Page 7 of Girl, Empty (Ella Dark #27)

If you didn’t count the businessman who’d passed out the moment he’d sat down, which Ella didn’t, she and Ripley had the business class section to themselves.

Now about thirty-thousand feet above D.C.

– or probably Pennsylvania now – Ella pressed her forehead to the window and watched the clouds roll by.

An old tutor had once told her that you could see your subconscious manifestations in clouds, like a Rorschach test in the sky.

She remembered thinking that it was pretentious garbage back then, and looking out at the shapeless white balls now, still did.

‘Earth to Dark,’ Ripley kicked her across the aisle. ‘Are you alive?’

Ella snapped back to reality. ‘Yeah.’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘I was just thinking about… clouds. Weird, aren’t they?’

‘It’s where we keep the rain. Now tell me what’s really on your mind. Did Edis poison you back there?’

‘No. He just…’ Ella trailed off. Edis had told her not to mention it to anyone, even Ripley. Given the lengths Edis had gone for her, the least she could do was oblige him. But then again, she’d lied to Ripley before and it didn’t turn out well. ‘He asked me not to tell anyone.’

‘Well, why don’t you just show me whatever’s in your pocket? You can tell Edis I found it myself.’

‘What?’ Ella patted herself down. ‘How did you…?’

‘Ever since I whacked that broad with a shovel back in Florida, my skills have been sharper than ever. You’ve been caressing your pocket with your palm since we sat down.’ Ripley mimed the action on her own jacket. ‘I used to do the same when I kept cigarettes in there.’

Ella should have known better. That was the problem with hanging around the Bureau’s best profiler for a living. You couldn’t keep anything under wraps, no matter how personal.

She decided to just lay it out there. Maybe Ripley could lay out some common sense, because Ella had forgotten what that was like.

‘Here. Look.’ She pulled out the paper and slid it across the table. Ripley snatched it up.

‘Shit,’ Ripley said as she scanned the page. ‘This is an affidavit to see Creed.’

‘Yup.’

‘Edis gave you this?’

‘Yeah. He hid it in those roses.’

‘Devious bastard. There’s no agent name on this, though.’

‘That’s for me to fill in. Edis wants me to visit Creed and…’

Ripley laughed. ‘Don’t tell me. The old get-into-a-fight, shoot-him-in-self-defense trick, right?’

‘You know it?’

‘Practically invented it. Not me personally, but my generation.’ Ripley slid the paper back to her. ‘Dark, you can’t do this.’

The question was never whether or not she could do this, Ella thought. It was whether she should. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s a brave new world out there. I’d like to think the FBI have progressed from executing prisoners in secret. I won’t have that in my FBI.’

‘ Your FBI?’

Ripley flushed red for a second, then her tanned complexion resumed. ‘Maybe. And let’s say you do kill Creed and somehow don’t get taken to court – then what? Congrats, you’ve killed the only source you have.’

‘It’s been six weeks since anyone died, Mia, and that might be because Creed is unreachable at the minute. His accomplice can’t get instructions from him.’

‘So? You think killing him will make that permanent? That’s not going to catch the perp.’

‘I know, but it might stop people getting killed. Kill the host, kill the parasite.’

‘Kill the hydra and it grows an extra head. Try that analogy instead.’

She folded the paper and slipped it back into her pocket. What if Creed's accomplice wasn't just following orders? What if they were already planning to surpass their mentor? Killing Creed might just make things worse. But on the flip side, it could also draw his accomplice out of the woodwork.

Too many decisions. None of which could be comfortably made at this altitude.

‘Here you go.’ Ripley slammed the case file for the Indianapolis case on the table. ‘We’ve got a job to do, so stop thinking about Creed and focus on this.’

‘You’re right.’ Ella pulled out her own folder and re-familiarized herself with the details.

Creed would have to wait, because there was a locked room mystery that needed her attention.

‘Michael Rankin, dead in his office on the fortieth floor. Stabbed in the stomach. No witnesses, no security stills. What do you think?’

‘I think I don’t believe in ghosts, but I also don’t think anyone can get through a corporate headquarters without any cameras catching them.’

‘So let’s eliminate the impossible. It’s not suicide, because there’s no murder weapon. Even if Rankin stabbed himself and flung the weapon, there’d be a blood trail. There isn’t.’

‘Rappelling.’ Ripley slapped the photo down like a blackjack dealer. ‘Dangle from the roof, slice the window, do the deed, like Tom Cruise. What do you think?’

Ella checked each photo again. ‘Doubt it. These windows don’t look like they open. Probably a safety precaution being so high up. He could cut through the glass, but all of the windows are intact. What about if somebody hid inside the room and waited until everyone left?’

‘Has that ever happened?’

‘Off the top of my head, yeah. Massachusetts, 1987. The case of Daniel LaPlante. This guy hid in a woman’s basement for a year without her knowing.’

‘Because basements don’t have security cameras. Morrison & Associates does.’

‘Rankin’s office is a beast. Look at the size of this thing. Plenty of space to hide.’

‘The office is a typical penis extender, that’s for sure. But still, surely you’d notice someone hiding under your table or behind your plant pot.’

‘What about air vents? Could have crawled from the outside right up to Rankin’s office’

‘Up forty floors?’

‘Fair point.’ Ella found her pen and began chewing the end. She wasn’t sure why she even carried a pen because she never wrote anything down. ‘Edis said the victim was working with the FBI, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah. The FCS. They’re in West Virginia. I’ve never met those guys.’

‘So we need to consider the possibility of an inside job. Someone within Morrison & Associates or the Financial Crimes Section. If someone knew that Rankin was going to be in his office on that day at that time, would it be a stretch to think they could manipulate the cameras and security measures during that window?’

Ripley glanced over at the refillable drinks station, like it was summoning her. She turned back and said, ‘But how? Is it even possible to bypass things like that? Surely you can’t just override security systems, because that negates the whole purpose of a security system.’

Ella rubbed her temples. ‘There’s got to be something we’re missing. Cops always miss something.’

‘They miss plenty, but you can’t miss physics.’

‘What about Rankin himself? What do we know?’

Ripley rifled through her papers and found the sheet she needed. ‘Michael Rankin, 38, married to Sarah Rankin, had a nine-year-old daughter named Emma.’

‘Ugh,’ Ella said. ‘Poor kid. That’s the worst age.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah. Toddlers are too young to understand, teenagers understand perfectly. But a nine-year-old will just ask questions for the rest of their life and never get answers.’

‘Well Rankin was a good dad, at least on paper. His daughter was in a private school, so he must have been pulling in the big bucks.’

‘Put that in the possible motivation column,’ Ella said.

‘Speaking of motivations, we might be missing the obvious thing here. Rankin investigated criminals, and if you hang out with criminals, you get hurt. We need to see if he helped with any major arrests recently.’

Ella closed her file. ‘We need to see the scene. And speak to someone who knows these security measures inside out.’

‘We need a nerd.’

‘Agreed. We’ll need to buddy up to the tech department at state PD.’

Ella glanced out the window at the passing clouds and again saw nothing but white balls.

Part of her felt like crap for leaving D.C.

right now, leaving Luca, but at least he could handle himself.

Plus the police were still watching everyone on her list of thirty-six potential targets. The math said everyone would be safe.

The math had said Ben would be safe too.

Ella touched her jacket pocket where the affidavit sat.

First the impossible murder. Then the impossible choice.