To Die For → Derek Morgan

One

Josephine

The rain fell in a steady drizzle, coating the streets of D.C. with that cold, slick sheen I'd come to associate with new beginnings and half-buried regrets. I stood at the entrance of the FBI's Forensic Pathology Unit, staring down at the blurred reflection of a woman I hardly recognized anymore. Josephine Blue. Doctor. Soldier. Coroner. The titles felt like ill-fitting armor, cobbled together from past lives that didn't quite mesh.

I shifted the weight of my bag, feeling the familiar press of leather against my shoulder, a ghost of the rifle I'd carried through four years of deserts, firefights, and blood-soaked triages. But this wasn't a war zone. This was my new reality, and it felt just as daunting.
The air was thick with the smell of rain, antiseptic, and something else—formaldehyde, maybe. The scent tugged at memories I thought I'd left behind, of cold morgues and sterile steel, of slicing through flesh to uncover the secrets hidden within. Secrets I would now be uncovering for the FBI.

I paused at the door, taking a moment to gather myself. Four years. Four long years of sandstorms, gunfire, and trying to keep my unit breathing in a place where death was as common as the sun rising. And now, I was here—Josephine Blue, former Army medic, now coroner for the FBI. I pushed through the door, and the cold, sterile air hit me like a physical force, yanking me out of my reverie and planting me squarely in the present. The lobby was empty, except for a security guard who barely glanced up as I approached. The harsh buzz of fluorescent lights droned overhead, casting a stark, almost clinical light on everything.

"First day?" the guard asked, his voice rough but not unfriendly. "Yeah," I replied, offering a tight smile. "Josephine Blue."

He nodded, handing me a visitor's badge. "Welcome to the FBI."

I clipped the badge to my coat and took a deep breath, feeling the significance of this moment weigh down on me. For years, I'd fought to keep the living alive. Now, I was here to speak for the dead.

The elevator ride to the basement was brief, but with each descending floor, I felt like I was peeling away layers of who I used to be, exposing something raw and unfamiliar underneath. When the doors finally slid open, they revealed a stark hallway lined with steel doors and frosted windows. My boots clicked against the cold, tiled floor as I stepped out, the sound echoing in the quiet.

Ahead of me, a door marked "Forensic Pathology" stood ajar, a thin line of light seeping out into the dim corridor. I pushed it open and walked inside, immediately hit by the scent of chemicals and the unmistakable undertone of death. A man in a white lab coat looked up from a table, his gloved hands poised over the chest of a body partially covered by a white sheet.

"Dr. Blue?" he asked, his tone professional, his expression unreadable.
"Just Josephine," I corrected, my voice steady despite the flood of memories threatening to pull me under. "But yeah, that's me."

His gloveless hand stretched out over the white sheet, and I took it, firm but quick. "I'm Agent Mark Caldwell, head of the unit." I gave him a small smile. Agent Caldwell looked to be in his mid-forties, with a calm, seasoned gaze—the kind of look that only comes after seeing too much death.

"We have three bodies today," he said, gesturing to the white sheets, their outlines growing smaller the further away they lay. "A father, likely in his thirties, and his two sons, no older than ten." I frowned at the grim setup. A father, a son, and a brother. If this job weren't so serious, there'd almost be something morbidly ironic in the resemblance to a riddle. "We identified the father as Phillip Dane—his driver's license was tucked in his breast pocket along with a half-empty flask of whiskey."

As Caldwell debriefed, I slipped on a pair of blue gloves, stepping closer to the first body. "Was he intoxicated?" I asked. "Tox screens say no," Caldwell replied. "We were waiting for your eyes on the scene before running anything else."