Page 31 of Girl, Sought

Her eyes finally started to close as rain painted abstract patterns on the window glass. The TV's glow softened, turned distant, became part of that liminal space between waking and sleeping where connections formed in the back of the brain without conscious input.

Somewhere in that twilight zone, pieces were shifting. Ideas were arranging themselves like those antiques in their perfect displays. But whatever pattern they were forming would have to wait for morning.

Sleep took her at last, dragging her down into dreams of glass cases and compound eyes and the endless rain beyond the windows.

Pictures, Ella thought.

The one thing you needed when selling something – was pictures.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ella clawed her way out of the dream like she was digging herself out of a grave.

Austin Creed's face floated in the darkness behind her eyelids; his crooked smile, that dead-eyed stare she'd dissected in court. Four bodies in the bayou. Four families who'd never sleep right again. Four reasons she'd helped send him to the needle.

She jerked awake with Louisiana swamp water in her lungs and December sunlight stabbing through cheap motel curtains. Her heart slammed against her ribs like it was trying to break parole.

The dream clung to her skin, sticky memories of a courtroom in New Orleans last month. She'd spent twenty minutes on the stand breaking down Austin Creed's psychology for the jury and helped secure him a death sentence. Now Austin Creed waited on death row while appeals crawled through the system. Justice served cold, with a side of state-sanctioned homicide.

Punish death with death. The math worked out clean on paper but left chalk dust on her conscience that wouldn't quite wash away. Was she any better than him, really? Just another actor in the same bloody play, only her violence came wrapped in badges and court orders.

Then reality crashed back like a hangover. Masks. Collections. Two dead bodies. It was nine AM according to the clock beside the bed, and the rain outside had finally taken a hike and left behind that particular smell of wet asphalt that meant morning in any city, anywhere.

She rolled over and reached for the solid warmth of Luca, but her fingers met empty sheets and cold indents where his body had been.

She sat up and found him hunched over his laptop at the rickety table by the window. Music leaked from his earbuds – probably that thrash metal he insisted helped him think. His fingers attacked the keyboard with the particular violence of someone who'd been up way too long.

‘Good morning, sunshine.’ He yanked out the earbuds and spun around in his chair.

‘Sunshineis grounds for justifiable homicide in Virginia. What are you listening to?’

Luca checked his MP3 player. ‘Slayer. What about you?’

‘I’m listening to you listening to Slayer. How long have you been up?’

‘Since about seven. Brain wouldn't shut up about collector forums. Been digging through auction sites, buy and sell pages, anywhere Alfred might have listed that roach of his.’

The morning light caught the stubble on his jaw, reminding her of other mornings, other motel rooms, before they'd tried to put their relationship in neat little boxes labeledworkandnot work.‘Find anything?’

‘Dead end. These sites are locked up tighter than Fort Knox. A lot of collector forums require credentials, and most listings aren't even cached on search engines because they're technically temporary pages. As soon as an item sells, poof-’ He made an exploding gesture with his hands. ‘Gone.’

Ella considered it. ‘But Alfred’s roach didn’t sell, right? Surely it was still active when the killer arrived at his door.’

‘I have no idea. All I know is that I can’t any listing for aSaltobla-whatever.’

Ella's temples began to throb. It was too goddamn early for this. ‘So our killer's hunting ground is basically invisible.’

‘Yeah, because not only that, but Chesapeake PD emailed us some bad news about an hour ago.’

'It's too early for bad news, but tell me anyway.'

‘Apparently, our buddy Finch was living in the Stone Age. No cell phone, no personal computer.’

‘You’re kidding? But his credit card statements showed him buying things online?’

‘Yeah, but the logs show he was doing that stuff from his work computer. And he worked at theVirginia Museum of Natural History.’

Ella pressed her palms to her eyes. She knew exactly where this was headed. ‘And we can’t search his computer because it’s government property.’

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