Page 26 of Girl, Unknown

They had him.

“Who the hell are you?” Arthur shouted, his voice hoarse, his words snappy.

Ella moved closer, pistol still trained on the startled gentleman. She got close enough to sample his cologne, or lack thereof. She spotted red blotches under his eyes, cracked skin on his cheeks. The man looked a wreck.

“We’re the FBI. We need to talk to you.”

“You could have just knocked,” Arthur said. Ella detected the confidence in his tone, the kind of confidence that came with a hardwired disregard for fear. Most people usually stumbled when they found two pistols pointed at their chests. Arthur had no such concerns.

“Or we could have tried your home or your workplace, but you’re not there.” Ella motioned behind her back for Ripley to block the gateway out of here. They needed to cut Arthur off in case he tried to flee.

“No I’m not.”

Ella slightly lowered her pistol. “Mind telling us why you’re hiding out in an empty motel?”

Arthur took a few steps back. There was a change in his stance, something that suggested he wasn’t planning on sticking around for long.

“None of your business.”

Ella kept her unwavering stare on his beady eyes, so brown they looked black under the shadow of the darkened motel. She sized him up, trying to imagine him sneaking into Katherine’s apartment, stabbing the life out of her. He certainly had the size and strength to subdue her, and his current predicament suggested he had something to hide. Knowing this man was also an abuser of women stimulated her knuckles too, and fighting off the urge to lodge them in his face was more difficult than she anticipated.

“I think we need to talk,” Ella said. “And I know a great little precinct a few miles away.”

Arthur adjusted his jaw, opened his mouth to speak, then thundered back inside the motel to a chorus of deafening footsteps. His bulky frame in motion caused a gale that swept across Ella’s face, and then she was fast in pursuit, into the damp motel, the blackness pressing down on her like a physical presence. She raced through the hallway on the ground floor, footsteps against thin carpet as she followed Arthur’s logical escape route. It didn’t seem like this place had many exit points, but a guy like this would always have a backup plan.

Ella reached the end of the corridor and found a staircase leading to the heavens, but all her experience told her that fleeing suspects rarely went higher. Height meant less chance of escape, and if Arthur had trampled this stairwell, she’d have heard him.

Instead she stayed grounded, pulling the handles on all the motel doors in succession to see if Arthur had holed himself inside one. She tried three, all locked, but as she tugged the handle to room thirteen, her contact with the metallic doorknob caused a sudden explosion. The door swung back with force and Arthur Walters emerged from within, shoulder-barging Ella back against the corridor wall. The impact forced the air out of her lungs, and the brief moment of disorientation allowed Arthur to flee back down the corridor at a speed that betrayed his size.

Ella jumped back into action, pushing the pain aside as she trained a pistol shot at Arthur’s diminishing profile. Her finger itched on the trigger, but she didn’t have a clean shot. The golden rule: never point your gun at anything unless you intend to kill it. Ella didn’t know if other people were hiding out in here, so firing into the darkness and praying fortune was in your favor was a move best avoided.

A sudden crash echoed down the corridor, and as Ella moved closer, she saw Arthur scrambling with the locks on the motel’s front door. He unlocked deadbolts as fast as his hands could move, but then Ella remembered what she’d told herself around thirty minutes ago.

If you anticipated the human mind, it left nothing to chance.

Daylight flooded the motel as the front door swung outward. Arthur toppled out into the open, but Ella saw the scene play out in her mind before it happened. Arthur froze in his tracks when he saw the pistol aimed at his heart.

Ella trusted Ripley to play it smart. And she had.

“Don’t move,” she said.

But Arthur was already on the run again before Ripley had finished her command. He came hurtling back down the corridor, but this freight train was on course for a head-on collision. Ella bolted in his direction, fists clenched, muscles tightened, ready to unleash her unresolved frustration on one or more of Arthur’s body parts. Once she was in striking distance, her momentum defied gravity, and she left her feet and struck her elbow into Arthur’s thick skull. The suspect tried to shield the blow, but Ella’s force pushed beyond what limbs could defend against.

Arthur crumpled into a heap. He clutched his face, rolled on the ground. Ella grabbed her handcuffs, mounted her slithering target, and slapped them on.

Game over.

Ella caught her breath as Ripley’s voice carried down the hallway.

“Nice shot, Dark. One down.”

One down, at least one more to go.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ella entered the ice-cold interrogation room with an arm full of documents and a head full of questions. She had a great feeling about Arthur Walters, the man sitting in shackles, but she kept her head in the game. Any celebrations without hard evidence would be premature. The man was undoubtedly guilty of something, but how far his crimes stretched were still a mystery.

Time to extract the truth.

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