Page 39 of Girl, Fractured

Diana fished the phone out of her pocket as she reached the base of the staircase.The screen flashed a cell number she didn’t have saved.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.Answer it?Ignore it?Which choice led to survival?

A lifetime of law enforcement had imbued her with the inevitable compulsion to answer.

‘Hello?’

‘Diana Jewell?’

‘Yes.Who is this?’Diana began her slow ascent, gun still trained on the basement below.

‘Special Agent Dark with the FBI.We need to speak with you about-’

‘Get here,’ Diana interrupted frantically.‘My place.Now.’

There was no hesitation on the speaker’s part.‘We’re coming.Are you safe?’

Diana reached the last step.The threshold.Freedom.She gently turned the door knob and stepped into her hallway.

‘Just get here as quickly-’

But her hallway transformed into something fundamentally different.

Diana struggled with the incongruity.The familiar suddenly unfamiliar.The safe space made dangerous.It was like looking at a photo negative of her own home.Everything was recognizable yet impossibly altered.

And in that negative space stood a figure.

In the splinter of time before conscious thought caught up with visual input, a peculiar calm descended.

Diana Jewell had spent the past 23 years wondering what the Ferryman looked like.Had he worn a mask to decapitate those women?What kind of weapon had he used?Exactly how did he get into those victims’ houses?

She didn’t have to wonder anymore.

Diana raised her gun, but the figure was too fast, too instant.

Her white whale had surfaced, and when Diana’s scream tore free, it was the sound of years of unanswered questions.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘Hello?Miss Jewell?’

There’d been a conversation, then a scream, and then a thud.And then silence.Ella tore the phone from her ear and checked the connection.

The call had been severed.

‘What the hell was that?’Ripley asked from the driver’s seat.Their original destination was the precinct before Diana’s plea for help had changed the plan.

‘Need to get to Diana Jewell’s house, now.’Ella pulled up the GPS and hammered in the address that Sarah Webb had given her.A moment of loading later, it said their destination was twelve miles away.‘Floor it.’

‘I am flooring it.What did Diana say?’

‘She said get to her place, immediately.Then I heard a scream, a bang, and then nothing.’

‘A bang?Like a gunshot?’

‘No.Like something falling down stairs.’

‘Call her back.’