you're still the one
part 2: stranger
“Namaste. Have a good day, guys. I’ll see you on Monday!”
I lowered my hands from my heart center and gave a final, practiced smile to the last students leaving the studio. I loved Wednesdays, and today felt especially good. Everything had gone right since I woke up. My cold brew tasted great, my favorite linen top and loose pants felt just right, and I felt light, grounded, and completely at peace.
Too bad it all shattered the moment I knelt down to gather the blocks.
I bent down to stack the foam wedges against the wall. The sweet scent of lavender and sandalwood incense still hung in the air. Suddenly, a low, firm voice cut through the soft music, sounding so professional that my stomach twisted.
“Aaron Hotchner, FBI. We’d like to ask you some questions.”
My fingers froze against the foam block. That voice didn’t belong in a yoga studio. It belonged to the life I had left behind.Â
As I uncoiled my spine and turned to face the doorway, a sudden, freezing chill swept over me. The peaceful illusion of my Wednesday vanished. I felt her cold presence before I even fully saw her. And then, my eyes locked onto them: those long, shadowy lashes framing that sharp, stabbing gaze.
She was standing just half a step behind a stone-faced man in a tailored charcoal suit. He looked like the epitome of a bureaucratic machine, but my eyes couldn’t stay on him if they tried. I was completely locked onto her. She looked older, obviously—the faint lines around her eyes spoke of years spent in the dark rooms of the Behavioral Analysis Unit—but she hadn’t changed. Not really. She still held herself with that same effortless, armored confidence. Her hair was the exact same heavy shade of coal; her skin was just as soft and pale as the night she had stood in a dark bedroom, frantically pulling a shirt over her head to erase the trace of my touch. Her eyes still possessed those same hypnotizing shapes, though today, they looked more tired. Worn down.
It felt as though the oxygen had been sucked completely out of the room. Time ground to a violent halt. I stood there like an idiot, a half-picked-up yoga mat clutched against my ribs like a shield, staring at the girl who had engraved herself onto my soul only to tell me I poisoned everything I touched.
I swallowed hard, forcing my throat to clear, desperate to claw back even a shred of my composure. “Uh, yes, of course,” I stammered, my voice sounding thin. “How can I help you?”
The man—Hotchner—didn’t blink. He reached into his breast pocket, smoothly pulling out a printed sheet of paper. “Do you know this woman?”
He held it out, waiting for me to cross the distance. His tone wasn’t strictly aggressive, but it had a terrifying certainty to it. It was the tone of a profiler who already knew the answer.
I set the mat down on a nearby bench, my hands trembling slightly, and took the paper. The face looking back at me made my breath hitch. “She’s my friend. Maya. She covers some of the evening Vinyasa classes here. We work together.”
“She was murdered in her home last night.”The words didn’t come from the man. They came from Emily.
Her voice sounded even colder than I had imagined it would after all these years. Murdered. The word felt heavy, like a physical blow to my solar plexus. But before the grief could even process, a spike of hot, defensive anger flared up in my throat. Was she fucking serious? After the way she had left me—after the agonizing click of that bedroom door closing between us when we were nineteen—the very first thing she says to me now is that one of my friends is dead? She didn’t say hello. She didn’t even introduce herself. My fingers clenched, wrinkling the edges of the printed photo.
“Miss, I understand this is shocking news,” Hotchner’s voice cut through the static in my brain, dragging me back from the edge of a spiral. He took a subtle step forward, his eyes tracking the way my knuckles had gone white. “But we need you to help us by answering some questions.”
I forced my lungs to expand, trying to stop my heart from hammering against my ribs. “Last time I saw her was Sunday afternoon,” I said, my voice steadier now, adopting the flat, factual tone I had learned a long time ago. “We usually see each other here on Mondays, but I canceled my afternoon sessions. She looked normal. We went out for coffee across the street, she went home, and I talked to her on the phone that night around nine.”
Hotchner raised a single, expressive eyebrow. He tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over my defensive posture, my bare feet, the serene room around us.
“I haven’t asked you any of those questions yet,” he noted calmly.
A sarcastic, bitter laugh almost bubbled up, but I caught it. I raised an eyebrow right back at him, leaning my hip against the reception desk.
“And weren’t you going to? Let’s save some time, Agent. You were going to ask when I last saw her, how she acted, and if she mentioned anyone new.”
“I don’t mean to come off as rude,” Hotchner said, his voice entirely devoid of actual apology, “but you don’t exactly seem surprised or sad about the loss of your friend.”
“Of course I’m sad,” I snapped, the zen completely evaporating, leaving behind the sharp, defensive girl I had always been. “But bursting into tears right now isn’t going to bring her back, and it isn’t going to give you answers.”
“Where were you yesterday, Michelle?”
The sound of my name escaping her lips felt like a physical touch. It was softer than Hotchner’s clinical tone, almost as if it had slipped past her defenses before she could catch it. For a fraction of a second, the stoic federal agent vanished. I caught a sudden tightness in the corners of her mouth—a flicker of the fierce, hidden panic she used to get right before she bolted. Her fingers, which had been resting near the heavy leather of her belt holster, twitched slightly, shifting down to tightly grip the edges of the case files in her hand as if using the paper as a shield.
