Jimmy sat slumped in his chair, dried blood coating his neck and t-shirt. He was a lifeless specimen, something Tessa had seen plenty of in her time, but never once did she think the body would belong to the man she loved.
A second wave of despair came when she realized she’d walked right past him only a few minutes ago. She scrambled around for her phone to call the police, but before her jittering hands could dial the number, she saw something that seemed out of place, even for a morbid scene like this.
She saw a sign of life in her husband.
In her frenzy, she hadn’t seen it right away. She had been too engulfed with panic. She reluctantly shuffled closer, wiping away the tears with her forearm as she did.
Then came a third wave of despair when she realized it wasn’t a sign of life at all. Jimmy’s eyes reflected beams of golden light, as though death had transformed them into tiny mirrors.
On closer scrutiny, it had.
Because Jimmy now had silver coins where his eyes should have been.
Tessa lost all basic functions: voice, mobility, cognitive thought. She managed to dial the emergency service number, and when it connected, all she could do was scream on the line.
CHAPTER ONE
Ella Dark sat on her apartment floor, paperwork piled high on every side. She checked her phone.
One message from Mark.
I’ll pick you up in 10 mins, followed by a row of XX’s.
Ella checked the time. Seven-thirty AM. She’d woken up two hours earlier after a bizarre dream in which she was singing to a packed audience with an orchestra; only when she turned around, the musicians had no faces. She hoped it was just her imagination taking liberties rather than a metaphorical manifestation of her thoughts.
She was ready to go; but before she left, she had to make a dent in this paperwork.
Two weeks ago, she’d apprehended the sex worker killer down in Baltimore after a grueling battle. She’d been the one to physically take him down, but it had been a team effort between her, Agent Mia Ripley and Agent Mark Balzano to get the circumstances right.
The wounds were beginning to heal, at least the physical ones. She’d suffered a few injuries, but the FBI doctors had set her right. However, the mental wounds were still an inescapable abyss that seemed to widen by the day.
Agent Ripley had discovered Ella’s deceit. Ella had been conversing with incarcerated serial killer Tobias Campbell, something that she’d gone to great lengths to keep from her partner given Ripley’s history with him. Ripley had been the one to take Campbell down fifteen years earlier, but it wasn’t without its traumas. Ella had kept her partner in the dark out of concern for her reaction, and Ripley had reacted exactly as Ella expected when she finally found out. Worse, in fact.
But while Ella still called Ripley her partner in her own thoughts, the more appropriate term was ex-partner. Ripley told Ella they couldn’t be a team anymore. Ripley’s last words to Ella before she stormed off was that she was putting in a request for a new trainee.
So far, Ella didn’t know if Ripley had made good on her claim. She hadn’t seen or talked to her in two weeks, although it wasn’t for Ella’s lack of trying. She’d sent texts, made calls, and tried to catch her at FBI HQ to no avail.
Ella wanted nothing more than to apologize, even though words really couldn’t convey just how much of a fool she felt. Her career in the field might have come to a close, and while she hated that fact, it was what she deserved. Not only did she go behind her partner’s back, the same woman who’d saved her life multiple times over the past six months, but it was laughable to think she could meet with one of the country’s most notorious criminals and keep it secret. It had been Campbell himself who’d divulged the details to Ripley. He’d sent her a letter, explaining everything in full. She had opened herself up to a human predator and he’d reacted exactly as one might expect. It was no one’s fault but her own.
And it wasn’t just Campbell’s written acknowledgments that haunted her day and night. It was Campbell himself, at least through proxy. Campbell was a spider at the center of a giant web, and he had contacts all across the country and possibly further. His disciples had eyes on her, watching her every movement and leaving dead animals on her doorstep. Every time Ella left the house, she was dreadfully wary of anyone who passed her, any stranger who made idle conversation, any leaflet distributor who shamelessly invaded her space. Any one of them could be a Campbell disciple, and one day, one of them would be.
Her last cause of concern regarded that of her deceased father. Twenty-five years ago, she’d found her old man dead in his bed and the perpetrator had never been uncovered. Two weeks ago, she’d tracked down a man named Richie Cunningham, who sources told her was an old foe of her dad’s. Richie denied any involvement in her dad’s murder but told Ella that her dad had some serious money issues. He owed the wrong people, allegedly. It was the first Ella heard of such a thing, but she was going to dig deeper regardless. The piles of paperwork that lay beside her were her father’s possessions. Bills, receipts, letters. If there was something here that scratched the surface of the truth, she’d find it.
But concentration didn’t come easy, not with the smorgasbord of troubles weighing her down. It was getting late now, but she still had the paperwork from 1993 to 1995 to go through. She took a few shots of whiskey and lime to keep the tiredness at bay, a trick her ex-partner taught her. The lime to boost concentration levels, and the whiskey because it was whiskey. She picked up the next pile and leafed through it for any discriminate documents, something that didn’t follow the usual format of soulless greeting, request for money, informal signoff. The edges of the paper became a blur as her tiredness took over, but then the bottom half of the stack fell from her hands. Ella glanced at the yellowed piece of paper laying on the top of the pile.
A different size from the rest. Not standard paper size, or a standard letterhead.
And it was entirely handwritten.
Some of the ink had faded with time, but the content was mostly legible.
Ken, consider this your acknowledgment of borrowed monies. Must be repaid in full, with ten percent interest by 05/25/95. OWA.
Ella almost dropped the rest of the paperwork when she saw the date.
Five days before her father had been killed.
Her hands trembled as she reached out for it, but then her detective instincts kicked in. She gently picked it up by its corner, held it and scrutinized every inch of it. Written in black ink, only a few sentences on the front and nothing on the back. If this had been left among this paperwork for two decades, there was a chance the creator’s fingerprints were still on it somewhere.
But what was this anyway?
Some kind of receipt? And a handwritten one at that? No reputable establishment would use such irregular paper, so was this some kind of backdoor transaction? And why was there no mention of the actual amount?
Ella quickly flicked through the rest of the paperwork to see if she could find any similar documents. None. Nothing that resembled this one. It was a one-off.
Something wasn’t right about this. And the biggest question was – who was OWA? Someone’s initials? The name of an organization? She had some digging to do. She put the document in a plastic wallet to keep it safe then stashed it away.