Page 87 of Girl, Fractured

Until Sarah Webb showed up in his inbox in 2018.Funny how the world worked.Of all the true crime writers who’d contacted him over the years, she was the only one who hadn’t treated him like a sideshow attraction.The others had come sniffing around for emotional table scraps, but Sarah had approached him as a human being first, a source second.

When they’d met for that initial interview in the café six years ago, she’d left her recorder in her bag the entire time.They’d just talked.About books.About Florida.About the way grief changed shape but never truly disappeared.She didn’t call the Sandman by the ridiculous nicknames media outlets had invented.Didn’t promise ‘fresh insights’ or, worse, ‘closure.’

He hadn’t meant to fall in love with her.Just as she hadn’t meant to fall for him.Life was full of accidents that, in retrospect, seemed inevitable.

Then that same year, she’d convinced him to become someone else, and so Robert Lawrence was born.A man untethered to the past.She’d written three books which they’d released through Scarecrow Press, but over time, the publishing world changed.People didn’t buy books anymore, at least not ones that favored quality over quantity.True crime had become particularly saturated.Every psychopath with a body count had their own Netflix special, their own dedicated podcast series.Death had become content, packaged and consumed like fast food.

And the stories about his father’s case were the worst offenders of all.Amateur sleuths who proudly proclaimed ‘the beach burial victims deserved justice’ while massacring basic facts about the case.Podcasters who invented theories without understanding the first thing about tidal patterns or sand compaction.Profilers who claimed to know the killer’s mind without ever setting foot on this beach.

The story needed a reset.Something to wake people up.

So together, him and Sarah had concocted this masterful story.The victims were the detectives obsessed with old cases.The killers were the ghosts of the original killers themselves.What if these chronic failure cases experienced what their victims had felt?What if the investigators became the investigated?The hunters, the hunted?

And Sarah – the woman who’d write this story – was dead center of it all.

It would be a true crime book with unprecedented insider access.Not just to the killer’s mind, but to his methodology, his motivations, his very soul.A book that would revitalize the genre, rescue their finances, and finally give Sarah the recognition she deserved.

Nathan glanced at his watch.9:52 PM.

It hadn’t been easy to convince Sarah.She’d balked at first, horrified by what he proposed.But Nathan understood her in ways no one else did.He knew the desperation that gnawed at her.Her books sold enough to keep her afloat but not enough to thrive.The advances grew smaller with each contract, Scarecrow Press teetered perpetually on the edge of bankruptcy, as it did now.

They lived in a world where true crime podcasters with no credentials beyond a microphone and an opinion could draw audiences in the millions while serious researchers like Sarah struggled to make rent.

Their financial issues got worse.Nathan owned his apartment but couldn’t sell it due to it being on an unlicensed road.Nobody wanted it.Sarah rented a place too, not wanting to live with her boyfriend because she needed to be near her sick mother.

Hence the third, perfect victim.With Thomas Webb out of the way, Sarah would inherit his house.A week later, she’d agreed to help him.Reluctantly at first, then with growing investment as the plan took shape.Sarah understood narrative better than anyone he’d ever met.She saw the elegance in what he proposed: a story they controlled from beginning to end.

But somewhere on this murderous journey, something had changed in him.The killings stopped being merely instrumental and became fulfilling in themselves.Each death felt like balancing some cosmic ledger.They were debts repaid to the universe that had taken his father and left his killer free.

He felt clean for the first time since he was ten years old.

Nathan checked his watch.Any minute now.

Would he get out of this unscathed?He didn’t know anymore.If Mia Ripley suspected Sarah Webb of being a killer, then it’s possible thatotherpeople also knew.But he was an editor.Sarah was an author.People like them didn’t commit murder.The backlash from Sarah’s fans would be enough to secure them verdicts of innocence because, after all, there would be no forensic evidence tying him to the scene.He’d been obsessively careful.Sarah herself hadn’t even been at any of them.He’d done the dirty work himself.

In the distance, a vehicle pulled up to the access road that led to this isolated stretch of beach.The engine died, then a car door opened and closed.

Right on time.

Twenty-six years after a boy with a purple book learned that monsters were real, the monster he’d become prepared to close the circle.

After all, shehadto come.

He’d already dug the hole.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Mia Ripley knew this place.

‘Paradise Point,’ she said.

‘Very good, Agent Ripley.’Sarah pushed the barrel of the gun into the back of Mia’s forehead.The journey had been too direct for Ripley’s liking.She hadn’t had a chance to crash the car into a wall or the ocean.Now she’d arrived at her apparent destination.

‘I haven’t been an agent in months.’

‘Yet here you are.Out.’

Ripley complied.Sarah joined her, and direct her down a ramp that led to the beach.

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