Page 41 of Girl, Sought

Under other circumstances, Ella might have laughed. She’d be reluctant to pay that for a car, let alone some squirrel-bat hybrid thing crafted by a murderer.

‘Well, maybe you’ll find someone dumb enough to buy it one day. Thanks for your time, now I better go find my partner.’

‘Certainly. I’ll see you out,’ Vanessa said.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Luca had never been so grateful to see a bathroom in his life. Even FBI business couldn’t override biological urges, and now as he washed his hands for the return journey, his detective brain seemed to come into focus. It was funny how relief could sharpen your senses, like coming up for air after staying underwater too long.

He slipped out of the bathroom into the corridor, and while his official excuse for being here hadn’t been a lie, it had also made for perfect cover. Somewhere down the hall, Vanessa was probably still building a wall that only an official warrant could bypass. After all, not even the FBI could just walk into a building and take whatever they wanted, not unless they had hard evidence against a person of interest. Luca could see a mile off that Vanessa wasn’t going to cooperate.

So now it was time for some creative wandering. The kind of ‘wrong turn’ that sometimes cracked cases wide open.

The hallway stretched empty in both directions when he emerged. No cameras in the corners - unusual for a business dealing in high-value items. Just those certificates on the walls, watching him with their gilt-edged authority. There were five doors on this row. The first in line was Vanessa Blackburn’s office, the second was a maintenance closet judging by the narrow doors, and the third was the bathroom.

So Luca took off in the opposite direction to inspect the other two.

The first office he passed was standard corporate fare. A cramped space packed with shelves and not much else. Stacks of paperwork leaned like drunks propping each other up. A few framed objects on the walls, but nothing that grabbed him by the eyeballs and screamed ‘look closer.’

Luca moved on to the next office. Another door, another gap just wide enough to peer through. He leaned in, ready to give this room the same quick once-over – and froze like a rat that just heard the snap of a trap.

His hand froze on the doorknob. His heart stumbled over its own rhythm as he counted what hung on the wall beyond the glass.

Because staring back at him from the wall was a row of faces that didn't belong to anything living.

Masks.

Five, six, seven of them by his quick count. Two plain white masks, a jester’s visage, a tragedy mask with black pits for eyes, a Japanese-looking demon, something tribal with feathers sprouting from the head, one animalistic face complete with antlers.

Luca's neck developed that particular itch that meant he was being watched. A quick scan revealed no prying eyes, either real or digital. Then again, maybe the real security was just how boring everything looked from the outside.

The door handle turned without resistance.Don't do it, whispered the voice of reason, the one that filled out proper paperwork and called for backup. But that voice always lost to the other one - the one that had made him a detective worth a damn, the one that knew sometimes you had to color outside the lines to see the whole picture.

The office hit him with a cocktail of smells: leather that had never seen a cow, paper that predated his 30 years, and something chemical that reminded him of that summer job at the morgue. The kind of smell that meant something natural had been forced to become unnatural.

His phone came out on autopilot, because evidence was evidence even when you obtained it sideways. Luca glanced over his shoulder again and found the coast still clear, so he began snapping pictures of the masks from every angle. They watched him work, no two alike, but each one radiated the same unsettling energy. Luca documented them in hi-res and tried to keep himself on track, but his mind jumped to darker possibilities.

Because who needed this many faces unless their own wasn't enough?

The office itself played it straight – desk, chair, filing cabinet. But the devil lurked in the details. Files stacked perfectly. Reference books arranged by height. Everything positioned just so, like items in a museum display. The kind of space that belonged to someone who needed to control their environment down to the millimeter.

Luca moved to the desk, tried the top drawer. Locked. Same with the middle one. The bottom drawer fought back, too - decent hardware from the feel of it. Not the kind of lock you'd find at Office Depot.

Good thing Ella had taught him that trick with the guitar string.

The high E-string hanging from his keyring had opened more doors than he cared to count. A souvenir from his college band days repurposed into a skeleton key. Ella called it ‘aggressive locksmithing’ - her way of justifying the technically-not-legal things they sometimes had to do to catch killers.

The string slid into the lock with a whisper of steel on brass. Luca worked it with the delicate touch of a safecracker and angled for that sweet spot where mechanics surrendered to patience. Three seconds in, the lock gave up its ghost with a click. Luca could almost hear Ella's voice: ‘It's not breaking and entering if you're preventing a murder.’ Her particular brand of moral flexibility had rubbed off on him over the past few months. Hopefully the ends justified the means, and if it didn’t, then you were in deep with the top dogs back at HQ.

Luca's breath caught as he eased the drawer open. It revealed treasures that had no business being here.

A wedding ring, fresh enough that the gold hadn’t lost its shine. A row of silver watches, a bundle of necklaces, bracelets, brooches, rosary beads, a music box, military medals, a few small ornaments.

What the hell was this?

Collectables that had been donated to whoever owned this office? The possessions of people who’d passed on?

No, because none of it felt like legitimate merchandise. These weren't the kind of items you'd find in auction catalogs or estate sales. These were personal effects, intimate pieces of interrupted lives. The kind of things people were buried wearing, or passed down through generations until some tragedy broke the chain.

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