Page 79 of Girl, Fractured

‘A cigarette?’

‘That’s what she said.She watched you speaking with Nicholls, then rushed outside.’

Ripley had spent hours with Sarah Webb, and never once had she mentioned smoking, nor did she possess the intoxicating scent of burned tobacco on her clothes.Ripley knew what a smoker smelled like, and Sarah wasn’t one.

‘Did she catch the part where he confessed to being innocent?’

‘Yeah.’

Ripley took off down the corridor and burst out into the main precinct area.Twenty pairs of eyeballs shot in her direction as she pounded the carpet but she didn’t return the stares.Her focus was on finding this woman, this apparent author, this deceitful monster who’d been under their nose the whole time.

She burst out into the stairwell, rushed down with her heart in her throat, found herself in the lobby.There was a lone receptionist, but no sign of anyone outside the glass doors.Ripley exploded out into the night and frantically circled in search of her escapee.

There were about thirty cars in the lot.A candy wrapper blew past her feet.

Sarah Webb wasn’t here.

‘Shit!’

The word was quiet, but it was a visceral scream in Ripley’s head.Her legs burned and her heart screamed bloody murder, a result of both the sprint and the failure.The bitch had gone, and who knows if they’d ever find her again?She could move states or get surgery to look completely different.

Which means she’d never see justice for the blood on her hands.

Then – a sudden roar.

An engine, previously dormant, coughed, then tore to life.

It was a silver Nissan, and as the interior dome light flickered on, it illuminated the face Ripley was hunting.

Sarah Webb was the driver.

The dome light died, and before Ripley could even process a coherent thought, let alone move, the car shot forward.

It fishtailed slightly, then straightened.

And Sarah Webb sped off into the night.

Trace the plate?No, Webb would ditch that car at the first opportunity.Put out an APB?Summon as many cops as she could?No.Resources were already stretched thin.Webb would be halfway to Georgia before they even got a patrol car rolling.

Then Ripley felt a pair of car keys in her pocket.

The keys to the cruiser she’d driven back from Thomas Webb’s house.The Ford Explorer Interceptor with the high-output V8 engine that could hit 130 miles per hour with barely a tap on the gas.

Webb wanted a chase?

Game on.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Ella hurried out of Thomas Webb’s house, then froze at her car.The night air brought clarity, and Ella began conducting a question-and-answer session with herself.

Was Sarah Webb guilty?Yes.There was no alternative.She was the common denominator in all of this, and she’d lied right to Ella’s face about her father.If Thomas Webb had submitted a manuscript to Scarecrow Press – a publishing house run by Sarah’s boyfriend – then Sarah must have known that her dad was writing about this old case.They met every week.It was improbable that they’d never discuss it, but Sarah wouldn’t want anyone to know this.

Why?Because then the trail would lead to Sarah.

What else was there?Now that Ella saw it clearly, there were plenty of interactions that had seemed minor at the time but now took on a different meaning in this new light.

Sarah had been the one to invite herself to Josiah Nicholls’ apartment, and Ripley’s confirmation of Nicholls’ innocence suggested Sarah had planted that evidence at his house.Shewas the one who apparently ‘found’the Marlowe report and alabaster stones in Nicholls’ apartment, while Ella was conveniently in the other room.Throughout this whole case, Sarah had never once shown concern thatshemight be in the killer’s crosshairs.

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