Page 71 of Girl, Reborn

She looked past the hammer, past Baxter.Up to the vault of stars twinkling cold and distant. Fixed her eyes on thebrightest one and made a wish. Not for rescue or mercy or even a quick end.Just an acknowledgment, maybe. A final tip of the hat from the universe beforethe curtain fell.

The hammer fell like a comet, trailingsilver. Ella tensed for impact, for the bright burst of pain and then nothing.

But it never landed.

BANG.

Instead, the night split with athunderclap. The air sizzled and the stink of cordite singed her nose.

The world exploded. Sound and fury, fireand blood. Seth jerked like a marionette with its strings cut. Shock dawned onhis face, stark incomprehension blossoming like a terrible flower.

He looked down. Ella looked down.

A hole, neat as a button, punched throughhis chest. Right over the heart, like a tag on a specimen jar.

Seth made a noise that in some life mighthave been human. The hammer collapsed from his hands as they shot out to cradlethe steady flow of blood seeping from his torso.

His eyes rolled to whites. He toppledsideways and crashed to earth in a tangle of nerveless limbs and fallen hair,like a fallen scarecrow in a barren field.

Ella blinked. Blinked again. Her muzzybrain struggled to process, to make sense of the sudden shift from imminentdeath to – what? Resurrection? Miracle? Her gun was jammed. Luca was back inthe silo, still tending to their half-drowned victim. There was no one else outhere, no one around for at least a mile in every direction in this godforsakenslice of flyover country.

Maybe she'd willed it, channeled someuntapped reserve of psychic fuckery and popped his melon like a ketchup packet.Was she was concussed, hallucinating some divine intervention in the form ofmiraculous ribcage rearrangement?

Or maybe this was it. The end of the line.She was dead, and this was some kind of purgatory pitstop on the way to herfinal destination. A little bureaucratic snafu before the big judgment callupstairs.

Ella rolled sideways, levered herselfpainfully up on one elbow. And there, standing tall among the rustling corn,grim as a hangman but twice as welcome. Tall, rangy. A halo of fire writhingaround its head. Avenging angel? Valkyrie? Grim Reaper in brown boots?

No. That tread, firm and sure over thespongy ground. Only one person walked with that particular swagger, like theyowned every inch of earth they graced.

‘Mia?’

The old dog lowered her smoking gun withone eyebrow arched in that ‘bitch, please’ signature pose.

She strolled closer, as calm as a Sundaydrive, and kicked Seth's sprawled legs out of the way. Without a word, sherolled the man over, snapped on a pair of cuffs and put a foot on his back.Judging by Ella’s limited vision, the man was still breathing. For how long,she didn’t know.

Ella was alive too. Broken to bits andoozing from a dozen spots, but still breathing. Still on the right side of thedirt, despite Baxter's best efforts. And all because Ripley had shown up in thenick of time to save her ass.

But that presented a whole new set ofnagging questions. She fixed Ripley with a look that she hoped conveyed some ofthe emotions swirling in her gut. It was hard to pull off with blood in youreyes and a piece of tooth bouncing around your mouth, but she gave it her bestcollege try.

‘Mia… how’d you…?

Ripley fished in her pocket and came outwith a familiar black rectangle. She waved it like a winning lottery ticket.

‘GPS tracking,’ Ripley grinned. ‘Youshould read your memos.’

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

The farm was a damn circus. Patrol cars,ambulances, rolling code like they were auditioning for the Blues Brothers.

Ella sat in the dirt with Ripley – oldfaithful Ripley – beside her, watching the mayhem unfold through one swolleneye. The other had puffed shut, thanks to Seth Baxter's sledgehammer love taps.Every inch of her body sang with bright, vicious pain. But she was alive, stillsucking air on this side of the grass. Which was more than could be said forBaxter if the paramedics didn't hump it.

Speak of the devils. Two EMTs in navyjumpsuits trundled by with a gurney, heading for the lone figure sprawled inthe dirt. Baxter looked small in death – or near-death, at least. Just a sackof busted sticks, oozing the last of his crazy out onto the soil. Part of Ellawished Mia's shot had been a kill shot, putting the mad dog down for good. Butthe more practical part, the part not running on fumes and fury – that partknew they needed him alive. Needed him to answer for his crimes under the coldfluorescents of a courtroom, not the unblinking stars.

Besides, a bullet was too quick for thelikes of Seth Baxter. He deserved to wither away in a concrete box, a long,slow rot with nothing but his demons for company.

So Ella kept her lips zipped as theyloaded Baxter up, watched them wheel him off to the waiting ambulance. With anyluck, the docs would patch him up just enough to stand trial. Make him reliveevery grisly murder in exquisite detail before shuttling him off to a lifetimeof prison chow and cold, lonely nights.

There were questions aplenty rattlingaround Ella's swollen skull; a lead ball's worth of who's and how's andwhat-the-hell’s. But she couldn't seem to get her tongue unglued from the roofof her mouth.

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