Page 68 of Girl, Unknown

“Yup. It’s gone.”

Martin beamed a smile Ripley was quickly becoming fond of. “Then I’ll tell my mechanic it’s over. You’ll just have to fix my brake pads instead.”

“I can do a lot more than that.”

Martin pulled out Ripley’s chair and beckoned her to sit. “Oh yeah? Like profiling murderers?”

Ripley parked herself. “Two in one night. Two profiles, two guys. Caught them both.”

Martin stopped in his tracks. “You caught two killers in one day?”

“Well, not me. My partner put the plan together. She does most of the work now. I’m just the egotist who gets her face on TV.”

“And you’re alright with that?” Martin asked. He pulled the oven open and shielded his face. “Your partner doing the work, I mean.”

Ripley looked around the room. She had everything she could want here. She’d spent thirty years in the field and now it was time to come indoors and wash off the mud. “Yes, I’m alright with that. I’m ready to move on, and I hope – I really hope – that you might move on with me?”

***

Ella jimmied open the fire exit to her apartment block, carried herself up the stairwell as fast as her wounds allowed. The laceration in her stomach still throbbed with every step, but she’d adopted a new gait to minimize the sting. More painful was her swollen larynx that made even the tiniest sips of water feel like she was swallowing rocks. Her oxygen intake was perfectly fine according to the doctor, so now she just had to wait for the trauma to subside.

She’d gotten back from Davenport last night, but she’d spent the evening at Ben’s place. He hadn’t seen anyone suspicious lurking about his place, so Ella was happy to conclude that the Diamonds – or Logan Nash – weren’t aware of his existence.

It was Friday morning now, and Ella was in the place where Logan Nash had told her not to come. The man who’d killed her father and said that if she came back, she would die.

Well, she was here and she wasn’t dead yet. Now, the race was on. The first person to find the other one would be the winner. She opened her front door, slowly and carefully, ready to pull her Glock at any moment. She stepped over a mountain of mail, then moved from room to room, checking every single corner, cupboard, and curtain for waiting intruders. Once she’d done a full sweep, she did another one.

Ella went back to the front door, made sure it was securely locked, and then heaved her hallway cabinet in front of it. She inspected the mail at her feet, but atop the usual junk was a thick, A4-sized envelope with her name handwritten on the front. She grabbed it, turned it over with caution. She first assumed it was something to do with her rental agreement, but her landlord would never be so personal. She tore it open, emptied out the contents on her living room table.

Piles of papers. Sitting atop, a note:

Dear Ella, Robert kept paper copies of his important files at home. When you’re done, destroy everything here.

Clarissa. That’s why she’d been here. She couldn’t get Ella access to the VICAP files but she could get her the hard copies. She’d delivered all of Robert’s files on Logan Nash by hand.

Ella was indebted to her.

Rifling through the documents with a trembling hand, Ella concluded that maybe, just maybe, she had enough material here to form a complete picture of this man. One page was a list of sightings of Logan Nash over the past thirty years, another listed every suspected victim, another had a list of potential contacts and associates.

I’ve been waiting as long as you have for this. I was always going to come back for you. I never intended to let you live, Logan had said down the phone.

Well, now Ella had to do what she had to do. She’d tracked down murderers with less information than what lay in front of her now, because all it took was a little spark and insight to get into someone’s head. She and Logan were bonded by a shared experience, and while it might have occurred twenty-six years ago, it was enough.

Now the real work began.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Ella hadn’t moved out of her chair for at least six hours now. Her apartment was dressed in darkness, and she’d spend all day poring over every last word, every last sentence in the documents on her living room table. If what she was reading had any semblance of truth to it, Logan Nash was not merely a killer, but a deadly plague that had made a significant dent in the population of the United States.

His primary hunting grounds seemed to be Washington, D.C., and Virginia, but bodies bearing his signature diamond incision had been found in California, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Chicago, and Arizona too. According to Robert’s file, of which the last update had been submitted three years ago, Logan Nash was suspected of one-hundred-and-thirteen individual slayings. That suggested he killed an average of five people per year.

Which, if true, would make him one of the most prolific murders in United States history, at least as far as public record went. Very little was known about contract killers given their ability to stay concealed, so over a hundred murders might have been a drop in the ocean in comparison to some hitmen.

But Ella was about to make sure Logan Nash didn’t get to number one-hundred-and-fourteen.

Six hours of intense scrutiny and Ella still felt as sharp as steel. She grabbed her notebook and began scrawling everything she’d gleaned about Logan so far, approaching the profile as she would any perpetrator. She needed to see it all written in one place, and then perhaps something would jump out to her.

What she knew so far was that Logan Nash was a middle-aged white man who lived a life of secrecy, but one hidden in plain sight. Logan Nash was not his real name, but merely the codename that the Diamonds used for him. Judging by her searches, he hadn’t used the name anywhere else. There were no properties, tax records, or planning permissions requested by anyone with that name in the state – or at least none who fit Logan’s characteristics.

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