EPILOGUE
The next morning, when Ella got back to D.C., she found the parcel in her mailbox.
No return address. Her name printed in generic block letters on a shipping label. No postmark either, so it must have been hand-delivered. She carried it upstairs and held it at arm's length, because while she’d never worked in Counter-Terrorism, she’d heard a million stories of bombs in mailboxes.
Inside her apartment, she set it on the kitchen counter and stared at it for a full minute before ripping it open.
A flash drive fell out. Ten terabytes according to the label stuck to its side.
No note. No explanation. Just the drive and nothing else.
She’d been wary about putting it in her laptop, but she knew, from the moment the drive fell out, that she’d inevitably check the contents.
The drive took a moment to register, and then a folder opened, containing hundreds of video files organized by date and camera number.
She clicked on one at random, and the image loaded: the interior of a Louisiana courtroom.
The date in the bottom right corner read October 16 of last year.
Austin Creed's trial.
This was the raw footage. Agent Dever must have come through for her.
After some inspection, she found superimposed logos in the bottom corners of eleven different news stations across America.
ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, local affiliates she'd never heard of.
All unedited. All complete. Hundreds of hours of video captured during that week when her life pivoted on its axis.
Agent Dever had definitely done his homework here, because her napkin math tallied a total of 200 hours of footage.
She checked the time. It was just past nine in the morning because her flight from Wisconsin had been delayed. Luca had already left for work, so it was just her and this mountain of raw camera footage for the rest of the day.
Her working theory was that the killer – Creed’s accomplice – had to be there that day, because the same killer had stolen her cell phone and hairbrush. Whoever was carving up her friends had sat in that courtroom and watched Creed get sentenced to death.
She armed herself with caffeine and got to work.
***
Six hours later, she felt like someone had set her eyes on fire.
The coffee pot was empty. She'd chewed her nails down to nothing. Her back screamed from hunching over the laptop, but she couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop.
The footage was a labyrinth. Eleven different cameras meant eleven different perspectives, and none of them stayed in one place.
The camera operators panned across the courtroom when testimony got dull.
They zoomed in on Creed when he reacted to something.
They captured the judge, the jury, and the lawyers pacing back and forth.
And sometimes, blessedly, they showed the gallery. The audience. The people who'd come to watch a monster get what he deserved.
Ella had a system now. She'd scrub through each video at double speed and pause whenever the camera swung toward the seats.
Then she'd take a screenshot and study every face in the frame.
She'd started a folder on her desktop, and it was filling up fast – grainy images of strangers caught mid-yawn or mid-whisper or staring dead-eyed at the proceedings.
Any one of them could be the killer.
She'd thought about running facial recognition software, but what would she compare the faces to?
She didn't have a suspect. Didn't have a database of Creed's known associates because, as far as the FBI could tell, he didn't have any associates.
The pen pal letters had been a dead end.
They'd just been fake names and fake addresses designed to waste time and resources.
No. This had to be done the old-fashioned way. Eyes on screen. Face by face. Hour by hour.
Ella wasn't in most of the footage. The prosecution had kept their star witnesses away from the cameras before they testified, which was standard procedure to avoid tainting testimony or creating security risks.
She'd been sequestered at the back of the room for most of the trial and only emerged when it was her turn to take the stand on that single day.
There was plenty of footage of that part though.
Of her standing in the witness box as she walked the jury through Austin Creed's behavioral profile.
She'd watched those clips a dozen times in the months since the trial.
She couldn't avoid them really since they'd been replayed on every news channel in the country.
She'd become a minor celebrity for her designated fifteen minutes. People recognized her on the street. Reporters called her office. The attention died as quickly as it began though, thankfully.
But this unedited footage showed things the news hadn't bothered to air. The moments between dramatic testimony when nothing much happened, or when the lawyers shuffled papers and the judge called for breaks, and people in the gallery shifted in their seats or got up to stretch their legs.
That's what Ella needed. The in-between moments when someone might have slipped close enough to steal from her purse.
She rubbed her eyes and opened another file. Camera seven. Day three of the trial. The timestamp read 2:47 PM, which was right around when the prosecution had rested its case.
The courtroom was packed. Every seat filled. Standing room only in the back. People were hungry to see Creed go down. A serial killer with five confirmed victims was sure to draw a crowd.
Ella hit pause and zoomed in on a section of the gallery. Three rows back. A man in a black jacket and a woman in a blue sweater. Neither looked familiar. She took a screenshot and moved on.
The camera panned left. More faces. More strangers. An elderly couple holding hands. A young guy with a notebook. A woman with red hair tied back.
