Then suddenly, Ella was transported to a different world, a different time.A wave of déjà vu hit her like a fist to the skull, and she was no longer in a hut by a river in New Orleans.
And she was holding this figurine in her hand.
Because Ella was absolutely certain that she’d seen this object before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
He drove south with the windows down and the radio off.
Four.He’d done four and the sky hadn’t fallen.However, it soon would, and that’s when he would ascend to a higher plane.
His mentor had been right all along.This was the thing that would finally quiet the screaming in his head and make the world finally bend to his will.It was power distilled to its purest form, and it seemed that at last, his bad luck had finally run out.
And what about that hard-nosed bitch who’d tried to outsmart him on the phone?The confusion in her voice was music to his ears, and it was quite funny.He thought it would be harder to get her on the phone.He figured he’d have to go through layers of security, probably spin a few lies and call her out by name.But all it took was a few choice words – something about a fourth body and speaking to the lead detective on the case.The Red Sea had parted instantly and a minute later, he was talking to her directly.He guessed everybody wanted a piece of the action when the reaper came calling.
He flicked on his turn signal and banked a hard right onto a long, barren road that he knew better than his own reflection.Initially, this step in the process hadn’t been part of the mission, but the mentor had asked a favor of him.A fair trade, he thought, given the mentor’s assistance before this whole thing began.
As his car rolled to a stop at the gates, he let the silence of the evening engulf him.Here, cloaked in shadow, he could finally give voice to the strangest symptom of his metamorphosis.
And that was that even though the mentor had blocked his messages for reasons he didn’t understand, he missed the mentor like he missed a vital organ.The mentor had been the only one who’d ever really seen him stripped bare of social niceties.
Now it was radio silence across the board.If he didn’t know better, he might’ve thought it was all some figment of his apparently volatile psyche.
He groped the figurine around his neck and squeezed.It grounded him in the here and now and did away with all of those intrusive thoughts the mentor had warned him about.There was no time for reflection or concern, not when the final piece of the puzzle was about to fit nicely into this picture.
Agent Dark.Truth be told, he only talked to her for the first time today, and had never met her in the flesh or even seen her from afar.But still, he knew her like back of his hand.What was she doing now?Well, that depended whether or not she’d had enough brain cells to rub together and puzzle out his little riddle.He hoped so.It’d be a damn shame if she let her reputation down, after all the good things the mentor had said about her.Maybe one day, when this was all over and he was back home, he’d ask her about it.
But that was for later.He had more pressing concerns at the moment.
He eyeballed the distant farmhouse.He couldn’t take his car down there, so he’d need to hide it away up here and make the journey on foot.
He didn’t know why the mentor wanted this particular person dead.He hadn’t asked.The mentor’s reasons were the mentor’s business, and part of what made their relationship work was that neither of them demanded explanations the other wasn’t ready to give.He trusted the mentor’s judgement.If she said this person needed saving – and that was still the word that kept cropping up, because the mentor had taught him that killing and saving were not opposites but the same act seen from different angles – then this person needed saving.
Now all he had to do was wait, because if Ella Dark was as smart as the mentor claimed she was, then she’d know exactly where he was.
And she was going to get the surprise of her life.
***
Ella tipped her head back and tried to find solace in the star-pricked sky, but all she saw was a bottomless black, as cold and pitiless as a raven’s eye.It seemed to say: ‘You are small.You are meaningless.You will never be enough’.She caught Ripley side-eyeing her from the shed’s doorway.
‘CSI will be here in ten,’ she said.‘You gonna hold onto that figurine forever or give it to the techs?’
‘I know this figure, Mia.I’ve seen it before.’
‘Dark, it’s a pelican.Like a million other pelicans.It doesn’t even have any identifiable marks or anything.’
‘I know, but-,’
‘Look, I’m not saying you’re wrong about being part of this.That phone call made it pretty damn clear you are.But recognizing one pelican out of every pelican in Louisiana?That’s a stretch, and right now we’ve got a body on the floor that needs our attention more than your déjà vu does.’
Ella swallowed the snarl building in her throat.Much as it pained her, Ripley had a point.Her brain was latching onto anything that might make this senseless freak show make sense, even if it meant seeing ghosts in wooden pelicans.
So she went back into the shack and crouched down beside the vic.Up close, the old man looked something akin to an unwrapped Egyptian mummy.He had waxy skin, translucent over feeble bones.His clothes hanging off him like he was a toppled scarecrow.
But the bruises around his neck told the real story.There was a ring of red that was on the way to becoming purple.'No defensive wounds that I can see.No head trauma either, at least not that left a mark.Our unsub strangled him,' she said.
‘And the sky’s blue.The guy looks frail as hell.No wonder the unsub didn’t need to cave his head in this time.’
