PROLOGUE #3
Ella pulled back. She held his face in both hands and looked at him.
She checked his eyes, his skin, the color of his lips.
She checked him the way she checked victims at crime scenes, except this was the opposite.
She wasn’t looking for what was wrong but confirming that everything was right.
He was warm. His pupils were even. There was a small cut above his left eyebrow and a bruise forming on the heel of his right hand where the paper towel was, and that was it.
That was it.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘Sorry. I smashed your favorite mug.’
Ella stared at him. ‘What?’
‘The white one. You could probably fix it. Some of the shards might still be in her face.’
Ella’s brain couldn’t place the words into any meaningful order. She’d spent three hours constructing worst-case scenarios even after their phone conversation, and now he was standing here apologizing about a mug.
‘I couldn’t care less about the mug. What the hell happened?’
‘You want the short version?’
‘Any version!’
‘She came in pretending to fix the alarm. She had a toolbox, a clipboard, the whole thing. I let her in because I’m an idiot. Some things didn’t add up though. You ever known a tradesmen not take sugar?’
‘No.’
‘Exactly. She pulled a gun on me in the kitchen. Then the coffee machine did that thing — you know, that ping you hate — and she looked away. So I rushed her. I got the gun off her, broke her wrist, I think. Hit her with the mug, then it was curtains.’
He said it the way he said everything: plainly and without drama, as though he were describing a trip to the hardware store that had gone slightly sideways.
‘She pulled a gun? She talked to you?’
‘She talked alright. It was a Glock 19 she had too. Nice gun, actually. We should use them at work.’
‘Hawkins, this isn’t funny.’
Luca poked the laceration on his palm. ‘It’s a little bit funny.’
It wasn’t. None of this was funny. But Ella could feel the laugh building in her chest anyway. Luca had done it. ‘And the woman. It was definitely… her?’
Luca tilted his head to the left. ‘Take a look for yourself.’
Ella turned.
The second cruiser was parked ten feet away, angled toward the street. The rear windows were tinted but not enough. Ella could see her clearly.
There she was. Lindsey Doyle. The woman who’d caused all of this.
She was in the back seat with her hands cuffed in front of her. The side of her face that Ella could see was a mess. Swollen, lacerated. Her hair was dark now — dyed, Ella realized, dyed to throw off anyone who’d memorized the photos — and it hung in wet strands across her forehead.
Doyle was staring straight ahead with the vacant, inward expression of someone whose plan had derailed and who was still computing the implications.
Then her eyes moved.
They found Ella across the parking lot and locked on.
Ella had always had a love-hate relationship with this moment.
It was the moment when you realized that the monster you were hunting wasn't some mythical being or criminal genius.
They were pathetically human and had the scars to prove it.
She'd imagined there'd be fury when this moment came, but Ella felt no such sensation.
This was the culmination of six months of paranoia and three dead friends.
Five dead friends if her attacks on Ripley and Luca had been successful.
‘You gonna talk to her?’
Before Ella could respond, one of the officers came over to her. ‘Excuse me, ma’am, you live at this address too?’
‘Yes I do.’
‘Your partner has filled you in on the details?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know this woman? The offender?’
‘Do I know her?’ Ella repeated.
She looked at the cruiser. Doyle hadn't moved.
Hadn't blinked, as far as Ella could tell.
She just sat there behind the tinted glass with her cuffed hands in her lap and her ruined face and that stare that didn't waver.
Six months of looking over her shoulder, and here was the source of it all – a slight, hundred and twenty-pound woman who was bleeding what looked like coffee out of a gash on her cheekbone.
The same woman Ella had sat next to in that Louisiana courtroom. The same woman who’d been working at Louisiana State Penitentiary when she’d interviewed Austin Creed.
Part of Ella wanted to walk over there, open the door, sit down beside her, and ask every question that had kept her awake since this started.
Why me? Why the people I love? What did I do to you, or what do you think I did?
She wanted to look Lindsey Doyle in the face and understand anything about the woman who had turned her life into this.
But she knew better.
A parking lot, moments after the capture, wasn't the time to interview a known serial killer. Every cop had felt the overwhelming urge to confront the thing you'd been chasing, right there, right then, before the moment passed.
The moment could pass. There would be other moments. Controlled ones, in a room with a table, a recorder, and a lawyer present.
‘No,’ Ella said. ‘I don’t know her. But I know who she is. Her name is Lindsey Doyle. She’s wanted in connection with at least three homicides across both D.C. and California. The FBI have been hunting her for a while.’
‘Three homicides and a fourth attempted,’ Luca added.
‘Two states?’ the officer said. ‘She certainly is the Bureau’s problem.’
Ella found her badge and flashed it. ‘Yes. Our problem. Can you detain her until I speak to the agents in charge of her investigation?’
‘Can do. Always happy to help the feds out.’
‘She needs to go into holding tonight,’ Ella said.
‘Not tomorrow. Tonight. Isolated cell, no contact with other detainees, and I want a guard on her around the clock. Two if you can spare them. She doesn’t make phone calls, she doesn’t talk to anyone, and nobody goes into that cell without authorization from me or Director Vernon or Terrance Dever. ’
The officer looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded. ‘I know Vernon well. I’ll call him as soon as we’re out of here.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
The officer walked back to the cruiser. He spoke to his partner through the open window, and a few seconds later, the engine started, and then the cruiser pulled out.
Ella watched it go. She watched it turn onto Main Street. She watched its taillights shrink and blur and disappear into the city.
Luca put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Game over.’
‘Game over. Thanks to you. You caught her, Hawkins.’
‘Eh, she caught herself. I was just in the right place at the right time.’
Ella took his hand. The bruised one. She held it gently, turned it over, looked at the torn skin across his knuckles.
He’d fought for his life tonight because Ella’s life had bled into his, and he hadn’t once made her feel like that was her fault.
She wasn’t sure she’d earned that kind of grace. She wasn’t sure anyone could.
‘Shall we go inside?’
‘Can’t,’ Luca said. ‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘Of course it is. I guess we’re staying at Ripley’s house for a few days, then.’