Three more screenshots.
Her folder was up to two hundred and thirty-seven images now.
Ella's head pounded. The light from the screen stabbed into her skull like an icepick.
She should take a break, maybe eat something, or sleep.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that the answer was right there, hidden in plain sight among the hundreds of faces that had filled that courtroom. She opened the next file.
The court was clearing out. Day four. Final day. The jury had deliberated for six hours and come back with a verdict: guilty on all counts. Sentencing recommendation: death.
The camera showed people filing out of the gallery. Some looked satisfied. Some looked shaken. A few were crying. These were the people who'd waited years for this moment, and now that it was here, they didn't know what to do with it.
Ella watched them go.
Watched them shuffle down the aisle toward the exit.
Watched them.
She hit pause.
There. Third row. A woman standing up and gathering her things.
Ella zoomed in until the pixels started to break apart. The woman's face filled the screen. Mid-thirties maybe. Short brown hair cut in a practical bob. Minimal makeup. Dark blazer over a white blouse. She looked composed and professional, like she was part of the legal counsel.
But there was something about her face.
Something Ella recognized but couldn't quite place.
She'd seen this woman before. Somewhere. The shape of her jaw. The set of her eyes. It felt like a song you knew the melody to, but couldn't remember the lyrics.
Ella grabbed a pen and a notepad and started writing. Brown hair, but was that her natural color? Could be dyed. The cut was short and neat. Not stylish exactly, but not frumpy either. Functional. The kind of haircut someone got when they didn't want to spend time on it in the morning.
The blazer was off-the-rack. Nothing expensive. Dark gray or maybe navy. It was hard to tell in the courtroom lighting. The blouse underneath was white and plain. No jewelry that Ella could see. No earrings. No necklace. Nothing that would stand out or be memorable.
Smart if you were trying to blend in. Smart if you didn't want anyone to remember you later.
Ella zoomed in tighter.
Was she projecting here? Everyone in that room had just been privy to the finer details of five homicides and then seen a man sentenced to death.
It was only natural they'd be feeling somber.
Maybe she was so desperate to find the killer that she was seeing malice where there was only grief or exhaustion or boredom.
She saved the screenshot and labeled it with the timestamp and camera number. Then she kept watching.
The woman moved down the aisle. The camera followed her for a moment before panning away to catch someone else, this time a reporter doing a stand-up outside the courthouse. Ella cursed and scrubbed back through the footage to find another angle.
Camera nine. Same timestamp. Different perspective.
There. The woman again. She was near the exit now. She turned slightly, and her profile came into view. Strong nose. Determined chin. And then she was gone, out the door and into the Louisiana afternoon.
Ella leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. Who the hell was this woman?
Think. Think goddammit.
She'd been at the trial. She'd been in the courtroom when Creed got sentenced. But why did she look so familiar? Where else had Ella seen her?
Not at work. Ella would remember if she'd run into her at the FBI office.
Not socially. Ella didn't have much of a social life, and the few friends she did have were scattered across the country.
So where?
She closed her eyes and tried to visualize the trial. Tried to put herself back in that courtroom. She'd been in the back room most of the time, but she'd come out after the verdict was read. Had stood near the prosecution table while the judge thanked the jury for their service.
And then –
Goddammit.
Ella's eyes snapped open.
The seats. The gallery. After the sentencing when people were celebrating or crying or just sitting there in shock. Someone had grabbed Ella's arm. Someone had pulled her into a hug.
A woman. Short brown hair. Tears streaming down her face.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
That's what she'd said. Over and over. Thank you.
Ella had assumed she was a victim's family member. Someone who'd lost a sister or a daughter or a wife to Austin Creed's appetite for violence. She'd hugged her back and murmured something inadequate about justice being served, and then the woman had disappeared into the crowd.
But that wasn't all.
Ella's stomach dropped.
She'd seen her again. Recently. Within the last month.
She grabbed the laptop and pulled up her calendar. Three weeks ago. The prison visit. When she'd gone to see Creed on death row.
Louisiana State Penitentiary. Maximum security wing. She'd had to go through multiple checkpoints. Multiple guards. Multiple locked doors that clanged shut behind her.
And when she’d entered Creed’s interview room, there’d been a female guard there.
Except she had long blonde hair, but the face and profile matched this woman on the footage.
A security guard at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Someone with direct access to Austin Creed. Someone who could pass messages. Smuggle information. Coordinate murders from inside one of the most secure facilities in the country.
Someone who'd been sitting in that courtroom the day Ella's hairbrush and phone went missing. Someone who'd hugged her and thanked her and disappeared.
Someone who was still out there.