Page 3 of Girl, Reborn

Christ, she needed a distraction beforeshe drove herself insane.

Ella cracked open her laptop. Jabbed herpassword in like the keys had personally wronged her. If she couldn't fix thismess with Mia, she could at least pretend to be productive. She clicked over toher email, the new message icon cheerfully informing her she had a metric tonof unread crap. Joy.

Ella started skimming, deleting anythingthat smacked of pointless bureaucracy. Quarterly expense report? Delete.Sensitivity training? Delete. Mandatory feedback survey? Deletewith extreme prejudice.

But then a name caught her eye, nestledbetween two read messages like a viper in the grass.

Mia Ripley. And next to it, a little greendot. The universal sign for ‘online’.

Ella's heart stuttered, clicked intodouble-time. Online meant connected. Online meant at home.

The cursor hovered, trembling with theforce of her hesitation. Did she really want to kick this particular hornet'snest? Rip the stitches out of a wound that had barely begun to scab?

But the alternative – Mia, alone with aliar at best and a murderer at worst – was too much to swallow.

Screw it.

Ella slammed the laptop shut, decisionmade. She snatched her keys off the counter and was out of the door in a hotminute.

If Mia was in trouble, if Ella had put herthere with her big mouth and half-cocked assumptions, then apologies couldwait.

She had a partner to save first.

CHAPTER TWO

Ella clenched harder on the wheel as sheswung into Mia's driveway, the mansion rising up like a middle finger tosubtlety. Ostentatious columns and overcompensating square footage – the placestuck out like a pig at a bar mitzvah among the few modest lakeside homes thatshe’d passed along the way.

A quick scan revealed Mia’s vintageMustang with its cherry-red paint job, but no sign of Martin’s four-wheeldad-mobile.

Ella killed the engine, relief andapprehension playing tug-o-war in her chest. At least Mia was flying solo. Fornow.

She levered herself out of the car andmade her way to Mia’s front door. She hated how each step toward the door felt likewading through wet cement. Dread and déjà vu clinging like a cheap perfume. Howmany times had she knocked on this same slab of overpriced mahogany, coffees inone hand and case files in the other? Too many to count.

But there would be no wisecracking orcaffeine overloads this time. Just a tension you could bend steel around.

Ella hesitated, fist poised to knock onthe glass – the first of two barriers between her and her partner. The hell wasshe even gonna say? No idea, but she’d always had a thing for improvisation.

She rapped once, twice.

Silence. Then the crackle of the intercom.

‘Who is it?’

Ella rolled her eyes. ‘You know damn wellwho it is, Mia. I'm standing right in front of your fancy-ass camera.’

A beat. Two.

‘The hell do you want, Ella?’

Ouch. Full name, no inflection. This wasabout to be as painful as a root canal without anesthetic.

Ella leaned in, one hand braced on thedoorframe. ‘To talk. Clear the air. Make sure you're still breathing and notbobbing face-down in that lake behind me.’

‘I'm fine.’

'Right. So fine, you've been ghosting mefor days.' Ella pinched the bridge of her nose, suddenly weary down to themarrow. 'Just open up, please. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking.'

The line went dead and for aheart-stopping few seconds, Ella thought Mia had pulled the plug. But then thefront door swung open, revealing her erstwhile partner on the other side of theglass. Mia looked like ten miles of bad road: rough skin, dark circles, deeperfrown lines. But she was alive and whole, and for that, Ella could've wept.

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