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“Hello?”
“Ella, it’s Clarissa again, on my personal phone. I need you to listen to me closely.”
The air suddenly seemed to thicken, and a chill prickled at Ella’s fingertips. “I’m listening.”
“Don’t do this. Stay away. You can’t win this.”
Ella wasn’t sure she heard Clarissa right. “Come again?”
“Logan Nash is not a person. You can’t find him. No one can.”
Ella waited a while before responding. “What makes you think that?”
“Logan Nash is many people. Merely pursuing him is signing your own death warrant. His connections run deep. Law enforcement, courts, prison. His organization won’t let you live. They call him the Cleaner for a reason.”
Ella felt no fear. If her own life was the sacrifice for avenging her father, so be it. “Sounds like you know a lot about this man.”
“I know nothing but what Robert told me, and Robert knew a lot. Logan Nash is a lifelong mercenary. Protected, invisible, unkillable.”
Fear was nowhere to be found, but the rage was stirring. “Is an FBI veteran really telling menotto pursue a serial murderer?”
“This is not a standard serial case. Do you think the FBI haven’t tried to infiltrate the Red Diamonds before? We’ve tried many times, right back to when you were just a twinkle in your dad’s eye.”
The comment hit hard, for several reasons. “And?”
“We made a few captures, got some intel, but they’re the hydra of the criminal underworld. Cut off their heads and they grow back stronger. They just recruit someone else to take their place.”
“Bullshit,” Ella said. “They’re just people. When you cut off a hydra’s head, you just need to cauterize the wound.”
“Robert tried. He spent his final years trying, then he got too close.”
Ella remembered what Ripley had said.Weirder is how Robert died. Apparently he just went to bed one night, never woke up. Heart failure at fifty-five.
“Logan got to your husband, didn’t he?” Ella said.
Another silence, then a firm, “Yes. I believe so.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ella. “He seemed like a great man.”
“He was, and as much as I’d love to take those bastards out, I don’t want to see a promising young agent suffer the same fate as my husband. Some things are better left alone.”
Ella had seen Clarissa’s name mentioned a lot over the years. The woman was as well-known as her special agent husband, and being brutally honest with someone who presumably still had influence in the FBI wasn’t a good career move.
But to hell with that.
“Sorry Clarissa, but you’re out of your Goddamn mind.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re telling me you have suspicions your husband – one of the best FBI workers of all time – was killed and you’re going to pretend it didn’t happen?”
“Miss Dark, I have no proof it happened, only skepticism about Robert’s death. I know what I know, and if I interfere, what’s stopping them coming after me next? I’d like to stay alive.”
“Then I pity you. If my life is the price I have to pay for taking this man out, I’m fine with that. I’ll happily go down to hell and take these assholes with me. I didn’t sign up for this job for the pension. I signed up to deliver justice and make a difference, so I’m going to hunt this Nash guy down whether you help me or not.”
Ella caught her breath, not exactly sure what words she’d just spouted down the phone. It was a stream of consciousness, testifying from the heart. Clarissa went deadly silent, so quiet that Ella could almost hear the woman thinking down the line.
“What do you want with Logan Nash, anyway?” Clarissa asked.
