Page 49 of Girl, Undone
The voice clip ended and Ella rushed to play the next one in line.
She's just lying there, and the house is burning down around us.I can't breathe; the smoke is choking me.I'm screaming for help, but no one comes.The fire is everywhere, and I can't escape it.It's like I'm reliving that night over and over again.
Ella sat motionless as she clicked play again.Then one more time.
This must have been Rebecca Morgan’s voice; a glimpse into her deepest fears, a fear so paralyzing that it had haunted her dreams and now, it seemed, had played a role in her untimely death.
The rush of adrenaline that had initially surged through Ella began to morph into a cold, creeping dread.The question that echoed in her mind was a haunting one:
Who was on the receiving end of these messages?
With a deftness born of urgency, Ella delved further into the data.She wasn’t the most skilled technology-navigator in the FBI, but she managed to isolate the file and dig into the hidden data that usually consisted of letters and characters that meant nothing to her.
Amongst the stream of data, Ella glimpsed the full file name.
Voice_note_032_sent_file_scarecrow.m4a.
Ella’s blood turned to ice.All the feeling drained from her fingertips.
Scarecrow.
What the hell was that?
A heavy knot settled in Ella's stomach as she went back to the phone data, found the search function, and typed in the keyword.Ella's fingers trembled slightly, every sense heightened, every nerve on edge.
Three results.
Two voice notes.
One app.
Scarecrow.
Ella opened it up, and her heart nearly leaped out of her chest.
‘You gotta be kidding me,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
He slammed his fist on the desk.Papers scattered.Files he'd organized that morning now lay in chaos across the floor.
It had been perfect.Every detail planned.Every variable accounted for.And then it all went to hell.He hadn’t even witnessed the climax of his grand design, deprived of the satisfaction of seeing Rebecca engulfed by her ultimate fear.The fire, which was meant to be his ally, had betrayed him, proving too wild, too unpredictable.
The police would find her car.Her phone.Her ID.Evidence he hadn't meant to leave behind.
And then what?
They’d track him?
Was there anything on the subject’s phone that could give away his identity?Or had she deleted all traces of their conversation as he’d demanded?
‘All for nothing,’ he said as he paced around his office.He caught his reflection in the window; a bent nose, scratched forehead, dried blood below his bottom lip.The reflection staring back at him was a man teetering on the edge of his own abyss, because he’d foolishly fallen prey to a common oversight in psychological research.His self-perception had been distorted because he looked at himself in a rose-colored mirror.He’d been too confident, and it had nearly cost him everything.
He needed to think, to plan.The police were no doubt closing in.He had underestimated the fire's capricious nature.Fire, he realized, was a fickle element.It refused to be tamed or controlled.And control was vital.Without it, the experiments were meaningless.
His gaze fell to the desk, to the list of potential subjects.Ten names, each one carefully researched.Fears cataloged, routines memorized, and vulnerabilities mapped.But now, doubt poisoned his confidence.Had he been too ambitious and blinded by his own hubris to see the flaws in his plan?He had not intended this to be a long-term experiment because he was under no illusion that he could keep this up for a considerable time.This whole venture was a modern-day Stanford Prison Experiment, of which the results would be published after his death.The psychotherapy community would shun him posthumously, but his findings would be deemed invaluable regardless.The Milgram Experiment, Harlow’s monkeys, Unit 731.They had all been unethical projects that ended up shaping the world’s understanding of human behavior.
His fear experiments would slot right in.
