Girl, Sought (Ella Dark #24)

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

The St. Andrews Medical Museum was more warehouse than museum to the untrained eye. It lived at the end of a narrow access road, tucked between a derelict bottling plant and an overgrown stretch of marsh. The place was a graceless rectangle of pored concrete and tinted glass, and Ella could see already signs of the fire that ravaged this place from fifty feet away.

She parked Vanessa's car at a distance then walked the rest of the way. Soot stains licked up from shattered windows and the main entrance had been boarded over with plywood. Nature had started to reclaim the margins in the years since the fire, too, with weeds and creeper vines staging a takeover of the building's exterior.

But Ella's gaze zeroed in on the one detail that mattered: a modest blue Toyota crouched in the shadow of the loading dock, half-hidden behind a dumpster.

Winters was here.

The realization hit like an adrenaline spike to the heart. She cupped her hands around the window and peered inside the vehicle, but all she could see was what looked like a briefcase on the passenger seat. She knelt down, touched a front wheel and found it warm. That meant its owner couldn't have arrived more than minutes before.

She had to get inside, but first she fired off a message to Reeves to get every cop available here. He fired back a thumbs-up message a few seconds later.

The museum stretched two stories up, and it was dotted with windows that somehow managed to look both ornate and institutional. Most were intact, but some on the ground floor had been recently ventilated. Maybe by bored kids, maybe by Winters. As she was circling the perimeter, she found a dumpster that offered just enough elevation to make the climb possible. Not easy - especially not with her burns screaming protest - but possible.

Ella holstered her Glock and started up. The dumpster's lid creaked and glass crunched beneath her boots as she reached for the windowsill. Her shoulders burned as she hauled herself up and through while she tried to avoid the jagged teeth still clinging to the frame. The shards scraped her stomach raw as she squirmed through the opening, and then she managed to twist herself around and find the ground feet-first.

Silence greeted her on the other side. The acoustics in this place amplified the sound of her breathing, and the distinct smell of charcoal invaded her nostrils. The museum's fire-gutted husk had swallowed her whole, and now it held its breath in anticipation.

She thumbed on the flashlight clipped to her belt and swept the beam in an arc. It was a risky move, announcing her presence via flashlight, but the alternative was to stalk this place in pitch darkness and risk being ambushed. At least with light, she could see Winters coming.

The room resolved itself in stages. She was in some kind of storage area. Metal shelves stretched into shadow, still bearing their grim cargo despite the fire. A jar on the nearest shelf held something that might have been a human hand, floating in murky preservative. The label beneath had partially burned away, leaving only: ...congenital deformity, 1932.

Ella moved deeper into the gloom. More specimens emerged from the dark - organs preserved in cloudy fluid, bone fragments arranged on velvet. A fetus in a bell jar turned its malformed head to watch her pass, while something with too many limbs floated in green solution beside it.

Her flashlight caught a glass case big enough to hold a person. Inside, a partial skeleton had been arranged to demonstrate severe spinal curvature. Scoliosis twisted the vertebrae into shapes that shouldn't have been possible in a living being.

She passed shelf after shelf of medical curiosities. Tumors mounted like geological specimens. Cross-sections of diseased tissue suspended in alcohol. A collection of skulls showing various forms of something Ella couldn’t pronounce. The beam swept across a particularly large display case, and inside, conjoined twin fetuses stared back at her.

Focus. Clear the room. Find Winters.

Her boots clicked against tile as she moved deeper into the museum's guts. Rain drummed against high windows, providing cover for any sounds she might make - or sounds someone else might make. She moved through a door, out into what Ella guessed used to be main exhibit area.

More specimens revealed themselves, as did plenty of their fire-ravaged counterparts. At the chamber's heart stood a long central table with oddities in cases lining its edges. Ella saw organs and fetuses preserved in murky fluid, most of them with labels blackened by fire. A human brain floated in cloudy formalin, and beside it sat a bisected kidney. For a dizzy moment, the jars seemed to move of their own accord.

Tricks of the light, of fatigue and adrenaline. Nothing more.

She made a slow circuit of the room but couldn’t detect any hint of movement. Lawrence Winters was definitely here, but where was the bastard hiding?

Ella paused at the base of a grand staircase that swept up to the second-floor balcony. Ornate wrought iron railings curved along the balcony's length with yet more specimens up above. A metal walkway extended from the top of the stairs, disappearing into the murk.

CLANG.

The sound knifed through the eerie hush, so sudden and jarring that Ella physically startled.

She thumbed off her light and plunged the chamber back into full darkness. She let the darkness swallow her as she edged back toward a towering specimen cabinet.

