Page 77 of Girl, Accused

‘Talk?’ Mary's laugh was sharp as the knife she'd tried to bury in Ella's throat. ‘You want a confession? Fine. I killed Chester Grant because he slept with students half his age and kept teaching. I killed Evelyn Summers because she prescribed drugs to hide her ownincompetence. I killed Rebecca Torres because she stole from her own community. And I killed James Harper because he mutilated women on his table and called it beauty. Lust, Pride, Greed, Blasphemy.’

‘Right. And the others?’

‘Envy and Sloth? I had plans for more, but God intervened.’

Something caught Ella's eye. Movement down below. From this height, it looked like an ant scurrying through dirt.

The shape disappeared behind a cement mixer, reappeared near a stack of scaffolding, vanished again beneath the tower. Ella's pulse recalibrated. She couldn't make out details at this distance, but some things you knew in your bones.

Ella shifted her weight, adjusting her stance to keep Sister Mary's attention fixed forward.

Keep her talking.

‘And the W?’

Sister Mary's hand drifted unconsciously to her forehead. ‘Wrath is the ultimate sin. It’s the one that drives all others. God's wrath cleansed the world in the flood. Christ's wrath cleared the temple. Mine cleared Granville of its corruption.’

‘You used a branding iron on yourself?’

Sister Mary took another half-step backward on the beam. The metal groaned beneath her feet. She splayed her arms wide and said, ‘The time for talking’s over. Shoot me. Or I go to hell.’

Ella’s breath caught in her throat. What else could she say?

‘The Bible quotes. Why?’

‘Everyone needs an epitaph.’

‘The Latin. Why did you choose that?’

Sister Mary smiled. ‘You caught that.’

‘Blasphemia.’

‘Well done.’

Ella tracked the conversation with half her mind, the rest attuned to subtle changes in the air around them. Someone was climbing inside the tower now. Metal stairs whispered against concrete.

‘Blasphemy,’ Ella said. ‘Odd translation, isn’t it?’

Sister Mary peered down below, maybe assessing the fall she was planning. Presenting suicidal minds with tangibility of their plans sometimes deterred them, but Sister Mary showed no fear. Her body language suggested that she had every intention of leaving this power plant in a body bag.

Sister Mary's face reflected genuine offense. ‘No. It’s correct.’

The footsteps had reached the top of the spiral staircase. A presence hovered at the edge of the opposite platform now. The shadow inched closer, now just fifteen feet behind Mary

‘I’m sure it is. I just prefer Gluttony. The G is… better.’

Five feet.

‘What difference does it make, it’s-‘

The figure suddenly moved across the I-beam with the fluid confidence of someone who'd walked narrower paths with higher stakes. Mia Ripley wrapped one arm around Sister Mary’s neck and the other around one of her arms. Sister Mary began to flail like an insect who’d lost its wings, and Ripley’s submission hold briefly elevated Sister Mary off the ground. Her legs kicked at nothing but open air for three long seconds as Ripley held her aloft. The killer's eyes bulged, and Ella saw in them the same desperate flash of mortality that had probably been the last thing her victims had known. That sudden, terrible understanding that the world was about to continue without you in it.

Sister Mary's hands clawed at Ripley's forearm. Her face turned purple-red as oxygen became a theoretical concept. The color reminded Ella of freshly clotted blood.

This was the clinical application of unconsciousness, the same technique Ripley had demonstrated a hundred times in Bureau training rooms, but never sixty feet up on an exposed beam with nothing but physics preventing a two-body fall.

And throughout, Ripley never loosened her grip. Blood from Sister Mary's forehead wounds painted streaks across Ripley's forearm, but the former agent didn't flinch. She'd been baptized in worse fluids than this.

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