Page 34 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

Ella's office felt more like a war room than a detective's workspace. Ryland had commandeered her desk and spread printouts across its surface like a general plotting battle strategy.

Ripley said, ‘Tell her, Ryland.’

Ella spat, ‘The picture. You said you found a picture.’

Ella snatched the paper. The image was a blurry mess, like it had been taken on a webcam from the Stone Age of technology. But even through the digital muck, she could make out a face – long black hair, pale face, nose big enough to land a jet on.

A stone of nausea lodged in her gut. Was this Drago LaChance? Had this man killed two people already?

Looking at him, the kid barely looked strong enough to swat a fly, but all things considered, mutilation didn’t require strength. Anyone could carve out eyeballs and slash a throat as long as they had functioning limbs.

But there was another problem. The man in the picture was not Roger Blackwood.

Ella thought it over, but she couldn’t make assumptions based on a grainy photo found in the darkest corners of the Internet.

‘Let’s not put our eggs in one basket. We’ve got a guy in our interrogation room with a solid link to Martina.

For all we know, this could be a picture of anybody.

Mia, can you run this through image recognition software? ’

‘On it,’ she said and left the room in a hurry. Ella turned back to the pile of printouts on her desk.

‘What else did you find?’

'Excerpts. Several of them. LACHANCE666 has been posting on multiple dark websites. Mostly shock and gore pages.'

Ella snatched up the first paper and began combing through.

Tonight, Cain would not spend his evening staring at the leaning redwood outside his window and wishing for something more.

No, his journey had taken him past the park, past the spiral monument, across the river, and into the beating heart of this cesspool he called a city.

His destination was the home of a woman who'd set this whole thing in motion twenty years ago.

Ella skimmed the pretentious details and went straight to the action. That would let her know what section of this bloody manuscript Ryland had unearthed.

Cain stood on the balcony, the night air cool against his feverish skin.

Below him, his angel hung suspended, a masterpiece of flesh and wire.

Her arms stretched wide as he embraced eternity.

The barbed wire crown bit deep and drew rivulets of blood that glistened like rubies in the moonlight.

He'd slit her throat with surgical precision, letting her life drain away before fashioning her into this divine form.

Now she was perfection incarnate – no longer the sniveling, pathetic creature who'd scorned him, but a beacon of terrible beauty.

Murder number two. Martina Payne’s murder in fiction form.

‘That’s not all,’ Ryland said. ‘I found another one.’

‘Another? Hit me.’

Ryland passed her two more pages. Ella started at the beginning.

Cain's fingers tingled with anticipation as he approached his next canvas. Two angels had taken flight, their beauty frozen in eternal perfection. But the third–ah, the third would be the best one yet.

‘The third,’ Ella said breathlessly. ‘This is the scene for victim number three.’

‘Ryland pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘I thought you said he’s only claimed two?’

Ella's mind was a whirlwind. She needed to devour every detail in this third act because it might just help her save a life tonight.

‘He has, which means we’re ahead of him. These scenes are missing from the manuscript we found. Dammit, Ryland, I could kiss you.’

She had a viable suspect two rooms over, and her next crime scene right here in her hands. Roger Blackwood might be her killer, but she couldn’t bank on it. If he wasn’t, she needed a plan B.

Now she had it.