A bead of sweat trickled down her spine as she strained her eyes against the black. Had Winters heard? Was he watching her now? Maybe crouched in the shadows, watching her fumble half-blind among the relics of his madness?

SMASH.

Ella flinched low on instinct, one arm flung up to shield her face. The noise had come from her left. A display case toppling? Or something more human?

Her fingers twitched against the butt of her Glock. Every instinct screamed at her to fire in the darkness and worry about the repercussions later, but she held herself in check. And then, with a buzz and a blaze of light that seared her retinas - the overheads flared to life.

Floodlights at even intervals, huge caged things that threw stark shadows and bleached the color from the world. They painted the chamber an anemic orange hue.

Ella blinked the strain from her eyes, and instinct had her diving for better cover. That was when the screaming started.

Not human screams, or even animal screams. This was the sound of something completely Other, like a tortured machine no longer able to contain its rage. It dopplered towards her in a rising howl, and beneath that, the slap of sprinting feet.

Ella rolled up into a shooter's crouch, and in the instant before that searing sodium glow fritzed and popped like flashbulbs in her skull, she saw him.

Lawrence Winters.

The accountant-turned-collector was hurtling towards her in a fever-dream of whirling limbs and feral eyes.

Coming for her.

Ella had time for one shot, and it completely missed the mark. The bullet screamed past him and shattered glass somewhere in the distance.

Then he was on her, impossibly fast, the smell of him filling her nostrils as they slammed together. Ella collapsed onto her back as Winters mounted her. He clutched her right arm with both hands and pinned it to the ground, then he reached for her gun. Ella grabbed Winters’ hair with her free hand, but three, four, five deafening gunshots momentarily seized her. She looked over and saw a smoking Glock, now devoid of bullets thanks to Winters’ quick-thinking. He’d discharged the entire magazine.

‘You,’ Winters spat. ‘You ruined everything.’

Ella bucked, trying to throw him off. But Winters had gravity and 180 pounds of batshit crazy boring her down into the unforgiving tile. She snarled in wordless defiance, then drove her head forward and felt cartilage crunch as her forehead smashed his nose. Blood splattered hot across her face, her neck. Winters reeled back with a shriek, more enraged than pained.

She pressed the tiny advantage, drew her uninjured leg up and pistoned her knee into his crotch. A cheap move – a Ripley special. Once, twice, a third time for good measure. He made a noise like a stepped-on frog, folding in on himself. Ella heaved and finally bucked him off. She sent him sprawling across the blood-smeared tile as she rolled to her hands and knees.

There were shards of glass in every direction – a byproduct from the gunblasts that Ella had only just noticed. She caught sight of a beefy one, one that could use a knife substitute. It was so close, so close.

But then clawed fingers sank into her calf. Winters dragged her back, now laughing as he did. Ella turned back and saw those picked fingers that the teen witness was talking about. Signs of a man with high anxiety, low self-esteem a little bit of masochism under the surface. But apparently, that version of Winters was long gone.

Ella kicked, felt her heel collide with yielding flesh. Another kick, this one fueled by desperation and the pure animal fury of the trapped. Winters howled as something crunched under her assault - cheekbone, eye socket, the hell if she knew. She scrambled to her feet again, but Winters was already on the move. She caught a glimpse of his back as he pounded up the stairs.

She dragged herself upright and limped after him. The fight had renewed the pain from her burns, but she could cream them up once this was over. She bounded up the stairs, reached the walkway and found it empty.

‘Winters!’ she screamed. ‘What’s the matter? Too scared?’

Silence.

A spike of dread pierced her guts, because what if Winters had found another way out of here? Another window, a secret hatch, whatever.

No. She refused to even entertain the possibility. He was here. She could feel him, that skin-crawling awareness of his presence. He was close. Watching. Waiting.

Ella reached the end of the walkway. Peered around the corner, expecting - praying - to see Winters' figure skulking in the shadows.

But there was nothing. Just another stretch of gloomy hallway lined with more shattered display cases and toppled shelves.

She bit back a scream of pure frustration. Dug her nails into her palms until blood welled, using the sting to center herself. She had to think. Had to figure out his game. If she were him, where would she go?

A shadow passed nearby - too fast, too solid to be imagination. Her instincts screamed ambush a fraction of a second too late.

CRASH.

Ella whirled, heart in her throat. Behind her, something had been launched in her direction. Something big. It hit the walkway in an explosion of bones.

The skeleton came apart like a morbid jigsaw - femurs spinning one way, a pelvis shattering another. The skull went cartwheeling into darkness.

