Girl, Haunted (Ella Dark #22)

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Ella Dark's gut did a backflip straight into her throat. She blinked at the laptop screen like it held the answer to life's darkest mysteries, but all she got back was a grinning skull in the place where her soul should be. She'd just stumbled across a break in the case big enough to drive a Dodge Charger through, but a lead this hot had a timer on it. And she didn't need cop's instinct to know that hourglass was nearly empty.

Ella clawed through the mound of crap on her desk, hunting for her cell. The damn thing was always playing hide-and-seek at the worst possible times; like now for instance, when she needed to drop a tactical nuke on her partner's skull.

She launched herself out of her chair so fast vertigo climbed up her spine and tapped out. She swept everything off her desk until she found that goddamn clump of metal.

‘Got it.’

But the moment she picked it up, the screen flashed with Luca’s name.

INCOMING CALL .

‘Hawkins,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve found it.’

Dead air hissed down the line. No scathing wit, no jaunty one-liner. Just the harsh rasp of someone else's breathing underlaid by scuffling sounds, the muffled grunts and thumps of a struggle just out of earshot.

‘Luca? You there?’

The rustling and thumping grew louder, more frenzied. Like a pack of junkyard dogs fighting over table scraps. Then, abruptly, the background noise died and the line went graveyard quiet.

‘Hello?’ she asked. Ella knew that Luca wouldn’t – couldn’t – reply, but the question spilled out like a verbal knee-jerk anyway.

Another stretch of silence. And then she knew. Knew it in that lizard-brained place where gut sank into gristle that something was wrong.

A soft tearing sound, like tape peeling from flesh. Then a voice finally oozed into Ella’s ear.

‘Hello.’

Two syllables and Ella's hindbrain tripped the panic switch.

That voice. His voice. The same one she’d heard down the phone last night. Instinct screamed at her to threaten, to snarl and posture and promise ten kinds of hell but she checked it. Wrestled the rage down until it burned cold.

‘Let him go,’ Ella said.

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because we might spare you the death penalty.’

A mad cackle, straight from the crypt. 'Oh, please. You're too late to stop this.'

Ella tamped down the urge to scream Luca's name, to make this screwhead confirm he had her partner at his mercy. She pictured the scene; Luca caught off-guard, coldcocked and dragged away to whatever fresh hell this psychopath had planned.

Ella's thoughts banked hard. What did this bastard know? Did he learn anything from Luca? Did he figure they’d ID'd him? Or maybe he thought Luca ended up there alone without informing anyone else?

She couldn’t risk mentioning anything, especially not the name of the bookstore. Because if he twigged to the fact that someone else had figured out his identity, Luca was as good as gone. Ella had to play this smart. Play up the clueless cop angle.

So Ella dummied up, slipped into the skin of someone who still had all her fingers and toes crossed under the table. When she spoke, her voice was steady as a surgeon's hand.

‘Who are you?’

‘If you were so smart, you'd have figured it out by now.’

‘We’re working on it.’ Ella barreled out of her office, damn near taking the door off its hinges. The precinct was a ghost town without a ghost. There was only one soul around to light her fuse – Redmond. She flagged him down in a whirlwind of waving arms.

‘Where does this end, Cassius?’ she asked. ‘Another haunted house?’

‘Of course. But which one? Isn’t that the question?’

Redmond rushed over and gave her the long blink of the terminally confused. Ella grabbed a pen off the desk beside her and scrawled ‘Ghostlight Books’ into a notepad. Redmond’s expression lit up.

‘So why don’t you give me a clue? Lots of haunted places around here.’

Work him. Get him to reveal something, anything.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Old buildings, churches, bookshops.’

A long beat of silence, fringed with static. He mumbled something like he was searching for the right words. It was the first time she'd tripped him up.

Got you, you bastard.

‘You’ll have to figure that out yourself. Must dash.’

Click. Dead line. Ella pocketed the phone and looked at Redmond’s confused expression. She tasted blood, sure that she’d bitten clean through her cheek while she was on the line.

‘That was him. We need to get to Ghostlight Books right now.’ She was already moving through the office at a dead sprint with Redmond behind her.

‘The bookshop? In the square? Why?’

‘Because that was our unsub – and he’s got Luca.’

Hold on, Hawkins. Just hang in there. As she barged out into the night, another thought hit her, one she didn't expect. If this son of a bitch so much as split one of Luca's cuticles, she was going to rip out his heart and show it to him. Death penalty be damned. Some monsters deserved to meet their end screaming.