Melissa’s punishment had been much worse. Mia had explained everything in full detail, much to Melissa’s disapproval. From the reluctance to leave her vehicle to shooting a fleeing suspect to causing two-hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damages. For all that, Melissa had been relegated back to her desk job. Her career in the field started and ended on the same day.
Mia thought about opposing the decision, but it was for the best in the long run. Melissa didn’t have the natural instincts that a field agent needed, she realized. Textbooks couldn’t teach you everything. You needed a head on your shoulders to survive in this game. Everyone thought they had it, but it wasn’t until you came face to face with real hardships that you discovered whether you really did.
“I’m sorry, Ripley,” Melissa said as she hauled her bag over her shoulder. The tears had dried now. “I’m just… in shock. Two hundred thousand dollars. I could have killed people.”
There was no point kicking the girl when she was down, Mia thought.
“No one got hurt. And two hundred grand isn’t going to bankrupt the Bureau.”
“I guess we’re lucky.”
Lucky, Mia thought. That wasn’t the word she’d use right now. “Take it as a lesson. Field work isn’t for you.”
“I’m gutted. I really wanted to give this a shot.”
“You gave it more than a shot,” Mia said. She saw the girl’s expression resume despair. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Melissa sulked her way to the door, head down, eyes on the ground. Mia knew they’d both remember this for the rest of their lives, and not for the right reasons. Melissa for nearly blowing up a gas station, Mia for making a string of bad decisions that led to the fact. How had she got so things right with Ella but completely missed the mark with Melissa?
Thinking about it, maybe she was lucky after all.
Mia grabbed the last item standing. Her phone. As she picked it up, she saw the notifications on the screen. Too many to count, but one name stood out to her. The name she’d seen on her phone every day for the past two weeks.
“Speak of the devil and she’s sure to appear,” Mia said. Another missed call from her old partner.
Melissa turned around. “Huh?”
Mia hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. “Sorry. Nothing. Can you just wait downstairs? There’s one last thing I have to do here.”
Melissa waited a second before responding, probably fearing that Mia’s task involved her misdemeanor somehow. “Umm, okay. See you down there.”
Mia sat back down at her desk and scrolled through all of Ella’s messages and missed calls from the past few weeks. Too many to count. Mia sighed, opened up her messages screen, closed it again.
No, it was time. She needed to do it.
This had gone on long enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ella found herself driving through Newark with no particular destination in sight. Dead ends were familiar territory to her now, but it didn’t stop them stinging just as hard every single time. Two days, two suspects, two releases. It didn’t get any easier.
Maybe through subconscious familiarity, she found she was on the same street as her motel. Might as well get a coffee from her room, she thought. It wouldn’t be as nice as franchise outlet coffee, but it would be a lot cheaper. Every case, she doubted her ability to reach the finish line, but that was usually all she doubted. Now, her mounting problems were beginning to suffocate her, and for once, her detective skills were the least of her problems. All morning, she’d felt her phone continually vibrate, and she hadn’t dared check the messages because she knew what her reaction would be: anger.
Was it her fault she didn’t like her relationship? Did she do something wrong to make Mark react this way to her? Would he be like this if she was different, maybe if she was tall, tanned, and blonde? Well, she wasn’t willing to find out, because next time she talked to him, she was giving him the truth: she didn’t want to be with him anymore.
She parked her car and went into the motel. She’d get coffee from the room, she decided, plus she could get her phone charger. With the influx of messages, it must be close to dead. She checked her battery level and saw it was at eleven percent, but as she did, she noticed the barrage of notifications on her home screen. Seven messages from Mark, two missed calls, and one message from a name she never expected to see again.
Mia Ripley had replied to her. Ella saw her name, felt the joy, and tapped into her message as she stood on the motel stairs.
Then dread returned, pushing her further down into despair.
Please stop trying to contact me.
Right then, Ella could have curled up into a ball and slept forever. She felt like she’d lost her place in the world, like she was fighting a stream of constant, growing, never-ending battles that she didn’t want or need in her life.
First there was this unsub. Someone out there, someone who she could have already walked past on the street, was systematically killing off people in the coin collecting trade. Every time a new body showed up, the blood was on her hands. It was her responsibility to stop this maniac, and even with three crime scenes, three dead bodies and a solid link between them all, her case was still directionless at the moment.
Then there was Mark, the man who’d shown such promise upon their first meeting only to morph into an insecure, jealous monster at the mere mention of another man’s name. It wasn’t normal. Her ex-boyfriends didn’t do that. Her friends’ boyfriends didn’t do that. No man or woman should do that. It was what the young folk called toxic behavior according to her late-night Googling.
Now Mia, the woman who gave her this job in the first place, an opportunity few people would ever get, despised her. Ella deserved some backlash from her actions. Of that, she was more than happy to admit. She wished no ill will towards Mia for acting the way she did. More so than anything else, Ella hated herself for being so short-sighted throughout the whole ordeal.
She pulled out her keycard and opened her motel door. The coffee sachets looked tempting, but the bed looked better. She wanted to collapse on it, sleep for a few days and wake up to a solved case. No more death, no more bodies, no more coins. Just the bliss and stress-free living that she suddenly craved. Maybe it was time to go back to Intelligence and stay there, resume her life of minimal responsibilities and maybe get her kicks through rock climbing and martial arts tournaments.
It wasn’t until she sat on the bed and organized her thoughts that she remembered the note. The note sitting on her nightstand, possibly sent to her by the country’s most sadistic serial killer. She tried not to look at it, but her peripheral vision betrayed her intentions. Through some bizarre mechanism of her cognitive system, the note looked longer, wider in her fringe vision. She gave up, deciding to embrace the dread, turned around and looked at it.
The note looked longer because there was another next to it.
Ella begged it to be a product of her stress. Or one was the letter, one was the envelope. She edged closer to the nightstand, finding two envelopes sitting side by side.
Her stomach tied in knots, and she had to swallow hard to keep the bile from rising to her throat. How did this get here? Had the maid moved it? Had someone been in her room? How the hell was this possible? Just as she reached out to grab it, a gentle knock at the door rose the hairs on her neck. Ella was off the bed and holding her pistol in the weaver stance in a single movement. She edged closer to the door, peered through the spyhole and saw a familiar face standing on the other side. She lowered her weapon and opened the door.