?'

Edis pinned them both with a beady glare, his mouth puckering like he"d bitten into a lemon. ‘Yes. You two have both seen the memo about the updates to your cells?'

Ella froze, fighting the urge to side-eye Luca. She glanced at her email daily but usually deleted a lot of it, especially the ones with legal-sounding subject titles.

But Luca just nodded, smooth as ever. ‘Of course, sir.'

‘Miss Dark?' Edis asked.

‘Uh.' She patted her cell phone in her pocket as though it might jolt the answer into her brain. ‘I have not.'

Edis harrumphed. "Well, the new update to your cells comes with GPS tracking. Your phones will now broadcast your location at all times to select personnel."

Ella"s hackles rose, but she tamped down the knee-jerk indignation. ‘GPS tracking? Why?'

"It"s nothing to concern yourselves with. It"s a legal measure to help us confirm your movements, so lawyers and defense attorneys can"t dismiss our evidence."

It was no secret that the higher-ups had a hard-on for micromanaging their grunts, so she guessed GPS tracking was just the latest leash they"d cooked up to keep their dogs in line. As if tapping their phones and reading their emails wasn"t bad enough, now they wanted to track their every move like wayward toddlers in a mall.

But she bit her tongue. It was probably for the best, all things considered.

She gave Edis a tight nod, already mentally cataloging which burners to swap into rotation should she need to. ‘Got it loud and clear, sir.'

Edis waved them away, his attention already back on the files scattered across his desk like confetti at a murder scene. "I want updates on the hour and this son of a bitch in bracelets by the weekend. Toledo"s already getting the martyr treatment in the press, and I don"t need this snowballing into a national incident on my watch."

She and Luca made their escape while the making was good and headed back the hallway. Ella waited until they were safely ensconced in the elevator, the doors whooshing shut behind them, before rounding on Luca with fire in her eyes.

‘GPS tracking? What, like we"re on parole or something?'

Luca chopped her on the shoulder. ‘It's a good idea. You know how many field agents go missing every year?'

‘How many?'

‘More than one, which is enough to justify GPS tracking.'

‘What if I stop off to get pizza? The FBI"s gonna know about it before the chef does.'

‘I think you sometimes forget you're a public servant. But anyway, are you okay with this? Heading down to your old stomping grounds, chasing ghosts and politicos?'

Ella looked away, suddenly fascinated by the scuff marks on her boots. It was an innocent question, but it hit a little too close to home. Liberty Grove was less than an hour from where she"d grown up, in the house where she found her dad's body as a five-year-old girl. A place she could count the times she'd returned on one hand.

‘I"ll be fine,' she said, feigning bravado. ‘It"s just another scumbag to put in the ground.'

Luca studied her for a long moment, those blue eyes seeing right through her bullcrap. But he let it slide, bumping her shoulder with his own instead. ‘Damn straight. And you"ve got me riding shotgun this time. What could possibly go wrong?'