Page 70 of Girl, Unmasked
‘Hands where I can see them, now!’
She'd imagined this moment a hundred times over the past two days, but now that that she was face-to-face with the monster behind the mutilations, all she felt was a sick, roiling disgust.She watched the expressions chase themselves across his face in slo-mo – shock, disbelief, the dawning realization that the game was well and truly up.
And beneath it all, something darker still.Like Drago LaChance was desperate enough to chew its own leg off if it meant escaping the trap.
LaChance's hands inched skyward in an act of reluctant surrender.But his eyes, those watery gray pits, they never stopped scanning.
Looking for an out.
Ella had seen that look on the faces of a hundred scumbags right before they did something stupid.
‘I didn’t…’ Drago began, but Ella held up a hand.
‘Save it for the police station.’
Ella was three steps away.Two.One hand on her cuffs, the other keeping her pistol trained on LaChance's heart.His throat bobbed.A bead of sweat tracked down his temple.His watery eyes darted in every direction; door, gun, face, back to the door.
Her finger stayed outside the trigger guard.
Ten feet between them now.Eight.Five.
Home stretch.
And then the bastard moved.
LaChance lurched to his feet and bolted for the house.Ella's finger twitched on the trigger but she held off; better to take this scumbag alive and wring every last detail out of him than risk a million unanswered questions.
LaChance slammed the door behind him and Ella hit it a second later, shoulder-first.The lock gave way with a crack and Ella breached the threshold with her pistol up and sweeping.
‘It’s over, LaChance!’Ella shouted, but only silence responded.She looked around at the living room she found herself in, although the damn place was more like a rat’s nest.
Boxes everywhere, piled haphazardly from floor to ceiling.Newspapers and empty liquor bottles carpeting every surface.She was in a hoarder’s paradise.
He’s lost someone.People hoarded in the wake of tragedy, usually when a loved one disappeared.Holding on to crap was a psychological defense mechanism, even if that stuff had nothing to do with the person who vanished.Even so, this was the lair of a lunatic.
Ella swept the room.Checked the corners.Then she spun towards the back door and caught a flash of movement.
There.The ragged edge of a coat sleeve disappearing around the edge of the doorframe.
‘Freeze!’Ella yelled as she launched in pursuit.She shouldered the door open with enough force to crack her bones, but the backyard was empty.Just a postage stamp of browning grass hemmed in by a chain-link fence.
No sign of LaChance.
And her blood was already singing a different tune, because LaChance wouldn't have bolted out the back.Not without a clear exit.Perps on the run always looked for the biggest sprawl to maximize their chances of escape.
He had to still be inside.
‘Drago,’ Ella called out as she paced back into the living room.‘Come out with your hands up.’
Nothing but the creak of floorboards answered her.Ella edged forward and kicked aside a stack of newspapers.From her peripheral vision, she caught sight of a familiar face staring up at her.
Sophie Draper, smiling and alive.Next to it, a photo of Martina Payne accepting some teaching award.
Son of a bitch.He was monitoring the press coverage.
And it all but confirmed he was the killer.
Through the living room again, Ella kicked through the clutter and trash.There was a battered couch against one wall, something that passed for bookshelves on the other.She cleared away what detritus she could as she hunted for LaChance, but the place was a graveyard.
