‘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.’

Ella did. The phone rang once, twice, three times.

You’ve reached the voicemail of…

She ended the call. ‘No answer. You don’t think…?’

A vise clamped around Ella’s chest. A fall down stairs. That’s what logic said. A simple domestic accident. Maybe Diana had stumbled in the dark?

But logic felt paper-thin against the weight of context. Frank Sullivan’s murder. Diana’s scream. The fact that she said get here after three seconds after answering the phone.

‘Think what? We’re ten minutes out from her place.’

Ten minutes might as well have been ten years. If someone had gotten to Diana Jewell, those ten minutes represented the difference between a crime scene and a rescue. Ripley took a corner so hard Ella thought the car might topple to one side.

‘I’d been profiling this as an isolated case. Someone with a grudge against Frank and only Frank. What if Frank was only the beginning?’

‘Come on, Dark. Think.’

The world outside dissolved into a watery blur. The digits on the GPS counted down. ‘I am thinking, and I don’t like my conclusions.’

No one ever woke up and randomly decided to gouge out a man’s eyes. By the same token, no one ever committed such a vile act only once. The behavioral profile said that this unsub definitely had the capacity for multiple killings.

Ten miles to go. Nine. Eight.

‘Call it in?’ Ripley said.

‘Yeah. Just in case.’ Ella pulled out her cell and dialed Sheriff Bauer. He picked up on the first ring.

‘Ella. You learn anything at that true crime thing?’

‘Yeah, listen, I need officers at 388 Wayfarer Avenue. The home of one Diana Jewell.’

‘On it. I can get guys there in... eleven minutes.’

‘Do it.’

‘What’s the situation?’

Ella mentally raced through everything she knew about Diana Jewell and found the file very slim. She was a former cop and her white whale was the Ferryman case. That was all she had.

‘I don’t know. Just get some people here. Need some to circle the area too. Look out for anyone suspicious.’

‘Roger. I’ll be part of the crew.’

Ella thanked him and hung up. Five miles to go. The vehicle rocked as it hit a pothole submerged in rainwater.

‘If Diana Jewell…’

‘Don’t,’ interrupted Ripley. ‘Don’t theorize. Wait until we get the facts.’

The GPS arrow crawled across pixels. Outside, Ella watched palm trees blur past. The houses grew larger, more spread out as they entered what looked like an upscale neighborhood.

Four miles. Three miles. Somewhere ahead, Diana Jewell was either alive or dead, and the distance between those two possibilities shortened with every second.

One mile to go.

A nautical theme developed amongst the street names. Dolphin Drive. Seagull Court.

‘There,’ Ripley said. ‘Wayfarer Drive.’

Ripley turned onto it and killed the headlights. The street seemed like a rural backwater that had somehow survived Florida’s relentless development. Each property sat on at least an acre of land, with tall pines and ancient oaks creating natural boundaries between neighbors.

Ella counted the houses. Three on each side with long driveways that disappeared into the darkness. Diana Jewell’s residence stood dead center on the left. It was a sprawling single-story ranch with a screened lanai visible from the road. The perfect middle house.

A cold spike of dread shot through her. Burglars and opportunists hit the end houses.

Easier access, quicker escape routes, fewer potential witnesses looking outside windows.

You didn’t pick a house buried deep in the middle of a street unless that specific house, that specific resident, was your intended destination.

Ella’s door was open before the car even screeched to a stop. She was out, up the porch and banging on Diana Jewell’s front door within a few heartbeats.

‘Diana, FBI!’

Ripley caught up, stood back and surveyed the house. ‘No lights on anywhere. Any damage around the lock?’

Ella inspected it. ‘No. Not here.’ She banged on the door again and received no response.

‘Do it, Dark.’

Ella stepped back and took measured breaths. The door was solid wood, but the frame looked like standard contractor-grade pine. The weakest point would be near the lock, where the bolt met the strike plate. One good kick there and the frame would splinter.

‘Stand clear.’ She positioned herself at arm’s length from the door, angled her body sideways. Plant foot back, strong foot forward. Channel the force through the heel, not the toe. The academy taught you to aim just beside the lock, where wood met metal. Physics did the rest.

The first impact jarred her knee but the frame held. The second kick connected with a sound like thunder, and something inside the wall cracked. Then wood splintered, and the door flew inward with enough force to bang against the interior wall.

‘Diana!’ Ella rushed in and swept her weapon across the darkness. ‘Where are you?’

Ripley emerged from behind and brought out her flashlight. It illuminated a small hallway. ‘Clear the rooms. I’ll take-’

The comment died instantly, because both Ella and Ripley’s attention was drawn to the pool of blood at their feet.

Way too much of it. The kind of volume that didn’t leave its owner alive.

The trail of crimson led away from them toward a door that stood ajar at the end of the hallway.

Beyond it, a rectangle of darkness yawned.

‘Basement,’ Ella breathed. The nausea bubbled up and threatened to overflow. She peered down into the blackness and steeled herself for what might be waiting for her. The anticipation was sometimes worse than the discovery. ‘Stand back.’

‘Wait, Dark. Light switch.’ Ripley dug around the wall, flicked the switch and bathed the room below in dark orange.

Ella saw the whole basement in a single frame. There were boxes, exercise equipment, a stone oven, a bulkhead door that was slightly ajar – and a blood trail that stopped in the middle of the room.

But no body.

She crept down the stairs, moved to the last few drops of blood.

There was something there. Gold at the end of the rainbow.

‘Mia. What’s that?’

Her partner caught up. ‘A cufflink. Where the hell is Diana?’

A hundred thoughts fought for dominance, but one won out above the others.

Sarah Webb had said that Diana Jewell had a white whale case of her own. The case of the Ferryman; an uncaught serial killer from 2001.

Sometimes the worst part of being a profiler wasn’t predicting what a killer would do next. It was knowing exactly what they’d already done, and being too late to stop it.

‘I know exactly where Diana is.’

She left the cufflink undisturbed and made for the bulkhead door. Rain spat through the narrow gap where warped wood failed to meet the frame. Ella stepped over a steel chair and pushed her way out into the backyard with Ripley three steps behind.

The backyard was large, sloping gently away from the house. Landscaped beds dissolved into soggy mulch, and ornamental grasses bent low under the assault of wind and water.

But even through the downpour, Ella saw it. Toward the back of the property, nestled amongst cypress trees whose branches thrashed in the wind, was a rectangular pond.

Ella’s legs carried her forward while her mind screamed at her to stop. The surface churned with rain, but something else disturbed its depths.

Something pale. Something that shouldn’t be there.

Her boots sank into the earth as she neared the edge. She peered inside and beneath the miniature waves she caught the familiar outline of a human body.

But where the neck met the shoulders, there was only absence.

Diana Jewell had paid the Ferryman’s toll – with her head.