The moment the airplane's doors hissed open, a gust of turmoil swept in, carrying with it the stench of fear and the cacophony of a world turned upside down. Tori stepped onto the tarmac, her boots touching down on the cracked surface, each line in the asphalt a testament to the earth's violent shudder. The airport near San Fran was a small one, its usual quiet bustle replaced by a maelstrom of rescue workers and flashing lights.
Her sharp gaze, the color of storm-tossed waves, took in everything—the harried movements of paramedics, the clusters of dazed survivors wrapped in blankets, their gazes hollow as they recounted their nightmares to anyone who would listen. Tori's white hair, an anomaly like fresh snow against a wrecked landscape, fell over her shoulders as she scanned the chaos, her instincts honing in on the unnatural—a pattern of movement that defied the rhythm of rescue.
Beside her, Javi emerged from the plane's dim interior into the harsh light of day. His dark brows were knit together, a crease of tension etching itself deeper between them as he surveyed the pandemonium that awaited them. They shared a look, brief and wordless, both sets of eyes clouded with the same concern. It was a glance that carried the weight of many cases, of shared history, and of an unspoken dedication to finding truth amidst disaster.
With a nod, they moved as one, stepping away from the relative safety of the aircraft and toward the heart of devastation. Each stride was purposeful, a silent pact between them to uncover what secrets lay buried beneath the rubble.
As they passed through the temporary barriers set up around the perimeter, Tori's mind flickered to Javi. He'd been quiet on the flight. Quieter than usual.
The officer waiting for them gestured from the front of his sedan. They slipped into the back seat. "Report?" Tori said quickly.
"We're still getting news. A few dead already," the officer replied. "At least five buildings collapsed entirely."
"Shit," Javi whispered. "Names of the dead?" his voice was tense.
"Still identifying," the officer replied. "I'm taking you to the Jennings location?"
Javi nodded, a bitter look in his eyes. The cop nodded urgently, navigating the safety and emergency vehicles blocking most the road and speeding towards the city.
Tori's eyes fixed on the passing scenery, endless rows of broken windows and twisted metal like a mangled painting of despair. The weight of the unfolding tragedy pressed down on her chest, a heaviness that threatened to suffocate hope itself. Beside her, Javi remained silent, his jaw set in a hard line, a storm brewing in his gaze.
Tori's stomach churned as the sedan cut through the city's winding roads, sirens wailing in the distance. Her mind raced with questions, each one a sharp point digging into her thoughts. Why did Javi seem so troubled? And most pressing of all, what truths lay waiting for them at the Jennings location?
They weren't called in for disaster response when only nature had taken its course... Something else had flagged this particular scene.
But what?
As they neared their destination, the streets grew narrower, the scent of smoke and dust thickening in the air. The car screeched to a stop at the edge of an alley, barricaded by fallen debris. Tori and Javi wasted no time, stepping out into the chaos that surrounded them.
"Just down that alley," the officer said. "I'll wait in the car in case we need rapid egress."
Tori nodded, pushing open the door and stepping out onto the sidewalk. This part of the city had been hit the worst. Two buildings were toppled into the road. She spotted the giant structures keeled over like the legs of some colossus cut out from under it.
Navigating a labyrinth of crumbled concrete and twisted steel, Tori led the way with a brisk pace that matched the urgency tugging at her instincts. Javi followed half a step behind, his gaze sweeping over the destruction in silent appraisal. They sidestepped fallen power lines and ducked beneath the skeletal remains of what once was an awning, now dangling precariously.
"Can you believe it?" Tori's voice, though low, sliced through the cacophony of sirens and distant cries for help.
Javi just grunted.
She studied him for a beat, noting the shadows under his eyes that spoke of more than just fatigue. "What's going on, Javi? You've been off since we landed."
"Off?" He raised an eyebrow, adopting an air of nonchalance. "Just tired, that's all. This case has us hitting the ground running, literally."
"Flight got to you, huh?" she pressed, concern etching lines into her forehead.
"Yeah," he exhaled, glancing away towards the broken cityscape. "That must be it."
