Merit Reid, FBI.

She takes no shit.

She doesn’t back down.

She… is subordinate to a vicious fluffball named Spice lurking in the dark corners of her apartment.

Twenty-seven is not the age at which anyone wants to start their life over from scratch.

Especially not someone who had her heart set on being a neurologist ever since she was old enough to dress herself and started accessorizing with a stethoscope. The human brain was an infinitely fascinating machine, with depths unknowable, far beyond its three literal pounds of mass.

Science nerd and the definition of a Type A personality, Merit sailed through med school, vacuuming up everything she could learn about the human condition as well as the body.

It wasn’t until her first year of clinical rotations that her own mind shattered.

She was working in the ER, the most difficult and heart-wrenching place she’d ever spent time in. Traumatized people came in after enduring unspeakable things on every single shift.

And then one day the EMT crew brought in a beaten and unresponsive woman. A woman with long blonde hair and a black knit sweater and a little silver necklace made of two interlocking rings.

Honey-colored citrine on one, deep purple amethyst on the other.

Merit knew that because she wore an identical necklace. Her hand went instinctively to it as her throat closed around her sister’s name. “Honor.”

Her injuries were too extensive. They couldn’t save her, and as soon as the other doctors figured out their relation, they wouldn’t even let Merit try.

She walked out of that hospital five hours later feeling like her entire life had just been shoved through a meat grinder, and she never looked back.

She left school. Lost her university apartment. Gained a cat who despised her, and everyone else who wasn’t Honor. Stopped talking to her dad, who never wanted to say anything other than, “You should go back to medical school.”

He didn’t want to talk about Honor. He couldn’t fathom why the idea of ever putting on scrubs again filled Merit with nauseous dread.

Especially when Honor’s killer was still out there. Unknown. Unpunished.

Why?

That question haunted her and it felt like she was the only one still asking.

But, as her dad liked to remind her, life goes on.

As her new roommate – whose patience for the cat affectionately nicknamed Bloodletter was growing short – reminded her, bills must be paid.

And Honor wouldn’t want Merit to keep wallowing in her own ice cream-infused grief.

So she got a job in the Cuyahoga Valley National Parks. She thought it would be cathartic out in nature, far from people and the evil things they did to each other.

For a while she was right, until one day while she was walking the trails, death found her again.

This time, a coworker.

Body ritualistically arranged.

Laid out as if specially for her to find.

The world wasn’t going to let Merit Reid withdraw from it after her sister’s death. It seemed there was a message she still needed to hear. And she couldn’t trust that the incompetent cops who’d let her sister’s killer get away would do any better for this woman.

So she got mad. Got curious. Got a badge.

And became FBI Special Agent Reid.