Essential listening: Winter Windows, by Sea Wolf
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SSA Grace Pearce walked briskly across the frozen park, pleased at the satisfying little crunching noises that her boots were making on the ice-clad grass. She had been pleased, too, to find wild boar sausages at the little market outside Stafford Virginia, along with a plentiful supply of gingerbread, but both sensations had faded pretty quickly.
It was annoying, because ordinarily, this would be her favourite time of the year to browse the market – but this time she had gone round quickly, exchanging only a few words with each stallholder, and headed back as soon as she feasibly could, without indulging in the tempting mugs of steaming glühwein.
She scowled across the park towards the skeletal, frost covered trees.
It pained her to admit it, but the reason she had hurried away, far earlier than she ordinarily would, was because she was avoiding someone. It annoyed the hell out of her, acting like a scorned teenager, but the truth was, there were some things that she didn't feel like facing on her day off. She had enough of it at work.
Still, her house felt strangely empty when she got in, as though it had been expecting someone else to wander in after her, so as soon as she'd put everything away she pulled on thick, rough clothes and went out into the garden, which only felt cold.
One of the elderly fruit trees at the foot of the garden had succumbed over the summer, so she cut it down, burning the parts of the wood that still showed signs of taint and stacking up the parts that didn't for use around the garden. It wasn't the kind of disease that would easily spread, and the frosts would finish off the last of it.
It was restful, building and tending a garden fire. As a rule, fire made Grace uncomfortable, but this kind, held tightly under her control with no form of spreading, was one of the few kinds she could cope with. The small wood-fired stove she was considering installing in the living room was the other.
The sun had long set by the time the fire was dying. Grace was watching the quiet beauty of the breeze stirring the colours of the embers, resting her chin on the rake she'd been using to break down the fire, when she heard the creak of her garden gate.
Turning, she frowned when she caught the unmistakeable silhouette of Penelope Garcia, the Behavioural Analysis Unit's technical goddess. She had half been expecting someone else, which annoyed her even more. She pushed it away, though, and called out a greeting to her friend.
"Hey," Garcia called back, carefully picking her way through the dark garden. "You lose your cell phone?"
Instinctively, she reached for it, but her pockets were empty. Bollocks.
"I must have left it inside," she said. "Mind how you go there, there's a step down."
Garcia paused. "Imma just wait here, then," she said, obviously thinking of her usual fabulous footwear.
"We got a case?" Grace asked.
Generally speaking, if someone ignored their phone, they were left to their own devices unless there was a call – though Garcia would frequently bend that unspoken rule if she was worried about you.
"Yeah…"
Grace narrowed her eyes at her friend's tone. "Bad one?"
"The unsub's targeting cops."