Page 26 of Girl, Haunted

‘He doesn't look too worried, does he?’ she said. ‘Son of a bitch probably thinks he's untouchable.’

Luca winced at something again. ‘He’s heading for death row, Ell. That’s pretty touchable. Speaking of death, I think something died in this mattress. Recently.’

Ella hit the power button and the screen blinked out, taking Austin Creed's smug face with it. Good riddance. She tossed the remote onto the nightstand, shimmied out of her jeans and made for the other end of the bed. Luca was already sprawled out, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other dangling off the side. He looked like a crime scene chalk outline come to life.

She said, ‘You know, when I imagined our first night away together, I never pictured this.’

‘That’s on you. I pictured exactly this.’

Ella slid under the covers and did her best to sink into the mattress, futile as it was. Her head buzzed with visions of Creed's dead-eyed stare, and the footage from the Scrematorium played on an endless loop. She knew sleep would be a fickle mistress tonight, but she had to at least make the attempt. Her circadian rhythm had only recently gotten back on track after eighteen constant months on the road, and she wasn't about to let this case derail her hard-won sleep schedule.

Beside her, Luca was oddly turbulent. He was usually asleep within minutes, but he seemed to be having a tough time adapting to the foreign mattress.

She scooted closer and draped an arm across his chest. He mumbled something unintelligible, then rested a hand on her hip. Even in sleep, he knew her. Anticipated her. It was a small comfort, but she'd take what she could get.

CHAPTER TEN

Ella’s eyelids cracked open,crusty with sleep that had come about as easy as nailing jello to the wall. The first rays of dawn sliced through threadbare curtains, stabbing at her retinas with all the subtlety of an ice-pick lobotomy.

She groaned and rolled onto one side. The Yamhill Value Inn's mattress creaked in dispute and threatened to split at the seams and spill its guts all over the dingy carpet. Ella half-expected to find a ‘property of the Spanish Inquisition’ tag stapled to the headboard.

Her brain felt like it had been put through a meat grinder and then reassembled by a drunk toddler with sticky fingers and a vague understanding of human anatomy. Images from the night before flashed through her mind in a jumbled kaleidoscope – grainy security footage, a masked figure emerging from the shadows, Gregory Van Allen's final moments playing out in low resolution.

She rolled over, ready to jostle Luca awake with a well-placed elbow, but her arm flopped on empty space.

She cracked an eye open and winced as the world swam into fuzzy focus. She squinted at the alarm clock – 7:45AM. AKA, way too early for Luca to be vertical. The man slept like the dead on a good day; she'd need a bullhorn and a cattle prod to get him moving before noon.

Yet here she was, alone in bed at the asscrack of dawn.

‘Hawkins? You alive?’

No response.

As she hauled herself upright and blinked away the cobwebs, something caught her eye. Something that definitely hadn't been there when she'd face-planted into the pillow last night.

A teddy bear sitting inside a plastic bag.

‘What the f….’ Ella said as her legs shot out of the bed. Adrenaline doused the last dregs of sleep from her brain as she reached for her pistol on the bedside table.

She found it, edged closer, and saw this wasn’t just any old bear wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. It was the same one that their killer had lodged in Gregory Van Allen’s arms in the throes of death.

Same matted fur, same glassy eyes. Hell, same stitching on the left ear.

Then, from ten feet away, a toilet flushed. The door swung open and Luca sauntered out of the bathroom looking entirely too chipper for this hour. He cocked an eyebrow at the sight of her standing there half-naked, pointing a Glock .17 at an inanimate object like she’d finally lost her last marble.

‘Morning,’ he said.

Ella gaped at him, then at the bear, then back at him.

‘Hawkins,’ she said slowly, enunciating each word as if explaining quantum physics to a toddler. ‘Why the hell is there a teddy bear on the nightstand?’

‘Oh, that. Just something I picked up.’

Ella lowered her gun then pinched the bridge of her nose wondering if maybe she was still dreaming. A nightmare where her boyfriend had been replaced by a pod person with a penchant for tampering with evidence.

‘Okay, humor me. You picked up this vital piece of evidence, from…?’

‘The evidence locker at the precinct.’

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