Tori nodded, though unconvinced, and picked up the pace once more. She made a mental note to keep an eye on him as they moved forward. Whatever was eating at Javi, it could wait – right now, they had a job to do.
The alley greeted them with a hush, the clamor of the outside world muffled by the walls of debris that bordered it. Tori stepped over a twisted bike frame, her boots grinding against gravel and broken glass. The air was thick with dust, making each breath a gritty effort.
"Watch your step," she murmured to Javi, though her voice seemed superfluous in the heavy silence that enveloped the scene.
Javi nodded, his eyes scanning the ground ahead as if he could sense the disturbances in the wreckage. They moved with practiced caution, aware that any displaced stone or fragment of metal might be a whisper of evidence, an echo of the tragedy that had unfolded there.
Tori's gaze fell upon the rebar, sinister fingers of steel reaching out from the cracked concrete. It was here, amid this chaos, that Sarah's life had been cut short. The thought clenched her stomach, but she pushed the emotion aside.
"Over there," Javi's voice was low, pointing toward a section of wall that hadn't succumbed to the quake's fury.
A female officer stood there, glancing up at the buildings around her and shifting from foot to foot, wearing an expression of extreme discomfort.
She spotted the agents, frowned, holding out a hand and saying, "This area isn't safe."
"FBI!" Tori responded. "Disaster response team."
The cop hesitated, then stepped back. "No techs through yet. No one's processed the scene."
"So why are we here?" Tori asked.
"I... I found her. I think something is off." The officer shrugged. "See for yourself."
They edged closer, Tori's eyes now sweeping the area with meticulous care. She noted the way the shadows clung to the crevices, the uneven terrain that made every movement a calculated risk. Her mind, honed by years of hunting truths hidden in plain sight, began piecing together the scene before the disaster struck. She looked for anomalies in the rubble, patterns disrupted by human intervention rather than the blind force of nature.
Tori knelt beside the contorted figure of Sarah Jennings, her eyes methodically sweeping over the victim's body. Concrete dust and the sharp tang of ruptured gas lines filled the air, but it was the subtler scent of iron—blood—that drew her focus. Her hands, encased in latex gloves, hovered above the cold skin as if feeling for a story etched into the flesh.
"Look at her arms," Tori murmured, her voice barely louder than a whisper yet slicing through the cacophony of rescue work around them. "Defensive wounds." The pattern of bruising and abrasions spoke of a desperate struggle, one that nature's indiscriminate hand could never mimic.
Javi leaned closer, following the trajectory of her gaze. His own breath caught as he processed the implications. “And these weren't caused by falling debris.”
"Exactly." The assertion was grim, weighted with an understanding that Sarah had fought for her life amidst the chaos of the earth's upheaval.
Moving with deliberate care, Tori traced a path along Sarah's forearm with her eyes, pausing when she came upon a particular mark—the anomaly they were searching for. It was a clean incision, stark and purposeful amid the random lacerations left by shattered surroundings. She didn't touch it, didn't need to; the wound told its tale clearly enough.
"Stabbed," she whispered, the word hanging heavy in the air. It was the wound they knew to look for, the one that had raised red flags in the initial reports—the linchpin that transformed a natural disaster into the backdrop of something far more sinister.
Javi met her gaze, his own expression hardening. Neither needed to voice the realization that Sarah's killer had wielded their blade under the cover of pandemonium, gambling that the earthquake would mask their crime.
A cold shiver crept up Tori's spine as the gravity of their discovery settled in, its icy fingers a stark contrast to the warmth of the California sun beating down on the wreckage-strewn alley. She caught Javi's eye, and in that fleeting connection, volumes were exchanged without a single word—fear, resolve, and an unyielding commitment.
Tori pulled her camera from its case with practiced ease, the weight familiar in her hands. She adjusted the lens, focusing on the cruel gash that marred Sarah's arm. The shutter clicked, a sound almost devoured by the cacophony of rescue efforts echoing in the distance. Each photograph was a silent witness to the violence that had taken place amid chaos.
