Page 60 of Girl, Sought

‘About an hour ago, I guess. At first I rode off and thought about throwing the mask in the trash, but I figured this guy might be dangerous, you know? I didn’t know if he was watching me or not.’

Ella began pacing the room. She tried to map grid patterns and calculate response times in her head, but an hour was much too long to get any kind of proximity to this anonymous mask-donor. By now he was at home, and given how careful he’d been up until now, Ella knew he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hang around.

But her unsub had taken the next step. First he'd left someone else to discover Eleanor Calloway's body, then he'd called in Alfred Finch's death himself via anonymous call. Now, he was sending messages directly to the people hunting him. Whoever this guy was, he'd developed an unexpected taste for power. Right now, he was feeling invincible, and if she wanted to catch him, she needed to play to his newfound God complex.

‘Get CSI down here,’ she told Reeves. ‘Full workup. And get his complete statement.’

Reeves guided Ryan out of the room. Ella moved over to the mask and studied it without touching it. Not particularly expensive or well-made, despite the attention to detail. The kind of thing that would look convincing under stage lights but showed its flaws up close.

‘This isn't just a delivery,’ Luca said. ‘It's a preview.’

'This isn't a preview at all. These masks are part of his ritual, and he won't hand them over until that ritual's complete. This is a post view. We're already too late.'

‘So what do we do?’

The words triggered something in Ella's mind - a connection she should have made sooner. Gabriel Thorne's voice echoed:Hundred grand for Chinese vase, five million for an old crucifix...

‘Wait a minute.’ She pointed to the ceiling. ‘What Thorne said, ten minutes ago.’

'Uh… Thorne said a lot of things. Thanks for the prompts in there, by the way, but-'

‘No. Follow me. We need to speak to Thorne again, quickly.’ She bounded out of the room and back up the stairs. ‘Hawkins, you with me?’

‘Yeah. Keep talking.’ Luca wheezed his way up the stairs behind her.Ever since the barn fire in Oregon, his lungs hadn't been quite right, but he kept pace anyway.

‘Our perp wore a bug mask to kill a bug collector. What does that mean?’

‘It means he’d have a Jesus mask for someone who collects-,’ he panted.

‘Finish that sentence.’

‘Jesuses.’

Ella reached the landing. ‘Religious artifacts.’ She strode down the corridor with the interrogation room in sight. The knowledge that they were probably already too late stabbed her in the gut, but it wasn’t like she could wait around for a missing persons report to file in. The killer was already a step ahead, and she needed to catch up.

‘Or that. But what’s Thorne got to do with this?’

She reached the interrogation room door and paused with one hand on the knob. ‘Because not only does Thorne know more about local collectors than we do, but he said something earlier. Something I’m going to zone in on. Come on.’

She pushed open hard enough to make the two-way mirror rattle in its frame. Thorne jumped in his chair like someone had jabbed him with a cattle prod.

‘Thought I’d seen the last of you,’ he said.

Ella planted her fists into the table. ‘Religious collectors. How many are there in Chesapeake?’

‘What? Religious collectables?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

'Ask less questions,' Ella said. 'Earlier, you said you appraised a crucifix for five million dollars. Who was it for?'

Thorne's face transformed into a mask of its own - the particular blank expression that meant someone was weighing consequences against conscience. ‘That's privileged information. Client confidentiality.’

‘Your client confidentiality ends where my body count begins.’ Ella leaned in until she could see her reflection fractured in his pupils. ‘You really want to obstruct a federal investigation? Because we’ve already got you on several counts, and we can add a few more years onto that sentence if you want.’

‘I signed NDAs. Serious ones.’ Sweat beaded on his upper lip. ‘These people, they're paranoid about security. About who knows what they have.’

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