Page 130 of The Ripper

“No shit, Sherlock, any more obvious crap you want to share with us?”

I frowned at him and opened the box that held nothing but a single old photograph. The paper had frayed at the edges with time and the color was slightly worn, but I could make out the focal points.

It was a family photo. There was a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair, a tall, massive man whose face had been scratched off with a black pen, who had an arm around her, and two children at their feet. A boy and a girl, both smiling broadly at the camera.

I would have recognized her anywhere. The little girl with pigtails tied in pink ribbons was Arella, ever the one with the innocent eyes, and I found myself imagining a copy of her running around our penthouse, her bare, chubby feet slapping against the marble, throwing fucking pink glitter at my face.

I had to close my eyes for a moment to stifle the tears that threatened to come out. I didn’t have time to cry, even if every second hurt worse than the last one.

~ And you’re not crying in front of that conceited Italian wanker. Don’t make a fool out of yourself.

I’d never wanted to have children. I never wanted to bring life into an already overcrowded world that was infested with danger, waiting for innocent souls to stray out of their path, but seeing Arella as a child made me wonder what I would be like if I ever had one. Ever since we had that conversation in her bed, when I tried to get her to see her beauty, images of toddlers started invading my mind as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Hannibal took the photo out of my hand and I shook my head, pinching the bridge of my nose and trying to wipe thoughts of blonde braids and little pink shoes as I watched him get back to his computer.

“I can work with this,” he said as he scanned the image.

“Can you run it through facial recognition?” Damiano asked when he stopped glaring at Midnight.

“Obviously,” he replied simply as he started typing.

I sat on the concrete and pushed my fingers through my hair, fisting it as I prayed – again – for him to find something, anything.

I did a lot of things that were out of character for me, from hoping to praying to saints and demons, to devils and gods. I was a sea of anger and uncertainty, and I took out my phone to get another look at her, fucking wishing that her smile would calm the waters.

“Nothing,” said the kid. “I swear to God, it’s like they don’t even exist.”

I bit my tongue until I tasted blood as Midnight took the pack of cigarettes from Damiano’s hand, lit one, then shoved the pack in her pocket, smiling innocently at him as he grinned like a cat in heat.

“Can you look for the house in the background,” Klaus suggested.

“Um, I can try.”

His hands flew over the keyboard while I was ready to rip my fucking hair out. I couldn’t see anything anymore, I couldn’t hear anything except my name falling off her lips, as if she was calling for me from the depths of the abyss, begging me to pull her out of there, but I didn’t know where there was.

~ You’re going crazy.

~ No shit.

~ You seriously need to get laid. I don’t like you very much.

~ What a shame.

“There are two thousand three hundred and forty-six Baroque-style houses in all of Colombia, and over sixty percent of them are in or around Bogotá.”

“Okay, so we focus on Bogotá,” Damiano intervened.

So, we had an approximate location, and I was already prepared to leave and turn Colombia’s capital city to fucking ashes if that got me closer to finding her.

“We have to assume that it’s in a relatively remote area, far from prying eyes.” Midnight bent over Hannibal’s shoulder, making him blush.

She kissed his cheek and ran her fingers down his neck, but she wasn’t even looking at the kid, but at Damiano, who was close to boiling in his seat.

I’ve had it with these two.

“It wouldn’t be smack in the middle of the city,” I said as I stood up and approached Hannibal, staring at the photo as if I waited for it to talk back to me. “Can you do a search using the hills behind the house?” I asked, biting hard on the inside of my cheek.

“What the fuck is a hill going to give us, genius?” Damiano exploded. “It’s a waste of time.”

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