‘Ella.’Ripley used her first name, which she never did.‘Backup.I’ll get units to you.Do not walk into that farmhouse on your own.’
‘Get them moving, Mia.’
‘I mean it.’
‘So do I.Get them moving.’
Ella hung up and floored the gas.She could be there in twenty minutes – or less if she kept her foot where it was.
So she kept her foot where it was.
***
She’d built a case against this place from a desk two thousand miles away and never once stood on its soil, and now that she was here, the disconnect was so total it felt like stepping into a photograph.
Creed’s farm sat at the end of a dirt road that had stopped being a road about half a mile back.Ella drove up to a chain-link fence with the gate hanging open, then over to the holding pens where presumably Creed had kept his livestock.Then she saw the corrugated lean-to with the skinning table underneath it.Next to it was the hatchery building that was barely visible.And ahead of her, set back from the compound behind a patch of dead lawn that had gone brown, was the farmhouse itself.Everything was where the photographs had shown them; present like they were waiting for someone to come back and use this place.This was the house where Austin Creed had slept and eaten and planned and dreamed up his murderous plan that had set Ella on the path she now trod.
Nobody was coming back, but somebody might be here already.She got out of the car, drew her Glock, and started across the yard.She passed the skinning table and didn't look at it.She passed the hatchery building with its door hanging open and didn't look at that either.She kept her eyes on the farmhouse.
The back door was closed.She went around to the side and found a window.The curtains were drawn.
She pressed her ear to the glass and heard nothing, so she moved to the front.The porch was three wooden steps and a screen door that had come off one of its hinges and hung at an angle.The front door behind it was ajar.
Ella stood at the bottom of the steps with her Glock up and her weight on the balls of her feet.
Someone was in there.She could feel it in her bones.
She went up the steps with the boards creaking underfoot.She pushed the front door open with her shoulder and swept the hallway with her weapon.
Visibility was a luxury she didn't have, because it seemed the whole place had no power to it.She cleared the living room, the beaten-up sofa, and the TV.Nobody was hiding in here.Then to the first spare room downstairs, then headed through the hallway.
A door was open at the end – and light was seeping from it.
Ella swallowed hard.Her pulse was speeding at such a rate she couldn’t keep her hands still.
She readied herself, put one foot over the threshold and pushed through into the next room.
Austin Creed’s kitchen.The same one she’d seen in the photographs.
And there he was.
Edgar Borden sat at the kitchen table with his hands folded in front of him.
Ella had to wait a second for her eyes to adjust to the scene, because he was illuminated by candlelight, and the image didn’t seem to correlate to anything she knew about spree killers in their final moments.
The killer was unarmed from what Ella could see.He’d lit three candles and placed them in a triangle shape.Even by the brief light, he looked much older than thirty-six, and he was much stockier than pictures of him had suggested.He was wearing a flannel shirt over a grey T-shirt and jeans that looked like they’d been slept in.Around his neck, on a length of cord, hung a small wooden figure that Ella couldn’t make out from this distance.
He looked at her with no surprise at all.Like he’d been expecting her.Like this was the only possible way the evening could have ended.
‘Hello, Ella.’
‘Edgar Borden.Put your hands where I can see them.’
He lifted his hands off the table and held them at shoulder height, palms forward.‘You got me.You figured out my name, too.’
‘Yes I did, and you know why I’m here.’
‘I know why you’re here,’ Edgar said.
