Page 41 of Girl, Empty (Ella Dark #27)

Ella had only had to smash two panes and three doors to reach the roof, which was less casualties than she’d expected. Because she’d done some t hing most people had forgotten how to do – just unplug everything.

‘What the… who are you?’ Calvin screamed.

‘I’m the FBI, and you need to pun that gun down, Calvin.’

‘No. This can’t happen.’ He yanked Kevin’s hair, and the old man tried to kick him off. ‘He needs to confess. He needs to die.’

‘There’ll be no more dying. You’ve got three seconds to put that gun down. One… two….’

Calvin spun, then dropped his pistol to the ground. Ella was surprised at the sudden compliance, and that gave her cause for concern. ‘Good. Now raise your hands and kick it away from you.’

Calvin's eyes ping-ponged between Ella and the gun at his feet like a lab rat who'd just discovered the maze had no exit. After a moment, he kicked the gun away. It landed beside a yellow notebook. ‘How did you get here? I locked this place down.’

‘You didn’t lock anything down. It’s just wires, Roth. My partner just killed the power to this place and every lock disengaged. All we had to do was hammer through the deadbolts.’

Calvin's face went through several expressions at once. Disbelief gave way to rage, and Ella had to admit she enjoyed watching this genius grapple with the terrible understanding that he'd been outsmarted by a crowbar.

‘That's impossible.’

‘Nothing’s impossible. Only things that look impossible.’

Calvin begun to shiver and twitch, like a kid who needed the bathroom. His eyes kept darting to the roof's edge, to the door that wasn't there anymore, to Kevin Wolfe who was bleeding but breathing and definitely not about to get shot.

‘You're lying.’

‘I’m not lying about anything. I met your dear mother, the woman with scrambled eggs for brains, except they’re not as scrambled as she wants everyone to think. Ella took a half-step closer. ‘She knew exactly what you were up to. And she knew exactly what she'd done to dear old dad.’

‘My mother didn't-’

‘Berries, Roth. Simple as that. Your dad had a reaction, which caused a heart attack. End of story.’

Calvin's breathing went shallow and quick, like he was drowning in air. ‘That's not... Kevin killed him. Kevin locked him in that room and-,’

'Kevin didn't lock him anywhere, sweetpea. Your dad died because your mom had been feeding him poison. All these years you've been thinking there's some grand, convoluted answer, and really it was just berries.'

‘No.’ Calvin shook his head so hard Ella worried he might snap something. ‘She wouldn't. She loved him.’

'She murdered him, because Dennis Roth might have been a violent man, but he was her violent man.

He left bruises where they wouldn't show and made her flinch every time a door slammed. Your mother killed her abuser and let you spend fifteen years hating the wrong man because the truth was too ugly to tell a 14-year-old kid.’

‘She’s right,’ Kevin spluttered. ‘I knew too.’

And Calvin broke.

A scream ripped from his throat and traveled on the wind across the outskirts of Indianapolis.

He lunged at Kevin, grabbed him by the neck and suddenly they were dancing towards the edge of the roof.

Kevin fought for leverage, but Calvin had youthful energy on his side.

‘Shut up! Both of you! I’m going to kill you! ’

This was it.

Ella had to take him down.

She rose her Glock. Clear shot. Clean line of fire. Kevin wasn't even in the way.

Then pulled the trigger.

Click.

It didn’t fire.

She tried again. Click. Click. Click.

Nothing.

What the hell was wrong? Had it jammed?

‘Son of a bitch,’ she screamed, then started running. Calvin already had Kevin halfway over the edge now, and the older man's legs were kicking frantically as gravity tried to claim its prize.

‘This is for my father, you bastard! This is for years of-’

Ella grabbed him, pulled him off of Kevin, and he swung and connected an elbow with Ella's nose.

She flew back, shielded her face, and felt her palms fill with blood.

The adrenaline coursed fast and violent, but before she could retaliate, Calvin was screaming again.

He began staggering in drunken circles, and one of his arms dangled uselessly while the other clawed at something in his back.

Something had incapacitated him, and when Calvin Roth fell to his knees with his back to her, Ella could see that it was a brown pencil.

Blood spilled and pooled under his knees. Meanwhile, Kevin had scrambled away from the ledge and was now leaning against what looked like a garage. Where he pulled that pencil from, Ella had no idea, but that was a question for later.

‘Sorry, Calvin,’ she said. ‘But you spent too long looking down at your feet. You should have looked up, to the stars.’

Calvin looked like he was about to cry. Maybe he was.

Ella dug deep and found a note of sympathy for this poor boy, but then she thought of Michael, Thomas and Noah – three people who did nothing wrong but had been sacrificed at the altar of a broken kid’s delusions.

Three families ruined, all because Calvin Roth wanted an answer that didn’t exist.

He tried to stand, but then he met Ella's fist. Her knuckles met cartilage, and Calvin Roth collapsed face-down on the roof of the same building where his father had died fifteen years before. She reached down, pulled the pencil out of his back, and threw it on the ground. She rolled him over.

Calvin spat blood involuntarily. There was some internal damage, but the kid would survive.’

‘Am I going to die?’ he breathed.

‘No. I promised your mom I’d take care of you.’

Ella found her handcuffs and snapped them on Calvin Roth’s wrists.

There were no electronic locks here. You couldn’t hack handcuffs, and that was good enough for Ella.

Game over.