‘What?Yes I was.Throw enough crap at the wall and some will stick.’
‘Dark, how many times do I need to tell you?You’re a terrible actress.’
Ella tried not to laugh, given the circumstances.Crime scenes and funerals were the two places you had to hold back your smirks.‘Yup.Hollywood won’t be calling me anytime soon.’
Ripley plucked her phone from her pocket.‘Nope, but the director probably will.Ready to head back and brief him on everything?’
Just as Ella was about to haul herself from her rock-turned-throne, two uniformed officers marched past with a bloody Maxwell Tanner in their clutches.He kept his gaze on the ground as they escorted him away from the lake, down the dirt path towards their waiting vehicle.
‘Won’t even look at you,’ Ripley said.
‘He will when I testify against him, the coward.’
Ripley pulled herself up.'Probably won't have to.Bartram's already got his computer in the vault.His whole textbook is on there.Plus, we've got Lily's testimonial.The only way he's leaving prison is in a box.'
Ella's mind replayed the events that had led her to this moment.Maxwell Tanner's reign of terror was over, and while the physical scars would heal, the memories of this case would linger, as they always did.
Ella began the unnecessarily precarious process of disentangling herself from the rock that had been her makeshift chair.The pain from her temple stretched to every nerve in her body.‘Jesus, that hurts,’ she said.
Ripley watched her nonchalantly.‘You look like a newborn giraffe trying to stand up.’
‘You’re right, maybe I should see a doctor.Now let’s get out of here before I start sprouting moss.’
‘Roger that.By the way, needles?Why’d you never mentioned that before?’
Ella had been foolish to think Ripley would never find out about this.Still, Ripley didn’t know the full extent of it, and maybe it was time she did.‘You know how you’re always asking about my memory?’
‘What, your encyclopedia of useless crap but occasionally the odd helpful thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure, and I still don’t understand it.’
‘Well, needles are how it started.’Ella looked over at the lake.‘Those images of my dad injecting my mom were the first things that were ever seared into my head.Ever that, it just became something I could do on command.’
‘Jesus, really?’
‘Really.’
‘You know what they say about clouds and silver linings.’Ripley said.The words were rough but not unkind.Ella laughed.
‘Yup.At least something good came out of it, or close enough to good.’
‘Well, let’s get out of here.With any luck, we can be home before the sun comes up.’
Ella looked at the sky.One less monster in the world.One more case closed.
One more victory for the Ultra-Violent Crime Unit.
She’d take it.
EPILOGUE
The next morning, when Ella got back to D.C., she found the parcel in her mailbox.
No return address.Her name printed in generic block letters on a shipping label.No postmark either, so it must have been hand-delivered.She carried it upstairs and held it at arm's length, because while she’d never worked in Counter-Terrorism, she’d heard a million stories of bombs in mailboxes.
Inside her apartment, she set it on the kitchen counter and stared at it for a full minute before ripping it open.
