Page 23 of Girl, Reformed

Ella exchanged a glance with Luca, herheart kicking up a notch. She could feel it in her bones, thrumming through herveins like an electric current. It was a feeling she'd chased her whole life,from the first time she'd peeked through her fingers at a slasher flick onlate-night cable. That morbid fascination, that sick compulsion to understandthe darkness that lurked in the human heart.

And now, as she followed Harland out ofthe office, Luca hot on her heels, she could feel that familiar itch buildingbeneath her skin.

CHAPTER TEN

The house was too damn quiet. Mia Ripleysat at the kitchen table, a half-empty bottle of Jack and a pile of policereports her only company. She hated this. Hated the silence. Usually, Martinwould be here, filling the space with his easy laughter and effortless charm.

But Martin was gone. Vanished into thinair like morning mist. And if Ella was right, if the crazy theory she'd spoutedlike gospel truth held any water, then Ripley had a lot of thinking to do.

No. Mia shook her head, jaw clenching hardenough to crack teeth. She couldn't think like that. Couldn't let herself godown that rabbit hole. Not without proof. Not without something concrete toback up Ella's wild accusations.

Even if a small, traitorous part of herwhispered that it all made a sick sort of sense. That maybe, just maybe, herpartner was onto something.

Mia snarled, slamming her fist on thetable hard enough to rattle the bottle.

Goddammit. This was a mess. A dumpsterfire of epic proportions, and she was standing in the middle of it with a canof gasoline in one hand and a Zippo in the other. Screw Ella and herholier-than-thou crap. She didn't know Martin like Mia did. Didn't know the manbeneath the badge, the heart beneath the armor.

But then again, did Mia? How much did shereally know about the man she'd shared her bed and her life with? The man who'dwormed his way past her defenses, made her feel things she'd thought long deadand buried?

A chime from her laptop snapped her out ofher spiraling thoughts. She lunged for the device, nearly upending the bottlein her haste. The email she'd been waiting for blinked on the screen, tauntingher with its promise of answers.

The police report for Trevor’s death.

He’d turned up dead four days ago. Foundon the roadside with a bullet hole in his skull. And only two days beforeTrevor woke up dead, he’d tried to extort Ripley out of fifty thousand dollars.Ripley didn’t know what he needed the cash for, but Trevor had never met acasino he couldn’t spend all night in.

Mia scrolled through the report, consumingevery cold, clinical detail. Male victim, age fifty-four. Single gunshot woundto the head. Time of death estimated between ten PM and midnight. No signs ofstruggle, no defensive wounds. Just a neat little hole right between the eyes.

Mia's stomach turned. She'd seen athousand reports just like this one, each detailing the grim specifics ofsomeone's final moments. But this one hit differently. This one was personal.

No fingerprints left behind, no strands ofhair, no clothes fibers. Everything was neat. Not the kind of sloppy,rage-fueled kill you’d expect from some criminal loan shark. This had all themakings of a professional execution, someone who had the stomach and the skillsto put a bullet in a man’s brain without blinking.

Her eyes scanned the dense blocks of text,picking out details like shrapnel from a blast. Ballistics matched a 9mm PMCBronze one-fifteen grain – the same bullet used to put down both Carter andLogan Nash. The same caliberfavored by most law enforcement, FBI included.

But that didn't mean anything. 9mms were adime a dozen, the Toyota Camry of handguns. Anyone over the age of twenty-onecould get their hands on one within an hour in this country.

Mia felt bile rise in the back of herthroat, hot and acrid. She swallowed it down, along with the scream that wantedto claw its way out of her chest.

She forced herself to keep reading, tosift through the medical jargon and autopsy reports for anything that mightpoint to her boyfriend's involvement.

And there, buried in a sea of technicalmumbo jumbo, she snagged on something.

A single line, almost lost amidst theendless litany of bodily fluids and exit wounds.

Traces of kerosene were discovered on therear of the victim's skull. Mild, grade D-3699-19.

Kerosene? Gasoline?

Why would there be kerosene on Trevor'sbody? Had the killer tried to torch him after the fact, only to be interrupted?Was it a forensic countermeasure that hadn’t gone as planned?

She turned to the crime scene photos. Nosigns of fire damage, no telltale scorch marks or soot stains. Just one deadscumbag with a hole in his head, dumped on the side of the road likeyesterday's trash. The gunshot was clean, precise. Not the kind of kill you'dneed to cover up with fire and gasoline.

So why the kerosene? What was she missing?

Unless, of course, the kerosene was nevermeant to be there.

Mia stared at the laptop screen until thewords blurred into a smear of black and white, her brain doing its bestimpersonation of a rat in a maze, scurrying down one twisting path afteranother, always hitting a dead end.

Kerosene. The word stuck in her craw likea chicken bone. It was there, the answer, hovering just out of reach like aphantom itch she couldn't scratch.

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