Page 62 of Girl, Undone
Ella pulled out her cell, tapped in the number that Mason read out, and saved Derek as a contact.'Thank you,' she said.'I'll try him ASAP.'
‘Let him know we’re worried, and by the way, you never showed up for that coffee.’
The comment caught her off-guard.She’d completely forgotten about Mason’s meetup request the last time they spoke.
‘Sorry.Been up to my eyeballs in...work.’
‘I bet,’ Mason smiled.‘Well, I’ll be waiting.’
Before Ella could get another word out, Mason spun on his heels and headed for the door, leaving Ella with her thoughts for company.She quickly turned her focus to the phone in her palm and debated calling Derek right away.
But if he was her unsub, the chances of him answering right now were near zero. Even so, if Derek had his fourth victim in his targets, she couldn’t just stand around and wait for a miracle.She had to get out there and make every effort to throw a wrench in the works.
Ella slipped to the back of the room, away from the commotion and idle chatter.Her thumb hovered over the call button.
She pressed, waited, her heart in her mouth.
Two rings.
Three rings.
But the sound stretched on.Hope frayed into disappointment.
And finally, a robotic voice told her she’d reached voicemail.
Anticipation gave way to frustration as she stared at her phone.The screen grew dark and reflected her tired, beaten frown.
Ella slipped out of the communal room, into the corridor, and headed towards the church exit.She burst out into the courtyard and breathed in the winter air, then surveyed the distant tombstones as though the answer to her predicament might be etched beside the details of the dead.She began to pace up and down the pathway, rubbing the back of her neck in irritation.Nightfall was beginning to set in, and by her count, it meant another body was only a few hours away – if her unsub hadn't already skipped town.
Her thoughts turned to Dylan Hartley, the app developer.Perhaps he’d made some progress in obtaining the victims’ chat transcripts, but even so, it wouldn’t reveal Derek’s whereabouts.If anything, she needed access to all of Derek’s chats on the app.
She also considered the group therapy members.Who among them hadn’t shown up tonight?If the killer was keeping up his usual pattern, the victim would be both a member of the groupandon the Scarecrow app.
But as Ella tried to mentally prepare her next move, the stillness of the cemetery was broken by the shrill ring of her phone.
Startled, she fumbled for the device in her pocket, and her heart endured an abrupt shockwave.
The flashing screen was alive with a name.
A name she’d only just put into her phone.
Derek Graham was calling her.
She brought the phone to her ear.
‘Hello?’
There was a pause, a stretched second where the world inhaled, and Ella's nerve endings prickled.The rustling of leaves in a gentle breeze, the distant cry of a bird returning to its nest, the soft crunch of gravel beneath her – all of these sounds came at once and briefly drowned out any sound from the other side of the phone.
But then Ella realized there was nothing.
Just a crackly, static line with no one on the other end.
‘Hello?’she asked again.‘Derek?’
No response.
Ella checked her screen to make sure the line hadn’t disconnected.
