Page 2 of Girl, Empty
‘You’ve never mentioned this guy.’
She had to resist the urge to cover Luca in cold water.‘Hawkins, now’s not the time for jealousy, okay?’
‘I don’t mean like that.I just mean… I knew Julianne and Jenna because you talked about them.I don’t think you’ve mentioned Ben’s name once.’
As much as Ella wanted to say,‘There’s a reason for that,’she tampered down the impulse.She didn’t believe in comparing exes.‘Well, his details were in my cell.Text messages, call logs, everything.’
Her phone erupted in her pocket.The vibration felt like an insect crawling across her skin.
She dug it out.HQ flashed on the screen.6:03 AM.They never called this early unless someone was dead.
And yes, someone was dead.
Ella watched the phone pulse in her hand.Four rings.Five.They'd tell her about Ben like it was news.Like she hadn't just watched the footage.Probably some night-shift analyst monitoring news feeds had flagged the story about a murdered ex-cop with ties to FBI personnel.Or maybe LAPD had already reached out to ask if they should be worried about a pattern.
The phone kept buzzing.Luca watched her stare at it.
‘You going to get that?’
‘No.’
The buzzing stopped.Then immediately started again.Whoever was calling had decided persistence was key.
‘They're not going to stop,’ Luca said.
‘I know.’
But she couldn't bring herself to pick up.Answering meant making Ben's death official.Ben Carter deserved better than that.He deserved to stay human for as long as Ella could let him.
‘Give it here.’Ella reluctantly passed the phone to Luca.He moved to the other side of the room.‘Ella’s phone.’
She couldn’t watch the scene unfold.When Luca hung up, that would be it.Ben Carter would be officially gone from this world, and that fact alone would kill her.She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought of Ben since he’d gone.Not with any heartfelt longing or regret, but just to remind herself that he was out there doing his thing, sharing the same memories of their time together as her.
‘Yeah, I’ll tell her.What was the date again?Right.Got it.Thanks for calling.’Half of Luca’s conversation drifted across the room.He hung up, then threw her phone back to Ella.‘That was a man calling himself Roadrunner.’
‘Roady?’
‘Yeah.Oh.The guy in the basement, right?What’s he doing awake so early?’
‘He doesn’t sleep.And yes, the basement guy.I asked him to do me a favor.What did he say?’
‘He said the date is October 16, whatever that means.’
Ella's head spun.She'd asked Roadrunner if he could pinpoint exactly when she'd lost her cell, because she'd visited Roadrunner's office that same day.He had his methods of finding such information, and apparently, the day was October 16.
October 16.That date meant something.
It took a moment to search her memory bank, because the images of Ben’s dead body being wheeled away still took center stage.Then it became undeniably clear, and the day of October 16 played out like a movie reel in her head.
On the morning of October 16, she'd packed her bag and taken a flight to New Orleans International Airport.Then she'd taken a cab to the Orleans Parish District Court, watched through six hours of criminal hearings, and then finally taken the stand herself.She'd described how, two years ago, she'd apprehended a serial killer in a battered women's shelter.Then she'd laid out his psychological framework in order to secure that man's indefinite incarceration in a prison cell.
Everything had gone a little too smoothly, because she’d helped secure that man a death sentence.
And when she returned home the next day, she was miraculously missing both her cell phone and her hairbrush.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she breathed.She doubled over again, but this time it wasn't nausea.This time it was pure frustration, because the pattern was so obvious she wanted to scream at herself for missing it.
All of this – the deaths of Julianne, Jenna, and now Ben – all had something to do with a man named Austin Creed.
