‘Oh, I’m going home.I’m going back to Louisiana State.I never wanted to leave.’
Ella had to wonder if this man was much more demented than she gave him credit for.He’d killed four people but didn’t seem to understand the gravity of it.
‘Edgar, I can’t promise where you’ll end up, but it’s time to go.Get to your feet.’
The suspect did rise to his feet.‘But I cooperated.You could put in a good word.’
‘You understand that killing four people in Louisiana could get you the death penalty, right Edgar?’
Edgar Borden toppled forward and steadied himself on the table.Ella gently squeezed the trigger because this was starting to look like a job for a bullet in the leg.
‘Death penalty?But Lindsey said I’d be safe back inside...she said I’d definitely go back home…’
‘She lied to you, Edgar.Lindsey Doyle used you.She doesn’t even work at that prison anymore.Did she tell you that?She disappeared months ago, and now she’s in federal custody, so she won’t be waiting for you when you get back.Nobody will.’
It was a velvet lie, but not a million miles from the truth.Edgar stared at her.The color-draining process accelerated.Ella could see it happening in real time.Then the fatigue turned to wild, directionless energy of a creature that had discovered the cage he’d walked into was much smaller than he’d hoped it would be.
He hadn’t known about any of it.
Ella then realized her mistake.She’d just told a cornered man with four bodies behind him that the only person he trusted had abandoned him and the only future he’d planned for didn’t exist.She’d removed the only thing keeping him in that chair.
She saw it coming about a half-second before it happened, which was enough time to adjust her aim but not enough time to fire before the table came at her.Borden shoved it hard and the edge caught her across the hips and drove her backwards into the counter.The Glock went off and the round punched through the ceiling and sent plaster dust raining down.Borden was already past the table and coming at her with the frantic, committed energy of a man who had decided in the last three seconds that he was not going to sit in a room and wait for a needle in his arm.
He hit her low.His shoulder caught her in the ribs, and she went back into the counter again, and the Glock came loose from her hand.She heard it hit the floor and skitter somewhere to the left.Borden's hands were on her arms, trying to pin them, and the man had strength on his side.
Ella drove her forehead into his nose.She felt it give.Blood sprayed hot across her face and Borden screamed and let go and staggered back, and Ella used the space to get her feet under her and throw a right hand that caught him on the side of the jaw, but it was far from a clean shot.Her knuckles skidded off the bone and she felt the impact run up her wrist and into her forearm.
Borden came back.He threw a punch that was all arm and no technique, and it caught Ella above the left eye, and the kitchen went white for a second.She grabbed his jacket and pulled him forward and brought her knee up into his stomach and he folded, but he didn't go down.He grabbed her by the waist and they went through the back door together.
The door frame splintered.The screen door came off its remaining hinge.They hit the porch boards and rolled down the steps and landed on the grass in a tangle of limbs.Borden ended up on top.His nose was pouring blood down onto her and his hands found her throat.
Ella got her chin down before he could lock the grip.She could feel his fingers digging into the sides of her neck, searching for the right hold, and she thought about Amber Holloway and Rose Michaels and Earl Parsons and how this was the last thing they’d felt – these hands, this desperate grasping squeeze.
There was no code of honor here, Ella realized.This was a pure street fight, where the dirtiest player would come out on top.
So she had to play dirty.
She jabbed her thumbs into his eyes.He screamed again, and his grip loosened, and Ella bucked her hips and rolled him off.She scrambled to her feet.Borden was on his knees in the long grass, one hand over his face, blood from his nose running through his fingers.
Ella didn’t give him time to recover.She swung a kick into his ribs and felt bones shift under her foot.Borden went sideways into the grass and stayed there for a second, curled around the damage, and Ella used the second to scan the ground for her Glock.It was somewhere inside the kitchen, which might as well have been the moon.
Borden got up.He shouldn’t have been able to, not with the nose and the ribs, but he got up anyway, and Ella understood that whatever was driving him now was beyond pain.Pain was a signal and he’d stopped receiving signals.He was running on pure survival instinct.
He charged her again, and she sidestepped, but the grass was wet, and her foot went out from under her, and she hit the ground on her hip.Borden landed on top of her and got one hand around her throat.It was enough to keep any fresh air out of her lungs.She hammered the heel of her palm into his broken nose, and he howled, and the hand came off, and she rolled away from him across the grass.There, Ella's shoulder hit something metal.She looked and saw one of the feeding poles that had been stacked against the fence.It was a six-foot aluminium rod with a hooked end, knocked loose from its pile at some point during the NOPD processing of the site.Half-buried in the grass beside it was a yellow evidence marker on the ground beside it.
Ella grabbed the pole and swung it from the ground as Borden came at her again.It caught him across the forearm, and he pulled back.She got to her feet and swung again, harder, and this time it connected with his shoulder.Borden stumbled sideways and tripped on something – another evidence marker, or the leg of the skinning table, or just his own feet – and went down hard on the compacted dirt near the lean-to.
Borden should have been defeated, but he rose again.He rose with a piece of metal in his hand, which Ella saw now was a section of iron roofing that had come loose from the lean-to.It was about two feet long and ragged at the edge where it had rusted through.He held it in front of him like a shield and Ella could see the cut it had already opened across his palm.
Borden swung the sheeting at her.The ragged edge whistled past her face and she felt the displaced air against her cheek.She jabbed the feeding pole forward like a spear, and the hooked end caught him in the sternum.He doubled over, and the sheeting dropped, and Ella swung the pole sideways and caught him across the back of the legs.
And Borden went down to his knees.She smashed him in the shoulders, and this time he screamed and grabbed the end of the pole and pulled.Ella didn’t let go fast enough and the motion dragged her forward, off balance, and Borden headbutted her in the mouth.
Her lip split.She tasted blood and aluminium.She lost the pole.It clattered away across the concrete pad under the lean-to and Borden scrambled after it on his hands and knees.Ella got there first.She grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him sideways and drove her knee into the side of his head.
He went flat.Face down on the ground.His hands were underneath him, and he was trying to push himself up, but the strength was going out of his arms in visible increments.Ella stamped on his hand, and he yelled, and she grabbed his wrist and twisted it behind his back and dropped her full weight onto him.
He bucked.He writhed.He tried to roll, but she had his arm locked, and every time he moved, the broken ribs did her work for her.She got the cuffs off her belt with her free hand and ratcheted one around the wrist she was holding.Then she grabbed the other arm – he fought it, but he was running out of everything – and brought it back and cuffed that too.
