Page 3 of Girl, Empty (Ella Dark #27)

She wasn’t sure why that particular holiday remained memorable, because she’d never been a pizza lover and her brief love affair with a video game about car theft started and ended that same holiday.

Perhaps it was because things had been simpler back then, because that was her pre-federal life.

Before obsessive stalkers killed everyone she held dear.

‘You should be in the office. Rookie agents always have a rah-rah speech on the first day back.’

‘I know. I meant you.’ Luca switched on the coffee machine then dried his wet hair with a dish towel.

‘That’s the wrong type of towel.’

‘What? A towel’s a towel.’

‘Bath towels are for body parts. Dish towels are for… dishes.’

‘They’re both towels.’

This was the fundamental difference between men and women, Ella decided.

The taxonomy of objects. Women understood that everything had its purpose, but men saw a piece of absorbent fabric and thought: problem solved.

A dish towel used for hair today became a bath towel used for dishes tomorrow, and before you knew it, the world was in chaos.

‘Never mind.’

Luca sat opposite her, and now she saw that his hair wasn’t even dry. All he’d done was soak a perfectly good towel. ‘I know you’re dreading this,’ he said.

‘Dreading what?’

‘Going back to work.’

He wasn’t wrong. It had been six weeks since Ben had been murdered in California – the third of Ella’s confidantes to be killed – and not much had happened since.

The case of Ella’s stalker-killer was now officially under FBI jurisdiction, and Ella had passed on her theory about Austin Creed to the investigators.

He was the first serial killer Ella ever caught, and while she knew him as Austin Creed, most of the world knew him as the Mimicker, because his M.O.

was to copycat infamous serial murders of yesteryear.

Ed Gein, Richard Ramirez, Edmund Kemper, John Wayne Gacy, and finally a haphazard attempt at mimicking Ted Bundy before Ella intercepted and put him behind bars.

Although, if she was being honest, it was less of a theory and more of a gut feeling.

She’d lost her cell and hairbrush on the day she’d been to the courthouse in Louisiana for Creed’s sentencing.

Of course, Creed couldn’t have taken the items himself, but it didn’t mean someone else in the courthouse couldn’t have.

And perhaps that person was working in conjunction with Creed to make her life hell.

The investigators had said her theory had merit, and they’d told Ella to stay a million miles away from this investigation. The closer she got, the worse things would be, and she agreed with their logic, even if she had no intention of following their advice.

But still. What she wouldn’t give to find whoever did this herself. One minute alone with him and she could deliver justice better than a courthouse ever could.

‘I’m going to visit Ripley in an hour, then I’m at home the rest of the day,’ she said. ‘Training on the new system. I don’t need to be in the office.’

‘Are you going to be on camera?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then brush your hair because it looks like crap.’

‘Roger.’ They said healthy relationships were based on honesty, and Luca was too honest for his own good. ‘You remember where I’m going later this week, right?’

Luca's expression went sheepish. The same look he got when caught using the good scissors to open packages. 'Yeah. I remember.'

Ella was going to California to say goodbye to Ben properly.

Six weeks had passed since his death, but between the investigation, the holidays, and various bureaucratic delays, this was the first chance she'd had to pay her respects.

Ben deserved that much, more than just a phone call to his mother.

She owed him her presence at the end, because if not for her, Ben would still be here.

‘Do you want to come?’

‘No. You need to say goodbye without me there.’

It was a difficult balance, telling your current boyfriend that you needed to attend the burial of your dead ex-lover.

Even calling Ben her ex didn’t feel right.

Former partner, former lover, former everything.

The man who’d saved her life more than once and even wore matching scars.

The man whose death was entirely her fault.

And Luca understood this. In another relationship, this conversation might have triggered jealousy or some passive-aggressive comments about moving on. Luca didn’t do jealousy, luckily, especially not with dead men. You couldn't compete with ghosts and Luca was smart enough not to try.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and meant it.

‘What for?’

‘For getting it.’

‘I’d be more worried if you didn’t want to go. That would mean you were further gone than I thought.'

‘Fair.’

‘But you know why you’re really going, don’t you?’

Ella cocked a brow. ‘I’m going to pay respects.’

Luca got that hesitant look, the one that meant he was about to say something she didn't want to hear. ‘Maybe. But there’s another reason.’

'What are you on about?'

‘No invites at a funeral. Anyone could show up.’

'That's not why I'm going.'

'Isn't it? Not even a little bit?'

She wanted to deny it, but Luca knew her too well.

The thought had crossed her mind. More than crossed it.

It had set up camp and started a fire. This killer was sending her a message in the form of dead bodies, meaning they had the type of psychopathology that would inject themselves into the environments they created.

Every mourner at Ben’s funeral would be a suspect.

‘It’s a bonus. That’s all.’

‘You can’t keep dodging the obvious, Ell. You know that, right?’

‘What’s the obvious?’

Luca moved over to the coffee machine. She now realized that he’d been wearing the same outfit for nearly this entire holiday, and was the only man Ella knew who wore shorts in winter.

‘You think these murders have something to do with Creed. The investigators agree that this has something to do with Creed. So why has no one gone to visit Creed?’

Ella clenched her teeth. Of course she'd wanted to visit Creed. She'd inquired the moment she'd made the connection and practically begged the investigators to let her talk to him.

‘Creed's off limits,' she said.

‘We’re the FBI.’

‘His lawyers are appealing his death sentence. They won’t get anywhere, but they’ve got him locked down like Alcatraz. No visitors except legal counsel. They said any contact with outside agencies could constitute harassment and compromise his mental state.’

‘Mental state? He’s a serial murderer.’

‘That’s their angle. A sick man who needs treatment, not execution. They want him moved to a psychiatric hospital instead of a prison.’

‘That sucks,’ Luca said, ‘but what about things like his mail or his contact with people inside jail? If he’s manipulating someone on the outside, then he’s talking to someone on the outside.’

‘His mail has been monitored since day one. You can’t get a birthday card into prison without it being dissected by the admin staff. If there was anything fishy in his mail, they’d have flagged it.’

Luca took his coffee and leaned against the refrigerator. ‘Bring back the rope. Or the firing squad. It’d be so much easier if someone just shot him.’

‘That’s exactly what’s going to happen when his execution date comes.’

‘Yeah, in about twenty years,’ Luca said. ‘We shouldn’t have to wait that long. Anyway, I need to get dressed. You probably should too. You don’t want the trainer to think you’re a lazy oaf.’

Ella watched Luca disappear into the bedroom and let her thoughts drift to darker places. God, she'd love to visit Creed. To sit across from him in an interview room and extract answers from him by whatever means necessary.

Would it be a good idea if someone killed him? The moral calculus shifted depending on which lens she applied. Yes, because a dead Creed couldn't manipulate anyone. No, because Creed was the only lead they had, and killing him might let his accomplice escape justice.

But Ella wondered, in the dark territory of her mind where emotion won out over objectivity, that if she found herself alone with Creed, could she resist putting a bullet in his head?

After what he’d done to Julianne and Jenna and Ben, could she look at the man who’d orchestrated these deaths out of some pathetic revenge scheme and not be tempted to put him in the ground where he belonged?

She'd like to think she was better than that.

But sitting here in her kitchen, with Ben's funeral looming and the memory of finding his body still fresh, Ella wasn't sure she was better than anything at all.