Page 29 of Girl, Unknown

Ella pondered a strange theory, lost herself in a sea of imagined colors and landscapes while a few outlandish ideas played out in her head. An unexpected temptation to sleep came in a vicious wave, but as she shut her eyes to embrace it, a ringing phone shocked her back to reality.

Her cell lit up with an unsaved number. The same one that had called her earlier.

Ella grabbed it, hit the answer button. “Clarissa,” she said.

No words, just the sound of breathy running.

“Hello? You okay?” asked Ella.

“Ella,” Clarissa’s voice finally came through. “You have to listen to me.”

All her exhaustion suddenly vanished. She was alive, alert, heart pounding against her rib cage. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been to your apartment. There was a man outside your door. Trying to get in.”

More questions than answers. “Who? What did he look like?”

“Huge. Jet black hair, short. Scar tissue on his cheek. Fifties. Long black coat, black satchel.”

Ella knew no one by that description and it certainly wasn’t Ben. “When was this?”

“Five minutes ago. I’m walking back to my car now. Couldn’t get through the gate to park in your parking lot.”

Ella slowed her breathing, frantically trying to fit the pieces together. The questions came in a flurry. “Get back to your car quickly. What was he doing exactly? And why are you at my place?”

“I saw him try the handle, then try and peer through your spyglass. He disappeared when he saw me and I don’t know where he went.”

“Okay, but…”

“Ella, I thinktheyknow you know.”

She thought about the two members of the Diamonds gang currently sitting in holding cells. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that word could have reached the members that were still free, so now the Diamonds were on a relentless mission to take out the woman who’d gotten too close.

Clarissa continued, hoarse and breathy, “I told you not to do this. You’ve dug your own grave.”

“It was already too late by the time we spoke. This was set in motion a long time ago.”

“I think it was him,” Clarissa blurted out.

Ella was pondering that same question herself. “I don’t know who this phantom is, what he looks like, or even what his name is. But I think it was him too.”

The detective’s instinct. A subconscious, otherworldly sense that etched a truth into your brain without the need for deep thought. Every fiber of her being told her that the man stalking her apartment was the same man who killed her father twenty-five years ago. He’d come back to finish the story.

“We locked eyes,” Clarissa said. “Just for a second. But I saw Robert’s face in them. The man looked at me with familiarity. He recognized me.”

Ella wanted to scream at Clarissa, ask her why she didn’t shoot him on sight, ask why she didn’t try to pummel him to dust right there in her apartment corridor. But she knew Clarissa wanted no part of this deadly game, and involving her any more than she already had might be digging two graves instead of one.

Clarissa finished, “I’m in the car now. On the move.”

“Good. What were you doing there, anyway?” Ella asked.

“Doing you a favor. Now, this is the last thing I’m going to tell you before I never talk about this again.”

Ella scrambled for a pen and paper, but Clarissa was already reeling off the details before she could land one.

“Robert told me a few things about Logan. Things he shouldn’t have. Logan disguises himself as an everyman. He works a job, has a family, hides in plain sight. He uses a different name, and has social security, passports, driving licenses all under his alias. Robert doubted that even Logan’s family knew his real identity. “

Ella shut her eyes, committed the words to memory. Logan Nash was a creature hiding among the ordinary. She wouldn’t find him in an underground lair; she’d find him in an office, grocery store, construction site.

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