Page 47 of Girl, Accused

Then there was the G on her forehead. This one was a coin flip because it could either stand for greed or gluttony.

Her accompanying message,NO ONE SERVES TWO MASTERS, didn’t point to one or the other. The full proverb, from Matthew 6:24, was:No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

The verse nagged at her. Not just about greed or gluttony, but about divided loyalties. About trying to walk two paths at once. What had Rebecca Torres been juggling? What competing masters had she tried to serve? The answer might be sitting in her office or on her laptop, written in spreadsheets and emails that would take days to decrypt.

But they didn't have days. Somewhere in Granville, their killer was probably already choosing the next letter for their divine alphabet. And back in D.C., someone was collecting more of Ella's hair, preparing to sew shut another set of lips.

Had Edis followed through on his promise to protect the people on her list? Those thirty-six names she'd managed to scrape together represented every significant connection in her adult life. A pitifully short list for someone her age, but each name represented a life that might be snuffed out simply for knowing Ella Dark.

And what about the people she hadn't thought to list? The casual acquaintances, the faces she recognized but couldn't name, the invisible support network that formed the architecture of her daily existence without ever registering in her conscious awareness?

How many would die because she'd failed to remember them?

Her phone lay on the nightstand, and Luca's name floated at the top of her mind. Hopefully he was asleep in his old house now, far away from the roaming eyes of a mysterious predator in D.C. It would be easy to call him, even at this hour. He'd answer, voice thick with sleep but immediately alert. He'd listen as she untangled her thoughts, offering insights where appropriate, silence where necessary.

But Luca wasn't just her sounding board anymore. He was the man who slept with his arm draped over her shoulder, who knew exactly how she liked her coffee on bad days versus good ones, who had seen her at her most vulnerable and hadn't flinched. Calling him now would cross the boundary between professional consultation and emotional need, and Ella wasn't ready to admit just how much she needed him.

The clock now read 2:03 AM. Her body craved unconsciousness, but her mind refused to surrender, running endless variations of what-if scenarios that all ended the same way: with Rebecca Torres dead in an alley, branded with the letter G.

Her eyelids had grown heavy over the past hour and her thoughts becoming less linear and more associative. The way they always did right before unconsciousness claimed her. The human brain had limits that even Ella Dark couldn't override with willpower alone, and somewhere between the letter G and Torres’ laptop, the darkness she'd been fighting off finally pulled her under.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The dead didn't scream in Ella's dreams. They never had. Even when the victims came back to haunt her, they did it with a terrible silence that made every nightmare worse than the last.

Jenna sat in an armchair that didn't exist anymore. The one Ella remembered from their old apartment before life and circumstance had pulled them in different directions. Blood dripped from the black stitches that held her lips together, each drop hitting the carpet with a sound like distant thunder.

Across from her, Julianne Cooper folded laundry on the coffee table. Her movements were precise, mechanical. The same black threads crisscrossed her mouth in a pattern that reminded Ella of a child's connect-the-dots puzzle. Neither woman acknowledged the other's presence. They just performed their mundane tasks while their sewn-shut lips leaked red tears.

‘They'll all die,’ said an invisible voice. ‘Everyone you know. Everyone you forgot.’

Knock. Knock. Knock.

For a disorienting moment, Ella couldn’t place herself in space or time. The unfamiliar ceiling above her, the scratchy blanket tangled around her legs, the persistent throb of adrenaline in her veins. It all felt unanchored from reality.

Then the knocks came again and memory clicks back into place.

The Granville Motor Inn. Room 14. Ohio. Three bodies and counting.

‘Dark? You alive in there?’

Ripley's voice carried through the door with its familiar blend of concern and irritation. Ella blinked at sunlight that seemed too bright, too real after the nightmare's shadows.

Ella stumbled to the door and fumbled with the chain. Ripley stood in the hall looking freshly showered and annoyingly alert, wearing what appeared to be a new sweater from her shopping trip yesterday. Ripley looked her up and down, taking in her black t-shirt that reached her knees.

‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been waiting ages.’

Ella squinted at her partner. ‘What time is it?’

‘Potato clock, as Max would say.’

‘Huh?’

‘Eight o’ clock.’

Ella's brain caught up with reality. She rarely slept past seven, even on her worst days. But then again, she usually wasn't up until 3 AM counting other people's corpses.

‘Jesus, I never sleep this late.’

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