Page 63 of Girl, Haunted

‘No!’ Ella screamed into the phone. ‘Don’t hang up you piece of...’

But he was gone.

Ella dug her fingernails into her arm. Her blood went from frozen to boiling in an instant. This bastard had played them like tin guitars, and he wanted them to know it.

‘Not long enough, Ell. No trace,’ said Luca.

There was no time to process, no time to plan. She had only one thought pinging around her skull like a stray bullet:this just went off-script. They were improvising now, playing the psycho's game by his rules.

And in this sick little cat-and-mouse, they were definitely the mice.

‘Hawkins.’ She had to pry the word through clenched teeth. ‘Greygate Manor. We need to get there. Now.’

CHAPTER THIRTY

Ella hauled the cruiser into the parking lot outside Greygate Manor. The place was another grey rectangle with a few props outside, but amongst the props were two figures. Only one was moving.

Sheriff Redmond stood there, his profile washed out in the harsh glare of police lights. And there, sprawled at his feet like a broken marionette, lay a woman. A stain of crimson radiated outwards, starting at her chest and cascading down the steps, still fresh, still wet. Against the clinical white of Greygate Manor's facade, the blood looked so red it was almost black.

She was out of the car and at his side in a second. The anonymous caller hadn’t been lying.

‘Christ in heaven,’ Redmond said.

The body was clearly female, long blonde hair, manicured nails, maybe mid-forties. She’d been splayed on the stoop like a broken doll, but there was nothing but a gaping void where her heart should be.

That poor woman's heart just wasn't in it.

‘God damn it to hell,’ Ella screamed. Suddenly, Cassius's parting comment made sense.

‘Only got here two minutes ago. No sign of the perp. Just… this.’

Luca asked, ‘Recognize her, Sheriff?’

‘No. Goddamn butcher. Ripped her heart clean out. In all my years in this game…’

She crouched beside the body. The woman's honey-blonde hair spilled out beneath her, sticky with blood. She wore the remnants of a black top, ripped down the middle to expose the gory handiwork beneath.

Ella breathed deep and fought the urge to hurl. Eight years in law enforcement, and she still wasn't used to this part. Doubted she ever would be. So she steeled herself and slipped on the emotional armor that let her function at times like these. Shoved down the creeping dread that this was just the opening salvo in a war they were already losing.

‘He's evolving,’ she said, half to herself, half to Luca. ‘Getting bolder. Contacting us directly, taunting us, pulling off this... thisbutcheryout in the open.’

Luca nodded. 'Not just on a mission anymore, is he? Got a real taste for it now. But who is this woman, and how'd he find her? Doubt she was going for a late night walk past Greygate Manor.’

'He had to have abducted her.' Ella pointed to the blood spatter. It began in a pool ten feet from the body, then made its way to the front steps. 'This is the killing ground and the dumping ground, just like the others.'

The old profiles, the classic tropes – they didn't fit this freak. He'd ripped up the serial killer playbook and scribbled his own manifesto in the margins.

‘We took his playground away,’ Luca said, ‘so he improvised. This guy doesn’t take no for an answer.’

Her pulse jackhammered as she stared at the body's mangled chest, hypnotized by the raw ugliness of it all. This was a whole new kind of psychopath. Ella had never met a serial killer who could go through the entire spectrum of savagery in such a short space of time.

The growl of an engine shattered her thoughts. A car – a crappy beige sedan that had seen better decades – tore into the lot and screeched to a halt a few feet away. Before Ella could yell for Luca, she was up and moving, gun out of its holster and pointed straight at the sedan's windshield. Who the hell was dumb enough to crash her crime scene?

‘Driver!’ she shouted. ‘Hands where I can see 'em and step out of the vehicle! Now!’

The driver's door creaked open. A pair of hands emerged, followed by a hulking figure. He was built like a linebacker gone to seed, broad shoulders slumped under the weight of middle age. But there was still enough muscle there to do some damage.

‘Oh god,’ he choked out. ‘Oh god, Amanda! What the…' He lurched towards the body, but Ella planted herself in his path, gun still raised.

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