Page 53 of Girl, Unknown

“What took you so long?”

“Your dad was special to me. He was a great thief, one of the best. You could say me and old Ken Dark were friends, but then he turned his back on us. He tried to leave the Diamonds, so I was ordered to clean him out.”

Ella had to lean against the wall to steady her breathing. The thought of her dad and this man being friends once upon a time made her sick to her core.

“So, why wait until now?”

“I was waiting for you to get close, to feel like you had a chance. Then I was going to take out two generations of a single family – that would be a first for me. I might even stretch this one out, lock you away where I locked all the others. Torture you until you beg me to kill you. That’s always fun.”

Ella had heard enough. The anger rose from her stomach to her lips and she couldn’t hold back the bile. “You think I’m scared of you? Think again. I’m not afraid to die fighting for this. The only death is when you stop fighting, and I’m going to keep on going until the end. Wherever you are, I’m coming for you.”

Logan laughed. “See you soon.”

Another dead line.

Ella looked at her phone screen, hands shaking uncontrollably. In the moment she’d been calm and collected, but now that it was over, she was feeling the burn. She’d just had a conversation with the man who killed her father, the man who plagued her from day one. He was a real person with a voice and job and character. He wasn’t some phantom stranger, he was findable, touchable.

Killable.

And given what Logan Nash had just told her, he wasn’t as smart as he thought.

Ella rested against a table, steadied her breathing, and calmed her racing heart. She hadn’t expected Logan to be so cerebral, so dedicated to his job. She assumed his kills meant nothing to him, but they apparently brought him great pride and satisfaction. He was a serial killer in a contract killer’s body.

She slipped out of the office, back into the hustle of the main area. Ripley was leaning against the wall where Ella had left her, regarding the carpeted floor with an absent stare. Her free arm swayed by her side, and when she caught Ella’s eye, her expression shifted from absent to distress. Ripley closed in on her and said, “This can’t be real.”

“Tell me about it.” Ella was unprepared for the sudden jarring transition from personal horrors to the current case.

“You might be right. Mason Price might not be so guilty after all.”

Her last conversation with Mason seemed like a million years ago now. The thoughts came flooding back, and then a new comprehension tunneled into her head, kicking her back to consciousness with a heavy boot.

“There’s a fourth body,” Ella said. She glanced at a wall clock above Ripley’s head. Barely one p.m. in the afternoon.

Bodies usually came in the dead of the night, then awareness of them came at daybreak.

Ripley’s deep inhalation confirmed it. Then she said, “And this one is… different.”

Ella felt like the ground below her had given way, swallowed her up, and sent her spiraling into the abyss like a stone down a well. Into an all-consuming blackness with no end in sight, the air growing colder every second.

The monster was back.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

“Four victims in three days,” Ella said. “This isn’t normal.”

They were on the top floor of the Davenport City Council building, in a cramped office spoiled with paperwork, spattered blood, and a lifeless body. The victim was in her leather office chair, slumped across her desk in a bloody, satirical parody of working life. The scene was far removed from anything Ella had seen so far, prompting a few invasive thoughts as to whether this was even related to the three prior murders.

She felt like she’d been transported here at the click of a button. She barely remembered the journey, instead preoccupied with internal reflections. Another stop on the rollercoaster of disaster.

Sergeant Grant was at the body. “This is Gail Brookes. Councilwoman for the City Commission. Well-known around here. One of her staff found her in this state twenty minutes ago.”

Ripley asked, “You know her?”

“Not personally. She makes appearances on local news occasionally. The outspoken type. She filed a harassment case against the mayor last year. It was all over the news.”

Ella took it all in, ruminated on the information, and slotted any perfect-fitting pieces into the thousand-piece jigsaw that was this case.

“How long before forensics get here?” Ripley asked.

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