“At home,” I said, turning my eyes fully to hers. I didn't soften my gaze. If she wanted to play the cold professional, I could play it harder. My voice came out sharp, clipped.
“All day?” Hotchner asked, stepping back into the line of sight to break the heavy, suffocating eye contact between us. “You didn’t come into work at all?”
“No,” I replied quietly, my voice dropping to a flat, even murmur. “I had a situation to take care of at home. I needed some time off.”
I kept my chin up, refusing to let my posture betray the sudden, heavy wave of shame that threatened to pull me under. My words were technically true, even if the "situation" was just the familiar, leaden weight that had settled behind my eyes on Monday night, and the "time off" was spent pulling a heavy duvet over my head to block out the sun until Wednesday morning. It was a minor slip, a brief three-day descent into the old gray fog I thought I had outrun. A minor depressive episode, my therapist would call it.
But to Hotch, it just sounded like a calculated, clinical deflection.
I looked back at Emily. Her eyes narrowed just a fraction, a muscle jumping in her pale jaw. She knew. Unlike her partner, she didn't need to profile the words to understand the heavy silence between them. She recognized the flat, defensive pitch of my voice. She knew exactly what it meant when I claimed to be "handling things" alone. She had seen me like that at nineteen, and even beneath my stylish Wednesday outfit and the calm ambiance of the studio, she could read the lingering exhaustion in my face.
“The person we’re looking for is believed to have killed at least three other people over the course of the last eight days,” Hotchner explained, his voice returning to that detached, profiling rhythm, though his gaze remained fixed on me a beat longer, measuring the quiet gravity of my answer. “We believe the suspect is a female, likely someone with military or specialized tactical reinforcement training, who has suffered a severe emotional or physical trauma that has pushed her into a psychological break.”
I blinked, the weight of his words finally registering. Tactical training. A female killer.
“Why are you telling me your profile?” I asked, genuine confusion replacing my anger.
“Because of these,” Emily said. She stepped forward, her boots clicking sharply against the hardwood floor. She held out three more case photos.
I took them, my breath catching in my throat as I looked at the glossy images. The air completely left my lungs. I knew every single one of them. Chloe, the barista who always knew my exact coffee order. Tasha, a girl I had spent two weeks bonding with at a silent yoga retreat in Vermont last summer. And Sarah, the girl who did my nails every other Friday.
The room seemed to tilt. The incense suddenly smelled sickeningly sweet, suffocating.
“I see.” I looked up from the photos, my voice dropping to a whisper. It wasn’t a question anymore. “You think it’s me. A woman with federal training. Someone connected to all of them. Why am I not in handcuffs right now?”
“Because while there is a terrifying overlap in the victimology, you don’t fit the profile, and your timeline doesn’t match,” Hotchner said smoothly. “The unsub has displayed a level of disorganized, chaotic rage during the crimes that is almost impossible to mask in day-to-day life. You show no signs of that escalation. Furthermore, our technical analyst confirmed your cell phone’s location data didn’t move from your apartment coordinates from Sunday night until this morning. And digging into your history, it’s not unusual for you to isolate and go days without leaving your house.”
“If you already know I’m innocent, then why the hell are you here?” Desperation finally broke through my armor. I gripped the edge of the desk. If they knew I didn’t do it, why was she still standing there, dissecting me with those heavy, dark eyes? I had been having a perfect day. I just wanted to eat my breakfast in peace.
“Because we believe you know who it is,” Emily said, her voice dropping an octave.
“There aren’t a lot of yoga instructors who also happen to be ex-FBI agents in this district,” Hotchner added, his words cutting deep. “Let alone ones whose social circles are being systematically executed. Someone is targeting people you know, Michelle.”
Well, fuck me. This was officially the worst Wednesday of my life.
I ignored Hotchner entirely, looking directly at Emily for the first time since they had walked through the door. I let all the unresolved hurt, the years of abandonment, and the sheer terror of the situation bleed into my eyes.
“Did you tell him?” I asked, my voice dangerously quiet. “Or did he have to dig through the bureau archives to find out I used to wear the same jacket as you?”
Emily didn’t flinch, but a muscle jumped in her jaw. “Our analyst flagged the connection automatically,” she said, her voice completely flat, completely professional. “And then I mentioned to Agent Hotchner that we were in the academy at the same time.”
We were in the academy at the same time.
The words twisted like a knife in my chest. That was how she summarized us? Not the nights spent tangled in her sheets. Not the brutal, venomous words she hurled at me before walking out of my life. Not the fact that she knew every single one of my flaws, my miseries, and my secrets. To her boss, I was just a former classmate. I was just another badge who couldn’t hack the bureau. She was still trying to convince herself that I didn’t matter, still hiding behind her armor because she was terrified of what we used to be.
“Yeah,” I muttered, looking away as a bitter, hollow sensation bled through my chest. “Just trained together.”