Page 65 of Girl, Reborn

‘Who lives alone and locks a room?’

Ella jiggled the knob. ‘Someone withsomething to hide. Someone who might expect the police to come knocking.’

‘You’re the lock expert, Ell. Can you getin?’

Ella pulled out her keyring and dropped toher knees in front of the lock. She found the segment of guitar string – herfaithful amateur lockpick – and shoved it inside. She located the tumblers,turned slowly and heard the click.

It never failed.

‘Nothing’s ever locked,’ she said as shepulled the door open.

‘I ever tell you you’re my hero?’

‘Can it. We’ve barely got twenty minutesbefore the fireworks go off.’

Ella and Luca rose as one and crossed thethreshold into the unknown. A crackle of energy ripped over Ella’s skin. Theanimal awareness of a predator poised to strike.

The room was small, cramped. Anafterthought tacked onto the house like a rotten tooth. Sloping ceilings,bookshelves buckling under their own weight. A beaten metal desk hulked in thecorner, its surface a junk heap of papers and discarded electronics.

Ella began pacing, then settled on thebookshelf as her starting point. Titles glared out like accusatory fingers.

Fluid Dynamics.

The Art of the Pendulum Clock.

Engineering Marvels of the Ancient World.

Cheery stuff, real feel-good material. Shefiled through them, searching for some hidden inscription, a love note from asociopath. But they were as mute and unhelpful as all the other dead ends inthis godforsaken burg.

Luca, God bless the boy, had fallen onthat metal desk like a starving man on steak. Papers flew in a whirlwind ofreceipts and scribbled notes. He muttered to himself like a one-man pep rallyin the face of dwindling odds. Ella couldn't make out the words but his tonerang clear as a bell – frustrated determination, the hallmark of a hunter on acold trail.

She left him to his excavation and turnedher focus to the walls. Faded photos stared back in a rogues' gallery of Loss,American-style. Generations of Baxters in black and white, overalls and feedstore caps. Holding pitchforks, grins slipping in the sun. Just anotherhard-luck clan scratching a life from the dirt.

Until Seth and Jessie.

There they were, tucked in among theghosts. Two peas in a pod, a couple of carrion birds roosting on a wire. Thatsame hard, hungry look around the eyes as their forebears. Like they'd beenweaned on sour milk and broken promises.

Ella leaned in and snagged her eyes onJessie, tracing the lines of that fine-boned face. Just a slip of a thing.Hollow-cheeked, knobs for wrists. The kind of delicate that only comes from toolittle for too long. These murders – they were all for her. Her death was thecatalyst to these. Ella tried not to think of the whole butterfly effect thatset these homicides in motion, but she found her mind wandering to farawayplaces.

She snapped out of it before it couldwaste more than a few precious seconds. It was time to find a lead beforeanother corpse washed up by the morning.

Through the photos, the faces, thebackdrops, the people she had no names for other than Seth and Jessie.

But buried in the jumble, a single photoshone out like a rose in a white field.

Adrenaline shot through her veins. Herblood suddenly rose a few degrees. Sweat burned her forehead.

A photograph of Seth and Jessie, cheek tocheek, haloed by dying sun.

And behind them, a weathered clapboardsign flapped like a hanged man.

Starlit Meadow Farm.

The breath left Ella in a rush. Riley'squavering voice floated up, a half-remembered snippet of local color turnedrancid prophecy.

Jessie had taken over the family farm,poured her heart and soul into that place.

Of course. Jessie’s farm. Where else wouldSeth stage his magnum opus? On the very ground that his sister once owned – andnow he might have inherited. No way Baxter would've let that farm go. Not aftereverything, not with his baby sis moldering in the boneyard. He'd keep itclose, hoard it like a dragon with a belly full of gold.

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