Page 3 of Girl, Bound

Ben. Her ex-boyfriend.He'd broken things off last week, shattered her heart into a million pieces.Ben had wanted it all: the white picket fence and 2.5 kids. Ella couldn't giveit to him, not when she had a casefile where her heart should be.

And after they’dconsigned their relationship to the grave, someone had jumped Ben in hisapartment, too. Ella had arrived just in time, caught a glimpse of theattacker. She had seen him flee: that same silhouette slipping away into thenight.

Same profile, sameoutline, same clothes as the man in Carter’s CCTV footage.

Ella had no doubt. Itwas him, her dark avenger. The same predator in pursuit of new prey.

Ella stepped back fromthe board, her heart pounding in her chest. She was drowning in questions, infears she dare not voice. Who was this figure, this specter of death? And whyhad they chosen her, of all people? What had she done to deserve such twisteddevotion?

Ella's mind raced asshe stared at the latest addition to her macabre mosaic. Trevor Garbett, dead.A man she knew not by kinship but by casualty. Ripley's ex-husband, now reducedto a homicide statistic.

Four victims, fourthreads in a tapestry of unsolved assaults.

But the pattern wasoff, the design incomplete.

Ella barely knewTrevor, and her connection to Randall Carter was tenuous at best. Two peopleclose to her, two people close to Ripley. Two degrees of separation from her,two from her partner. Her fingers curled into fists. This angel of death, thiskeeper of their darkest secrets, seemed to dance around them, always one stepahead, seemingly disturbingly familiar with the ups and downs of their personallives.

Initially, Ellathought this angel of death only had eyes for her, but with Trevor’s murder,Ella had to conclude that this faceless angel of death watched over them both.

This was more thancoincidence, more than random acts of violence. Someone was playing judge,jury, and executioner to anyone who dared disrupt the delicate balance of theirexistence. But why? Why guard two agents trained to fend off their own demons?Who could be so obsessed with her and Ripley, so consumed by their lives thatthey would resort to such brutality? What drove them? A desire to impress, toprotect?

Ella almost laughed atthe absurdity of it all. They were FBI agents, for Christ's sake. They'd faceddown the worst of the worst, stared into the abyss and come out the other side.They didn't need a guardian angel, let alone one with a taste for blood.

She stopped short infront of the board, fingers hovering over Trevor's face, his eyes staring backblankly from a photo. Trevor, who had tried to leverage Ripley's past for hisgain, now reduced to a mere footnote in their twisted narrative. Ella hadn'tknown him, yet his end was woven into her story.

Ella's eyes traced thered threads of her conspiracy board, searching for a connection, a commonthread. Whoever this person was, they had to be close, had to know the intimatedetails of their lives. Trevor's blackmail attempt on Ripley had been a secret.Even Ella hadn't known about Trevor until Ripley confided in her.

And Ben, her Ben, hisdeparture from her life a private scar until violence tore it open for all tosee.

The familiarityrequired to orchestrate such calculated retribution meant that it had to besomeone who moved in the shadows of their shared existence. Someone who hadslipped through their defenses unnoticed, masked by the guise of routine orrelationship. But how deep did this obsession run? This guardian seemed to havea mainline to Ella and Ripley’s every move, every thought. This angel of deathhad clipped their wings, grounding them in a reality where they were the prey,not the predators.

The game had changed,the rules rewritten by a player unseen. She was the centerpiece of a puzzlethat refused to be solved.

A thought tugged atthe edges of Ella's mind, a dark possibility she almost didn't want toentertain. What if this was the work of an old foe, a killer they'd put away,now seeking some twisted form of revenge? Maybe they wanted to frame her andRipley, to paint them as the monsters. Ella's eyes drifted to the list ofnames, the rogues' gallery of her career. The Mimicker, the Keymaster, theNightcrawler - each one a nightmare given flesh.

But they were alllocked away, safely contained behind bars and concrete. All except one, but hewas in California, a world away from the streets of D.C.

No, the angel of deathwas not calling from a payphone with a list of targets. It was someone else,someone closer. This time, it was personal—too personal—and that blurred thelines between logic and paranoia.

She flicked to thedigital clock on her kitchen unit—it blinked 2:17 AM in unforgiving red digits.She could almost hear the tick of seconds slipping through her fingers.

Ella slumped in herchair, frustration and exhaustion warring for dominance. She was close, so damnclose to connecting the dots, to seeing the bigger picture. But it was liketrying to grasp smoke, to catch a reflection in a funhouse mirror. Every time shethought she had it, the answer slipped through her fingers, leaving hergrasping at shadows. The outline was there, a shape hinted at but never fullyrevealed.

The Magic Eye picturesshe'd loved as a child flickered through her mind—those dizzying patterns thatconcealed a hidden image, only visible to those who could adjust their sightjust so. Ella needed that shift in perception, that tilt of the head or softeningof gaze to bring the killer into sharp relief.

Nearly 3AM, and anychance of sleep was now a fantasy. She might as well endure the night and maybecatch a few hours once exhaustion crippled her in about eight hours. Ella movedto the window, staring out at the city below. D.C. slept, oblivious to thedarkness that lurked in its heart. Somewhere out there, a killer walked free, aself-appointed guardian with blood on their hands.

And she was no closerto finding them, to unraveling the twisted skein of their motives.

A sudden movementcaught Ella's eye, a shadow darting across the street below. She leanedforward, squinting into the gloom. There, in the pool of a streetlight, stood afigure. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a dark hoodie and jeans. Ella's heartskipped a beat. It couldn't be, could it? The same outline, the same profileshe'd seen on the CCTV footage, outside Ben's apartment.

Ella blinked, and thefigure was gone, melting back into the shadows as if they'd never been there atall.

A trick of the light,a figment of her imagination. But the unease remained like a cold knot in herstomach.

She stepped back fromthe window, drawing the curtains with a shaking hand. Ella knew she should callRipley, should run everything by her one more time, tell her about the growingcertainty that they were being watched.

But what would shesay? That she was seeing ghosts, jumping at shadows? Ripley had enough on herplate, dealing with the fallout of Trevor's death. Ella couldn't add to thatburden, not without proof. Besides, Ripley was on countdown to retirement. Twomonths and counting. The last thing she needed was another wrench in the works.

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