Page 86 of Girl, Unmasked
She fished out her cuffs, rolled Ezra over and snapped them on.
‘Ezra Borgman, you’re under arrest for… crap that’ll take us years to sort out.’
As the adrenaline began to ebb, Ella became acutely aware of the silence that had fallen over the theater.She glanced out at the sea of faces, then almost on autopilot, she staggered over to the podium and leaned into the mic.
Now she was on the spot.Usually, she’d have no shortage of insights to throw out there, but right now her mind was blank.
She picked up a copy of Kirsten Lawler’s book that lay idly beside the mic.‘You know, I always thought books were dead,’ she began.A quick glance back at Ezra’s lifeless body.‘But words have power.They can inspire, heal, and sometimes they can kill.’
Right at the moment, Ella’s backup came bursting through the door.
Finally, game over.
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
Ella surveyed the chaos of the theater.The uniforms were doing their thing, corralling witnesses and stringing up enough crime scene tape to gift wrap the Ellalyn Tower.The EMTs were checking on Kirsten Lawler and Ezra Borgman, the unassuming angel of death himself, was being dragged out in cuffs, still spitting blood.
‘Hell of a thing,’ Ripley said.
‘You keep saying that..’
‘Could be worse.We could be zipping the place up and tagging toes instead of mopping up blood.’
‘Your bedside manner needs work, Mia.’
‘I’m no doctor.’
She huffed a laugh, immediately regretted it as her battered diaphragm spasmed.Christ, she was getting too old for this stuff.Chasing down psychos and trading blows like she was back in the ring.She'd be lucky if she could crawl out of bed tomorrow without the aid of a crane.
But damn if it didn't feel good.The ache in her muscles, the throb of her split knuckles.The knowledge that she'd put herself on the line, body and soul, and come out the other side.Bloody and bruised, sure, butalive.
Ripley must have caught the look on her face.She bumped her shoulder with hers, gentle, mindful of her various hurts.
‘Great work, Dark.This Lawler woman would be on a gurney if it wasn’t for your stubborn ass.’
Ella ducked her head.Praise from Mia was a rare thing, but it was an effort not to play it off with her usual wiseass deflection.
‘Yeah, well.You know me.Always gotta be the debutante at the ball.’
‘Seriously.What you did was pretty much supernatural.Putting it all together, seeing the pattern when the rest of us were still trying to figure out which way was up.’
Ella shifted, uncomfortable with the sincerity in her voice.She was acting like she'd just pulled Excalibur out of a stone and declared herself queen of the realm.She'd never quite known what to do with praise that didn't come with a side helping of sarcasm.
‘It was Ryland that found the stuff on the web.Hell, even Borgman tipped his hand with that stupid book.I was just the chessmaster.’
‘Don't sell yourself short, Dark.’Ripley tipped her chin at the stage, the rust-brown pool of drying blood where Ezra Borgman's not-so-illustrious literary career had come to an end.‘You're the one who made that shot.Figured out just the right amount of Looney Tunes physics to make it work.That's not nothing.’
‘Got lucky,’ Ella muttered, but she could feel the traitorous heat creeping up her neck all the same.Goddamnit, was sheblushing?She'd just pounded a serial killer into pudding in front of a live studio audience, and here she was going all schoolgirl over a little compliment from her partner.Pathetic.
But if Ripley noticed her discomfort, she was kind enough not to mention it.She just nodded, like her downplaying was the most natural thing in the world.
‘Luck's got nothing to do with it.You've got a gift.Or a curse.One of them.’
Ella pressed her lips together and bit back the automatic denial.The knot in her chest, the one she'd been carrying since she’d laid eyes on that first mutilated angel, loosened and unraveled like a half-assed alibi under interrogation.
She was right.Of course she was.For all her rough edges and emotional constipation, Ripley had always been the voice of reason in their partnership.
‘So this Borgman creep,’ Mia said.‘What was his deal, anyway?’
