Page 63 of Girl, Unmasked
‘Can I help you?’Patrick asked, unaware he was addressing his own executioner.
‘You don't remember me, do you?’Cain asked, his voice deceptively soft.Recognition dawned in Patrick's eyes a moment too late.The knife was already in Cain's hand, glinting in the dusty sunlight filtering through the shop windows.
‘Crap.Third victim isn’t a woman at all.It’s a man.’
Ella raced through the rest of the scene, and sure enough, that was exactly how it played out.Cain ambushed this Patrick character with a knife and left him dead behind the counter in his store.
She jolted back in her chair so hard she nearly hit the ground.If this killer was following Halo of Bloodto the letter, then it meant the third victim would be a man.
A man connected to Drago LaChance.Someone who, if the themes here were consistent, had humiliated Drago LaChance in real life.This Patrick character was a surrogate for a real person in this city – but who the hell was it?
Then, a lightning bolt hit her cerebral cortex and sent her vision swimming.Maybe it was the concussion doing the talking, but whatever it was, Ella welcomed it.
Because one name jumped into her head.
William Kane.
Drago or something?Had long black hair, kind of scraggly.Long nose.Dressed in army trousers and a gray jacket.
That description ricocheted around the inside of Ella's skull like a stray bullet in a broom closet.Long black hair.Big nose.Just like the mug shot Ryland had dredged up from the armpit of the dark web.
This fiction scene took place in a vintage clothes store.
William Kane ran a bookstore.
This fictional kill took place in the daytime.
Ella looked over at the clock.It was just before midday.
But perhaps most importantly, Kane was a man who’d embarrassed the author, even by his own admission.
Ella snatched her keys and was out the door in a second.She needed to get to Bookshop Obscura now.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Ella blew through intersections with reckless abandon, red lights be damned.She covered the ten-minute journey to Main Street in half that time and violated every traffic law in the book in the process.She silently mouthed something, maybe Hail Marys or just plain old profanity.But she was deaf to all but the blood rushing in her ears.
She didn’t bother looking for a parking spot.She jerked the wheel and mounted the sidewalk with the crunch of metal on concrete.On the other side of the road sat Bookshop Obscura – William Kane’s musty little kingdom of the printed word.Today, it wasn’t just a forgettable little cube.It was a crime scene waiting to happen.
If it hasn't happened already, a voice hissed in her head.
Ella told it to shut the hell up as she bolted out into the midday sun and made for the entrance.Pedestrians looked at her like she'd just crash-landed from another planet, but she'd already been gawped at by an army of school kids today, and after someone had endured that, they could endure anything.
At the door, she skidded to a stop like a freight train hitting a wall.Somewhere in the back of her head, alarm bells clanged loud enough to wake the dead.The sign in the window said it all.
CLOSED.
Middle of the day on a weekday, and the store was shut up tight.
Her eyes cut to the lock, to the door handle.Dull brass, tarnished with age and the oily residue of a thousand hands.It mocked her, daring her to reach out and test her luck.
Ella flexed her fingers.She knew, even before she touched it, what she would find.Some small, bitter part of her almost wanted to turn tail, jump back in her car, and pretend she'd never darkened this doorway.Spare herself the confirmation of what her gut already knew.
But Ella Dark had never listened to that part of herself, and she wasn't about to start now.So she grabbed the handle, wrapped her fingers around it like she was throttling some perp’s neck.
The mechanism gave with a small click.
Unlocked.
