Page 38 of Girl, Fractured

Her hand felt along the wall inside the frame until her fingers found the cold plastic toggle of the light switch.She flicked it up.

A row of bare bulbs stuttered to life along the basement roof.It wasn’t much, but it did the job.Diana ducked beneath the door and descended gun-first.

She took each step one by one.Her eyes swept left to right.The hulking pizza oven in the corner that she’d never used.A treadmill.Boxes of Christmas decorations.They were all irrelevant now.What mattered were the spacesbetweenthings, the gaps where someone could hide.

But no.Nothing was out of place.Nothing disturbed.

The only movement was the bulkhead door, flapping in the wind.A puddle of water had formed just over the threshold.

‘God dammit.’

Diana breathed a sigh of relief, then edged closer to the mess.There was no immediate sign of forced entry beyond the obvious vulnerability.No broken glass from the small, high window.No footprints in the dust except her own.Up close, the door looked even more pathetic.Years of Florida’s salt-laden air had clearly taken its toll, and this flash storm had been the killing blow.

With her free hand, she pushed the door shut and tried to deadbolt it, but the part of the frame that held the lock had disintegrated.Diana scanned the basement and spotted a metal folding chair propped against the wall.She wedged it under the door handle, angling it so any inward pressure would drive the chair legs harder against the concrete floor.

Done.Breach secured, however crudely.

Diana let out a long, shaky breath.The tension in her shoulders eased slightly.Just the storm.Just a rotten door frame finally giving up the ghost.Embarrassing lapse in home maintenance, but not fatal.

She lowered the Glock slightly, though her finger remained near the trigger guard.Old habits.The immediate threat seemed to have receded, now replaced by the mundane annoyance of the puddle spreading across the dusty concrete floor.

Her sneakers were soaked.Wonderful.Wet feet were almost worse than potential intruders.She nudged at the spreading water with the toe of her shoe and tried to vaguely to disperse it towards a floor drain she dimly recalled being somewhere near the pizza oven.It was a useless gesture; the water just sloshed back, indifferent.

As it spread, her eye caught something glinting in the dim light.

It was a gray, metallic flash against the concrete.The object sat innocently in a shallow groove where the floor met the wall.

Diana frowned.Sure, she’d forgotten exactly what she’d dumped down here over the years, and the White Whale group had been down here thirty, forty times over the years.

She leaned closer and picked it up.Square, approximately half an inch thick.Silver, possibly sterling, based on the patina forming at the edges.

A cufflink.

The basement air turned Arctic, because this wasn’t just any cufflink.Diana discarded the possibilities as quickly as they hit her brain, because this cufflink didn’t belong to her or her ex-husband or anyone who’d been invited into her home recently.

Someone knew.Someone knew about their group, about their obsessions, about the details only the investigators and the killers themselves would recognize.

The gun trembled in Diana’s hands as the horrible symmetry revealed itself.Both cases - their respective obsessions.Frank had died trapped in his own nightmare.And now –

Diana’s breath accelerated as her training battled with elemental fear.She needed to get out of here, out into the open.

The basement door?Out into the backyard?

No.The garden was too enclosed.There was no gate out into civilization.

Front door.

Diana dropped the cufflink and backed towards the stairs.Her mind locked solely on the idea of escape.

Then something vibrated against her leg.It detonated against her thigh with such unexpected force that, for a moment, she interpreted the sensation as an attack.She was a few millimeters from unloading six bullets into the shadows.

Three pulses.

Four.Five.

The rational part of her brain finally caught up.

Phone call.Safety.Alert.Answer.

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