Page 93 of The Texas Murders

“Excuse me a minute,” she says, visibly quaking.

Isabella disappears into the hallway. Ava lets her go. Maybe a moment alone is what she needs.

A minute goes by. Then two. As she waits, Ava flips through the old articles about Isabella’s disappearance. The coverage was extensive, probably because she went missing from such a public place. It occurs to Ava that the news coverage of Fiona Martinez, the latest victim, has been minimal by comparison.

Ava’s heartbeat accelerates as she thinks of something Isabella said.

They all went missing from their homes, didn’t they? They all had an eagle feather left behind. What happened to me is not the same at all.

She and Rory and Carlos never told her the women had gone missing from their homes. And while they had asked her about eagle feathers, she doesn’t think they mentioned why. Because the press doesn’t know there was any connection between these years-apart cases, those details have never been in the newspaper or on TV.

She knows something, Ava thinks.And it’s time she comes clean.

She steps into the hallway, where she finds three doorways, two of which are open. One of the open doors leads to a bathroom. Another to an office. The third, the closed door, must be her bedroom.

Ava raises her hand to knock, but something in the office catches her eye.

On the desk sits a photograph. As Ava approaches, she sees it’s a picture of five girls. All Native. All wearing traditional regalia. All smiling and happy.

All holding small dreamcatchers, with five eagle feathers on each and the wordsORDEROFTHEGOLDENEAGLEstenciled in the centerpieces.

They are all younger than their more recent photos, but Ava easily recognizes each of the girls.

Fiona Martinez.

Rebecca Trujillo.

Chipeta Tavaci.

Tina White Wolf.

And there with the other eagle feather victims, smiling like she’s among friends, is Isabella Luna.

Ava spins around to look for Isabella, but something else catches her attention. In the corner, to the left of the door in a place that was out of her sight when she first walked into the room, a feathered dreamcatcher hangs from the ceiling, the same as the ones in the photograph, except this dreamcatcher has only one feather.

The other four—identical to the feathers left at the victims’ homes—are missing.

CHAPTER 85

ISABELLA APPEARS IN the doorway like a ghost, holding forth some kind of object in her hands. Ava is paralyzed with confusion, and before it registers that the item is a Taser gun, the young woman pulls the trigger.

Electrodes fly through the air, trailed by electrical wires. Ava reaches for her pistol, but the probes land on her uniform and fill her body with the worst pain she’s ever experienced. She tries to lift her gun, but every muscle in her body is locked up.

Heat burns through her bloodstream.

She drops to her knees. Then onto her chest. Abruptly, the electricity stops coursing through her veins, but still she can’t move. Her muscles were iron a second ago, but now they’re jelly. Isabella walks over to her and pries her pistol out of her fingers. She tucks it into her waistband and then leans back down to disconnect the electrodes.

Ava’s handcuffs are fastened to her belt, and Isabella pulls them off. Ava tries to resist, but her limbs won’t cooperate. In seconds, her hands are cuffed behind her back as she lies face down on the hardwood floor, still gasping from the pain.

“Please… Isabella,” Ava says, having trouble forming the words. “Don’t… do this.”

Isabella takes the gun and presses the barrel against Ava’s temple.

“If you try to yell for help,” she says, “I’ll kill you with your own gun.”

CHAPTER 86

I’M SITTING IN the back of an ambulance parked on the street outside Garrison Zebo’s house. I’m holding an oxygen mask over my face with one hand and have an IV needle in the other. Someone gave me a fresh T-shirt, but my jeans and boots are still damp. The EMT helping me strongly encouraged me to take a ride to the hospital to get checked out, but I insisted I wouldn’t leave the crime scene yet.

---