She looked at the cruiser.Doyle hadn't moved.Hadn't blinked, as far as Ella could tell.She just sat there behind the tinted glass with her cuffed hands in her lap and her ruined face and that stare that didn't waver.Six months of looking over her shoulder, and here was the source of it all – a slight, hundred and twenty-pound woman who was bleeding what looked like coffee out of a gash on her cheekbone.
The same woman Ella had sat next to in that Louisiana courtroom.The same woman who’d been working at Louisiana State Penitentiary when she’d interviewed Austin Creed.
Part of Ella wanted to walk over there, open the door, sit down beside her, and ask every question that had kept her awake since this started.Why me?Why the people I love?What did I do to you, or what do you think I did?She wanted to look Lindsey Doyle in the face and understand anything about the woman who had turned her life into this.
But she knew better.
A parking lot, moments after the capture, wasn't the time to interview a known serial killer.Every cop had felt the overwhelming urge to confront the thing you'd been chasing, right there, right then, before the moment passed.
The moment could pass.There would be other moments.Controlled ones, in a room with a table, a recorder, and a lawyer present.
‘No,’ Ella said.‘I don’t know her.But I know who she is.Her name is Lindsey Doyle.She’s wanted in connection with at least three homicides across both D.C.and California.The FBI have been hunting her for a while.’
‘Three homicides and a fourth attempted,’ Luca added.
‘Two states?’the officer said.‘She certainly is the Bureau’s problem.’
Ella found her badge and flashed it.‘Yes.Our problem.Can you detain her until I speak to the agents in charge of her investigation?’
‘Can do.Always happy to help the feds out.’
‘She needs to go into holding tonight,’ Ella said.‘Not tomorrow.Tonight.Isolated cell, no contact with other detainees, and I want a guard on her around the clock.Two if you can spare them.She doesn’t make phone calls, she doesn’t talk to anyone, and nobody goes into that cell without authorization from me or Director Vernon or Terrance Dever.’
The officer looked at her for a long moment.Then he nodded.‘I know Vernon well.I’ll call him as soon as we’re out of here.’
‘Good.Thank you.’
The officer walked back to the cruiser.He spoke to his partner through the open window, and a few seconds later, the engine started, and then the cruiser pulled out.
Ella watched it go.She watched it turn onto Main Street.She watched its taillights shrink and blur and disappear into the city.
Luca put his arm around her shoulder.‘Game over.’
‘Game over.Thanks to you.You caught her, Hawkins.’
‘Eh, she caught herself.I was just in the right place at the right time.’
Ella took his hand.The bruised one.She held it gently, turned it over, looked at the torn skin across his knuckles.He’d fought for his life tonight because Ella’s life had bled into his, and he hadn’t once made her feel like that was her fault.She wasn’t sure she’d earned that kind of grace.She wasn’t sure anyone could.
‘Shall we go inside?’
‘Can’t,’ Luca said.‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘Of course it is.I guess we’re staying at Ripley’s house for a few days, then.’
CHAPTER ONE
Rose Michaels stepped out of Martin’s Sports Bar after two hours of drinking, and she idly wondered why more people weren’t full-blown alcoholics.It just made everything easier.With the liquor in her system, it stopped her from thinking about everything that had gone wrong over the past year, and sure, people would judge you, but you didn’t care about that either.A constant three-drink buzz was like a superpower, and Rose liked to believe it brought out the best in her.
In the past year, Rose had also discovered the unexpected perks of insomnia.While everyone else slept, she could get stuff done, be it work, working out or hardly working.Sure, she sometimes needed a sugar overdose to stay awake the next afternoon, but it was a small price to pay for squeezing an extra four hours a day into her life.
Rose zipped up her jacket against the chill and started her walk home.New Orleans was uncharacteristically quiet at this hour, almost disturbingly so.Rose had never known this city to be anything other than non-stop, like a kid who’d eaten too much candy on Christmas morning.But in the dead of night, she felt like she got to see this place at its most vulnerable.When the sirens and voices faded, all that remained was the city’s true face, and Rose had to admit that she liked it.There were worse places to live, despite everything that had happened.
Rose cut across the street and started walking along the bank of the Bayou St.John.The signs clearly stated that pedestrians were prohibited, but she figured the rules didn’t apply at this ungodly hour.Besides, it would shave a good ten minutes off her walk home.The alternative was to hike up to the overpass and loop around, but if she was already taking her chances walking solo at two in the morning, what was a little trespassing to boot?
She kept her wits about her because you didn't get to her age without a healthy skepticism of dark corners.With one eye on the water and the other on the path ahead, Rose mentally cataloged what the rest of the night – or morning – might bring.Work didn't start until midday, so there was still time for a little recreation before sleep beckoned.Maybe she could binge that crime series she kept scrolling past on Netflix, or get started on that book that she'd been using as a coaster since Christmas.
At the end of the embankment, Rose came to a road that was usually uncrossable given the amount of traffic.But now it was dead, and Rose felt like she was pillaging uncharted lands by walking across it so brazenly.
