Page 64 of Girl, Undone
Five.
At last, the timer hit zero, the three-minute threshold breached.The software pinged, locking onto the last known coordinates of the call.
A stretch of green in North Bypass Creek, miles away from the nearest residential area.
Ella heart dropped to the pit of her stomach.
Another cabin?
Another body?
Ella turned the key, fired up her engine, and sped out into the streets.
Not tonight, she told herself.There would be no more bodies on her watch.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
With urgency that bordered on recklessness, Ella stormed through the streets of Cedarburg like a bullet.Her mind was a maelstrom of panic.Each thought collided with the next like molecules in a boiling test tube.She wasn’t in a cruiser, but she flew past red lights regardless.As she turned onto a narrow country lane, her GPS told her that she was just over a mile from her destination.
What would await her at the other end?Another cabin nestled in the woods?Another scene that could be straight out of a nightmare?These thoughts hammered in her head, relentless and unforgiving.On her dashboard, her call was still connected, but still silent.During the ten minutes she’d been racing through the night, she hadn’t heard a whisper or a shout or a sign of life from the other side.She couldn’t risk calling or texting for backup in case the caller heard her down the phone and ended the call, so she had to make this trip alone.
Ella's car careened down the serpentine country lane.The road was a ribbon of gray which unfurled beneath the sweep of her headlights as the miles dwindled.She began to visualize the potential scenes that awaited her: a confrontation, a rescue, a trap.Did Derek know her real identity, and if so, how?Was he able to see through her ruse during her time at the group session?Or maybe he'd watched her, researched her, and concluded that she was more than a local woman bound by phobias.
The headlights cut through the darkness to reveal a clearing ahead.The winding lane came to an abrupt stop as Ella’s car emerged on the edge of a crystal lake.She double-checked the location the phone and matched it with the map on her GPS.
This had to be it.
And she had to make the rest of the journey on foot.
Without hesitation, Ella flung the car door open and stepped into the moonlit night with her cell clutched tightly in her hand.It guided her forward.She skirted past the edge of the lake, into the dense woodland tapestry.Ella was a blur of panic, her feet barely touching the forest floor as she bounded through the grass and mud and felled branches.Each leap was a liaison with danger as she vaulted over tangled underbrush and skidded past trees.
Her ears were finely tuned to the symphony of the night, yet, above the cries of nature, her focus was on the silent phone clutched in her palm.As she delved deeper into the woods, the air grew cooler, the scent of pine and earth invading her nostrils.Everything became a little thicker, a little more intrusive, branches up above forming a natural cathedral over her head.
It had to be here somewhere.
Derek Graham’s phone was within spitting distance, but where?
Every muscle in her body was coiled to react.She could feel the adrenaline in her veins, pushing her forward even though her mind screamed for caution.
Suddenly, she stopped.The GPS marker on her phone had halted, indicating she was close.Ella scanned the darkness, her eyes searching for any sign of the cabin, any hint of movement.Her hand instinctively went to her weapon.Ella moved ahead, peering from shadow to shadow, looking for any anomaly, any manmade structure amongst the natural.The forest seemed to conspire in secrecy, but then, the faintest outline of something artificial materialized amongst the trees.
At first, it was nothing more than a trick of the light; a mere suggestion of structure that could as easily have been illusion as reality.
Piece by piece, the cabin offered itself to her: the rough-hewn texture of its wooden walls, the stark angle of the roof cutting a clear line against the sky, windows that stared back like unblinking eyes.
With the cabin now in full view, Ella's urgency transformed into reckless abandon.Her heart ascended to her throat as her feet pounded the forest floor with renewed fervor.Anxiety clawed at her insides, but the distance between Ella and cabin quickly evaporated.
Ella charged and tensed for impact.She summoned all of her strength into her upper body and transformed her shoulder into a battering ram.
The door, unprepared for the fury of her assault, gave way with a groan of stressed wood and rusted hinges, swinging open to reveal the shadow-laden interior of the cabin.Ella aimed her pistol at the scene in front of her – the centerpiece of the room – blinking rapidly to adjust her vision to the darkness.
Slowly, the cabin’s secrets unfurled.
Ella's heart, already a captive to fear, now raced with the shock of misunderstanding.
‘What the hell?’
Ella's gaze locked onto a sight that twisted her expectations into knots.There in the center of the cabin was Derek Graham, but not as the predator she had envisioned.
