Page 91 of Girl, Fractured

Sarah Webb, who was now a diminishing outline fifty feet ahead.She was running along the beach like wounded prey, even though Ripley hadn’t got to cave her skull in.

She took a breath.Let her go, she thought.The actual killer was at her mercy, and he was the one she wanted.

But then Sarah’s silhouette stuttered to a halt, her forward momentum arrested as if she’d hit an invisible wall.Ripley squinted through salt-laden darkness.The outline of Sarah’s body transformed, arms rising skyward in the universal language of surrender.

What the hell?

The silhouette didn’t remain static.It returned, growing larger with each second, advancing toward Ripley like an apparition pulled by invisible strings.

Ripley’s adrenal glands, already depleted from the explosive violence still reverberating through her shoulder joints, attempted one final chemical rally.Her vision narrowed to tactical parameters: distance to target, potential weapons within reach, escape routes rendered in urgent mental cartography.

The silhouette’s surrender didn’t compute.Sarah Webb had been running,escaping,with all the desperate momentum of someone who’d just witnessed her boyfriend’s cranium reconstructed by gardening equipment.Voluntary surrender contradicted every survival instinct encoded in human DNA.

Unless –

The silhouette’s outline blurred, bifurcated, then resolved into two distinct shapes; one stationary, arms elevated; the other approaching with the unmistakable forward-leaning posture of law enforcement in pursuit mode.The second figure grew larger against the backdrop of moonlit surf, and its gait was familiar enough that Ripley’s threat assessment circuits downshifted from red alert to cautious relief.

Ella.Somehow, impossibly, Ella had arrived.

Finally, the two figures came within spitting distance, within shoveling distance.Sarah was shaking like a leaf in a gale.The woman who’d written about murder from the comfort of her computer was now experiencing it for real – and Ripley was loving every second.

‘Brought you a gift,’ Ella said.

Ripley grinned, then inspected the head of her shovel, now coated with the blood of a killer.‘You’re too kind.’

‘Where’s Taylor?’

‘You figured that out too, huh?’

‘Yeah.Is he here?’

Ripley nodded at the hole in the ground.‘Drowning.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t worry, we’ve got about,’ – she looked at the oncoming tide, nature’s most reliable timekeeper – ‘two minutes before he dies.’

‘Save him!’Sarah screeched.‘Please!’

‘I’ll save him, if you confess.’

‘Yes!We did it all!We planned this out.Nathan killed all of them.I wasn’t there, but…’

A new wave of rage overcame Ripley.She stuck the head of the shovel against Sarah’s neck, staining her with her boyfriend’s blood.‘You killed three people.My friend, your own dad.Why?’

‘Because we wanted to write the best story ever.’

Ripley felt sick.She spat a glob of phlegm on the sand.‘I ought to cut your head off right here.’

‘No!Please!’

People showed their true colors when faced with death.To no one’s surprise, least of all Ripley’s, Sarah Webb was a coward.

‘Fine.’Ripley lowered her weapon.‘You have no idea how much I wanted to smash your skull in.Right from the second I met you.’

Then Sarah Webb started to cry.She was definitely a good actress, but these seemed genuine.Behind her, in the hole meant for her eternal residency, Nathan Taylor’s ruined body twitched with diminishing electrical impulses.The tide had advanced another inch, and now black water now lapped at his shoulders.

Ripley stood at the edge of what could be Nathan’s tomb.‘What do you think, Dark?Save him.’

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