"Make sure you get the angle on those defensive wounds," she instructed, her voice steady despite the turmoil churning inside her. "We need to show the struggle."
Javi nodded, angling his own camera to capture the nuances of the scene. They moved around the space with the precision of a well-rehearsed dance, stepping over chunks of concrete and twisted metal. He paused occasionally, using tweezers to collect fibers and any fragments that seemed out of place, placing them into labeled evidence bags.
The alley told its own story—a narrative of desperation and survival, punctuated by the brutality of the act they were now uncovering. Tori's senses were heightened, her gaze sharp as she documented each piece of potential evidence. She worked systematically, covering every inch of ground, while her mind raced with questions about who would do this, and why.
"Look at this," Javi murmured, gesturing towards a splintered piece of plastic partially buried under rubble. Tori knelt beside him, carefully extricating the object. It was a broken piece of what looked like a phone case—a distinctive pattern still visible on the surface.
"Could be our victim's, or maybe the perp dropped it," Tori mused, bagging the find. Her storm-cloud hair fell forward, casting shadows across her intent face, yet her eyes remained fixed on the task at hand, a tempestuous blue-gray reflecting the inner turmoil fueled by memories of her little brother, Sammy.
They worked in tandem, documenting, collecting, preserving—each action a step closer to understanding the final moments of Sarah Jennings' life. In the stillness that followed each click of the shutter, Tori felt a rising sense of anger. Another life stolen...
Someone would have to pay.
The ground trembled beneath their feet, a low rumble that grew into a roar as another aftershock shuddered through the fractured streets of San Fran. Tori steadied herself against a slab of concrete, her breath quickening not from fear but from an acute awareness of time slipping through their fingers like so much dust and debris.
"Keep steady," Javi called out, his voice a stable force amid the chaos. He reached out to brace a precariously tilted beam that groaned under its own weight, ensuring it didn't collapse onto the evidence they had yet to collect.
Tori nodded, her focus unyielding as she scanned the ground for anything overlooked. She moved with purpose, each step measured to avoid disturbing the crime scene further. The aftershocks were relentless, mirroring the turbulence inside her—a storm bred from loss and the relentless drive to bring justice to those taken too soon.
She rehearsed what she knew about earthquake safety. As a disaster response specialist, such scenes had been meticulously rehearsed for years before she'd ever set foot in the field:
the Three-Second Drop, the Triangle of Life fallacy. But nothing had prepared her for the realization that amidst the chaos of a natural disaster, there lurked the shadow of a calculated killer—a predator who had capitalized on tragedy to conceal their heinous act.
As the tremors subsided into a palpable tension that hung heavy in the air, Tori straightened, a resolve hardening in her stormy gaze. She knew they were racing against time, against the shifting rubble that threatened to erase the final clues left behind by Sarah's struggle.
"Let's wrap this up," Tori stated firmly, her voice cutting through the lingering echoes of destruction. "We need to get this evidence back for analysis."
Javi nodded in silent agreement, his eyes mirroring Tori's unwavering determination. They gathered their equipment with practiced efficiency, each movement purposeful as they prepared to leave the scene that held so much untold sorrow and secrets.
Every shiver of the earth was a grim reminder: the killer was still out there, possibly watching, perhaps planning the next move. And here, amidst the ruins, lay their best chance at unraveling the mystery entwined with Sarah Jennings' demise.
"Done here," Javi said finally, his hand resting on the last photograph they'd taken. His eyes met hers, dark pools reflecting the gravity of their task.
Tori gave the alley one final sweep, her gaze meticulous, missing nothing. She straightened up, pulling back her white hair, streaked with grime, into a makeshift ponytail.
"Let's get these back to the lab," she said, her voice steady despite the lingering vibrations underfoot.
Javi nodded, his face set in a mask of determination, matching the resolve etched into Tori's features. They shared a silent communication, an understanding that went deeper than words—their commitment to unearth the truth was unwavering.
With one last view of the ravaged alleyway, Tori and Javi turned away. The female officer followed behind them as all three hastened towards the waiting sedan.