Page 47 of Girl, Sought

His phone lit up as he hit traffic. He glanced over and saw another email about Eleanor Calloway. The office couldn't stop talking about her. Poor Eleanor, apparently. Such a quiet woman. Never hurt anyone. They had no idea how wrong they were. Eleanor had hurt plenty of people - she just did it by existing in her own little bubble, caring more about porcelain faces than real ones.

Then a call came in, but the Collector ignored it. It was an unknown number anyway, so probably just some scammers trying to sell him insurance he didn’t need.

Someone out there wanted his attention, but they'd have to work harder than that. He had places to be. Things to prepare. The next stage of evolution didn't happen by itself.

The traffic thinned as he hit Watson Boulevard, that sweet spot between lunch rush and school runs where the roads belonged to people like him - the ones with places to be and metamorphoses to complete. His new self felt like a butterfly testing damp wings, still soft around the edges but growing stronger by the minute. To his left, he spotted the concrete rectangle that doubled as the Chesapeake Police precinct.

Behind those walls, they'd be studying him now. They’d certainly found Alfred Finch’s body by now, because the Collector was the one who’d called in the anonymous tip. He couldn’t resist hearing the shock in the operator's voice when he'd told them he’d found a dead body inside a house. He’d wanted to describe it in detail, but the smart part of him told him to keep some things to himself.

And if those cops had any brains between them, they'd have found the footage of him in his insect mask in Finch's breeding room. The thought of those idiots trying to build a psychological profile of him brought a smile to his face, because how could they possibly know what he was planning? He wondered if they appreciated the artistry. The way he'd positioned himself just right for the camera so they could see exactly what he wanted them to see.

He turned onto Cedar, keeping the station in his rearview. Those cops probably thought they had him figured out. Drawing their neat little lines between victims, thinking they were closing in.

But he was still evolving. Still becoming.

So why not give them something new to study?

Something worthy of serious consideration?

He pulled into the curb. Sometimes the best ideas came from the simplest impulses. And right now, every impulse in his newly-minted self was screaming for attention.

After all, what was the point of transformation if you couldn't show people how far you'd come?

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Ella’s smartwatch told her that her pulse was running at ninety – twenty beats per minute higher than usual. Luca and his bright ideas were going to be the death of her.

‘Call Gabriel Thorne?’ she asked. ‘And say what?’

‘Whatever we have to.’

Once was a time when Ella wouldn’t have flinched at the idea of calling a suspect and tricking him into revealing his whereabouts. But now, with Ripley no longer here to call out her risky ideas, someone had to be the voice of reason.

‘And what if he busts us? Or realizes the cops are onto him and he hauls ass?’

‘You got a better plan? Clock's ticking, Ell. We gotta roll the dice sometime, might as well be now. Plus, if his voice matches what we heard on the CCTV, we’ll know it’s our guy.’

She bit back the snarky retort perched on the tip of her tongue. She didn't like the idea, but he wasn't wrong. They were grasping at straws, and Gabriel Thorne was the only one floating within reach.

Ella grabbed a cable out of her laptop bag and slid it across the desk. ‘At least hook your cell up to Stingray, see if we can get a read on his location in case he doesn’t fall for it.’

‘On it.’ Luca connected his cell to his laptop then activated the tracking software. ‘Just keep quiet. I’ll do the talking.’

‘What are you going to say?’

‘I’ll just lie. Lying’s easy. Ready?’

‘Whoa, hang on. He’s going to ask the obvious questions. How did you get his number? Why aren’t you calling the CVG instead? What item do you need appraising?’

‘I’m a good liar,’ Luca said. He punched the number off Gabriel’s business card into his cell, hit dial and turned it to loudspeaker. ‘I’ve never actually had Boston baked beans in my life.’

The phone's ring cut through stale air. One ring bled into two, then three. By ring number five, Ella had cataloged fourteen ways this could go wrong. By ring seven, she'd added six more to the list.

Then the line clicked.

‘Gabriel Thorne speaking.’

Luca sat up straighter and met Ella's eyes over the phone with a look that said 'game on.' She could practically smell the bullcrap he was about to shovel.

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