Page 12 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

Ella slipped into Sophie’s office with Ripley at her tail. She nodded her thanks at Sienna and let the grieving woman go back to her work. Now it was time to really dig into Sophie Draper’s character.

Except the office was as sterile as a surgical suite.

It was grey walls, simple furniture and a couple of framed prints that look like they came with the frames.

Ella did a slow pan and found the whole place was neat-freak levels of neat.

Nothing out of place, not so much as a paper clip askew.

Computer off, desk chair tucked in tight, pens lined up like soldiers in a mug.

The only thing that hinted at realness were the abandoned coffee cup graveyard on Sophie’s desk.

‘Real grey up in here,’ Ella said.

‘Fifty shades of it,’ Ripley replied.

Ella ignored the quip, quick as it was. Opposite the small desk, there was a bookshelf crammed full of titles. The shelves held a random mix of genres, all looking like they'd been rescued from various yard sales and thrift stores.

But it was what wasn't here that set Ella's Spidey-sense to tingling.

There were no photos of smiling faces, no kitschy souvenir shot glasses, no crayon scribbled ‘I love you Aunty’ notes taped to her monitor.

Not so much as a stray sticky note to hint at the woman who'd spent her days toiling away in this place.

Ripley made a sigh that sounded like an air pressure valve being released. She somehow managed to distil Ella’s discomfort into a single note. ‘Maybe she took minimalism to the max.’

‘I don’t think this is some feng shui effort, Mia.’

‘Agreed. All I know is that this place is a dead end.’

Ella grunted, conceding the point. For a woman that had supposedly been the patron saint of struggling writers, Sophie sure hadn't left much of an impression. She was just about to suggest they pack it in and try another avenue when something caught her eye.

The edge of Sophie’s desk, peeking out from behind a filing cabinet. Or more specifically, the drawers underneath. Standard office issue, but with what looked like pretty flimsy locks. The kind that might just pop open if someone happened to give them a good yank.

Before Ella quite knew what she was doing, she was crouched in front of Sophie's desk, giving the bottom drawer an experimental tug.

Locked. Of course.

‘The hell you doing?’ Ripley whispered.

‘Our job. You should try it sometime.’

‘By what? Violating protocol? We can’t go rummaging through a dead woman’s drawers.’

‘We're a homicide squad now. The Ultra Violent Crime Crew.’

‘UV Crew,’ Ripley repeated. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Either way, we’re not the ethics committee. Find me a paper clip would you?’

‘Can’t you do that thing with your guitar string?’

‘No. It’s the wrong type of lock.’ Ella glanced back. ‘We could ask Sienna to open it?’

‘Ripley rummaged around on the desk, then jangled a dangly piece of metal. ‘Or you could use the key.’

‘Oh. Or that.’

Ripley might have liked to pretend she was the poster child for by-the-book, but Ella knew her partner. Knew that deep down, she had the same need to claw her way to the truth by any means necessary. Ripley threw her the key, and Ella stuffed it in the lock.

She half expected them to be booby trapped, perhaps rigged to shoot poison darts or release a cloud of nerve gas at the first unauthorized touch. But they slid open and revealed the contents within.

Manuscripts. Piles of the damn things. All with ‘REJECTED’ stamped in red ink on the front, judging by Ella’s quick leaf through. The hopeful scribblings of a hundred would-be Hemingways and Kings, all chasing that Pulitzer dream that would never be.

‘Anything?’ Ripley asked.

Ella scanned some of the titles. ‘The Billionaire’s Virginal Secretary. I Married A Werewolf Biker. Missionary Impossible.’

‘That’s a classic.’

‘You can read it, if you like.’

‘I’d rather not. When did sex books get so big?’ Ripley had given up shadowing Ella’s efforts and was now wrist-deep in Sophie’s trash can like a raccoon. ‘Damn, even the garbage is useless.’

‘That’s why it’s called garbage.’ Ella moved onto the next drawer.

More of the same – a post-apocalyptic pirate romance, something with ‘Duke’ and ‘Desire’ in the subtitle, a handful of manuscripts so old the pages were starting to yellow.

Poor Sophie. Wading through this dreck daily. It was a wonder she hadn't gone postal.

But then Ella’s brain stalled mid-thought. She blinked at one manuscript in the middle of this pile, sure she had to be seeing things.

The edges of the pages were foxed and frayed, like it had been handled one too many times by ungentle hands. Not thick like the others either. More of a novella than a novel.

But it wasn't the state of it that had Ella's throat closing up or her guts knotting themselves into a sailor's hitch.

It was the title.

Ripley’s voice came through the haze. ‘You alright there, Dark? You’ve gone quiet.’

The hair on the back of her neck stood to attention. A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. Ripley loomed over her.

In response, Ella shoved the manuscript into her hands. Watched her eyes go wide, then narrow as she took in the title. Saw the same certainty settle over her expression.

‘Jesus,’ Ripley said.

Ella opened her mouth to bellow a similar exclamation but she couldn’t find any words. All she had in her head was the certainty that the crumpled pages in her partner’s hands had something to do with the mutilated woman-turned-angel she’d seen this morning.

The manuscript’s title was Halo of Blood.