But the rain of bones was just theatrical misdirection, because all of her thoughts were lost as something broke across her skull. Chemical-sweet preservative fluid drenched her face, burning her eyes, filling her nose with the reek of ancient formaldehyde. The world started to fade at the edges, reality bleeding out like watercolors in rain. She staggered back against the wall as her knees buckled.

Dimly, distantly, she heard Winters' high, keening laugh. A sound that would haunt her nightmares for years to come if she lived that long.

Then blessed oblivion swallowed her whole. She spiraled down and down, aware of nothing but the taste of her own blood and the knowledge that she'd failed. She'd let the bastard get the drop on her.

She could stay here, she realized. Let go. Slip away into that soft, dark place where monsters couldn't reach her, and the only screams were silent ones. It would be easy. Peaceful, even. No more fighting, no more chasing.

But then, at the very edges of her awareness - a sound. Faint at first, muffled, as if filtering through layers of wool.

Then it sharpened, resolved, and became the rhythmic slap of feet on metal. Running feet. Pounding across the walkway beside her.

‘I’ll kill you!’ a voice screamed. Not just any voice. His voice. The thought pierced the fog like a flare through night clouds.

Luca was here.

Winters howled, high and shrill. ‘YOU! You can't - this isn't how-’

His words choked off in a gurgle. Luca snarled something too low to make out, but the intent was clear. Punishing. Promising. Ella cracked an eye open, because if this was her last day on earth, the sight of Luca pummeling a serial killer was the best final sight she could ask for.

More blows. The crunch of bone, the splatter of blood. Winters wailing like the damned. Luca was moving in a blur of fists, pushing Winters back along the walkway. The wannabe-collector was staggering backward, spitting blood, looking like he was one punch away from collapsing for good.

‘That’s for Eleanor,’ Luca yelled with a knee to the ribs. Two more blows followed. ‘And Alfred and Joe.’

Ella rose to her hands and knees. It was just a concussion, she told herself. Nothing a good sleep wouldn’t fix. She used the railing to haul herself up, just in time to catch Luca picking up Winters by his shirt.

She predicted the next few seconds before they happened.

A part of her wanted to call out and tell him not to do it, but this was Luca’s case. She was just here for the ride.

‘And this is for putting your hands on my woman.’

Luca hauled up Lawrence Winters and threw him over the railing.

For a suspended moment, Winters just hung there, but then gravity did its job.

His arms pinwheeled, hands clawing at empty air as if he could pull salvation from the ether. Eyes wide, mouth gaping in a silent scream - the face of a man who knew that he wouldn’t be standing up of his own accord any time soon.

Ella tracked his plummet with a strange detachment. She could count the individual beats of her stuttering heart as Winters dropped, ten feet, twenty feet.

CRASH.

Below, the specimen table exploded into a maelstrom of wood, glass, specimens, bones and medical fluid. Jars shattered. Shards erupted in a glittering tsunami. And there, at the center of it all – was the motionless body of Lawrence Winters.

Ella gripped the railing and peered down into the abattoir below. She could taste blood, feel the hot thrum of it pounding behind her eyes as concussion and bald shock warred for control of her nervous system.

Dead, she thought.

She wondered idly what he'd thought in those final, flailing moments. If he'd had time to regret, to rail against a fate so prosaic after his delusions of murder-grandeur.

Probably not. Men like Lawrence Winters never truly believed the bill would come due.

‘Ell!’ a voice cut through. ‘Talk to me!’

She turned and realized that Luca had been standing next to her while she ogled Lawrence’s dead body. She threw her arms around his neck.

‘He’s moving,’ Luca said.

‘He’s not going far.’ Ella et her eyes flutter shut and her forehead fall to Luca’s collarbone with a dull thunk. Everything hurt. Everything. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. But Luca was solid against her. She let him take her weight as the world reeled and spun, as the blue-black dream of unconsciousness pulled like a riptide at the edges of her mind.

He pulled back. Cupped her face in his big hands. ‘Don’t you dare die on me.’

‘Pfft,’ Ella grinned. ‘If I’m dead, you’ve been dead for months.’

And then he was kissing her. Crushing her to him, blood and spit and desperate relief pouring into her mouth as he made her his with the bruising press of lips on lips.

Ella made a sound too raw to be a whimper. She kissed him back. It was messy, graceless and featured way too much blood and sweat to ever be romantic, but it was the best kiss of her life.

And it ended too soon, because the real world crashed back in as the blare of sirens cut through the bubble of their embrace.

The cavalry, late as ever but more welcome than she'd ever admit.

Game over.