Page 21 of Girl, Fractured

She pushed harder.A section of the leather popped outward with a soft click and revealed a small electronic keypad and a tiny LCD screen.

‘Bingo,’ Ella muttered.She looked up at Ripley.‘So?Do we crack it?See what secrets Frank was hiding?’

Ripley’s brief moment of amusement vanished.She crossed her arms again, the familiar posture of deliberation.‘Hold on, Dark.We don’t have a warrant for this.We don’t even technically know it is a safe.’

‘Mia, come on.It’s a safe disguised as furniture in the home of a murdered ex-FBI profiler.We’d be stupidnotto look inside.What more probable cause do you need?’

‘Need?Officially, you need a judge to agree with that chain of logic,’ Ripley countered.‘Unofficially, you still can’t justify breaking into this thing based purely on your gut feeling about some woman named Jennifer Marlowe who was apparently murdered 50 years ago.That’s not enough.Anything we find could be inadmissible.’

Ella sighed.Ripley was right, as usual.Procedure was procedure for a reason.Busting open a safe based on a phantom memory and a hunch felt reckless, even if the hunch screamed truth in Ella’s gut.

‘Okay, fine.We log it, we wait for-’

Her words were cut off by a soft sound from the doorway.A sleek tabby cat padded silently into the office.It paused, surveyed the two intruders with unnerving feline composure, then let out a plaintive meow directly at Ella.

‘Kids and cats.You’re two for two, Dark.’

‘It’s my lucky day.’Ella extended a hand.The cat sniffed her fingers cautiously, then seemed to deem her acceptable and rubbed its flank against her leg.‘Poor guy.Must be lonely.Wondering where Frank is.’

‘Yeah,’ Ripley murmured absently.‘The shelter will get him sometime today.’

Ella scratched the cat behind the ears.It arched its back and purred, a small engine vibrating against her shin.‘Still think we should call forensics back?See if they can get this thing open officially?’She looked up at Ripley for an answer, but her partner wasn’t looking at the safe anymore.

Ripley stood unnaturally still.She was gazing at the new intruder as though it held the secrets to the universe in its backside.

‘Mia?’Ella prompted.‘Oh.You’re allergic, right?’

Ripley didn’t respond immediately.Her stare remained fixed on the tabby.Ella felt a prickle of unease.Ripley wasn’t prone to zoning out, especially not at a crime scene.

‘Mia, what the hell are you looking at?’Ella asked.

Slowly, as if surfacing from deep water, Ripley raised her eyes to meet Ella’s.There was a dawning, incredulous light in them.

‘The collar,’ Ripley said.‘Look at the cat’s collar.’

Ella frowned.She leaned over and gently tilted the cat’s head.

A simple brown leather collar, slightly worn.Attached to it was a small, silver, bone-shaped tag.Engraved on the tag, in neat capital letters, was a single word.

MARLOWE.

Not Fluffy.Not Patches.Marlowe.The same surname as the 1976 Palm Harbor victim.Jennifer Marlowe.The skepticism and procedural caution had evaporated from Ripley’s face.

‘That can’t be a coincidence, can it?’Ella said.The cat, oblivious, continued its purring inspection of her sneakers.

‘Okay.I admit, that’s quite bizarre.’

Ella was still underneath the desk.‘So, we look?’

Ripley stared at the safe again.She chewed the inside of her lip.Finally, she blew out a puff of surrender.‘Alright.To hell with the warrant for now.’

‘Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

‘Yeah.Only problem is the keypad.We need the code.’

The code.That was Ella’s next barrier.She tried to crawl inside Frank Sullivan’s head.This wasn’t like some online account where you changed the password every six weeks.This was a safe.The code for a safe was bedrock.Something permanent.Something you could recall half-asleep, half-drunk, or staring down the barrel of your own mortality.

What numbers mattered to a man like Frank?Not birthdays or anniversaries; too sentimental, too easily guessed by anyone who bothered to check public records.Frank was Bureau to the bone.His paranoia wasn’t the flamboyant kind.He wouldn’t pick the street address or his social security number’s last four digits.Too sloppy.He’d built a career reading people, anticipating their moves.He wouldn’t make it easy.

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