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Logan Nash.
She had the name. The name of the man who’d killed her father twenty-five years ago.
It was time to finish the story.
“Okay boys, it’s closing time.” She clocked her pistol, moved her target between the two men. Nathan still had his hands up in surrender, Dennis looked as though he was about to have a heart attack at any second. A pair of cowards, Ella thought. Only tough when they had their little buddies to back them up. It took a surge of willpower to not plant bullets in them right here and now, but to do so would be foolish and immoral. She couldn’t avenge death by dispensing more of it. Plus, these two men were invaluable sources of information.
“Don’t shoot us, please,” Nathan said. “I have a family.”
Ella turned to Ripley. “You get all that?” she asked.
Ripley pulled out her phone, showed Ella the voice recording screen. “Every word.”
Everything documented. Proof, an insurance policy.
Ella clinked a pair of handcuffs out of her pocket, chained up Nathan and hauled him to his feet. Ripley took the old man.
Ella never had any intention of harming either men. She just wanted them to think their lives were in danger. If there’s one thing she’d learned so far in this game it was that the prospect of death was a great motivator.
“Don’t worry,” Ella said to Nathan, “your family can visit you in jail.”
CHAPTER TWO
Ella had been at it all night - her laptop screen illuminated the dark kitchen table like a beacon of hope. She was engrossed in her new research, and the hours melted away like the melting wax of a candle.
She and Ripley had taken the two captives down to a Virginia police station and told the officers just enough facts to put the two men in custody. They were members of the Red Diamond group – Virginia’s most notorious criminal organization – and had tried to attack Ella due to her FBI affiliation. These facts were enough to keep them locked up for a while, especially as law enforcement was happy to take any Diamonds off the streets.
But Ella had kept certain details to herself. She hadn’t mentioned her father’s murder, because if she welcomed police investigation into that avenue, it could cross-thread with her own investigation. The chief had assured her that the new captives wouldn’t be going anywhere until they’d been before a judge, because not only were they fully-fledged Diamonds, but their criminal history spoke for itself. Once Ella had finished her story and tracked down her father’s killer, she’d hand over all the details to help keep Nathan and Dennis inside for a long time.
Now, she had the name of her father’s supposed killer: Logan Nash. What had Nathan said about him?A killing machine. A pure, merciless psychopath. Lifelong contract killer, must have taken forty, fifty lives over the years. Don’t try and find him because you won’t.
The Diamonds were indeed adept at covering their tracks. They’d been in operation for decades and police never managed to unearth members, but Ella had captured two in one sitting, and she tracked down killers on a weekly basis. Whoever Logan Nash was, he wouldn’t stay hidden for long. She’d come too far to fail now. The end of the journey was in sight; she just needed that little push to reach it.
Ella clocked the time as she connected to the FBI database. Three a.m. She was meeting Ben in seven hours, but the adrenaline from tonight’s fracas was still surging through her veins, leaving little room for sleep. Better to use the time wisely rather than ruminating on the events of earlier this evening then waking up even more exhausted than she was before she finally dozed off.
Her usual resources had proven futile in locating anyone named Logan Nash. There were only a handful of people by that name in both Virginia and D.C., none of whom fit the profile. Nathan had said this man was a lifelong contract killer, and if he was taking lives twenty-five years ago, that would put him in his sixties at the youngest. The only people by that name she could find were sub-thirty, which meant one of three things. Either Nathan had lied about the man’s name, Logan Nash had since changed his name, or Logan Nash had ways of keeping himself in the shadows.
Her last resort was VICAP – the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It listed all known serial, violent, and sexual homicides throughout the United States, even ones that hadn’t been officially investigated at the federal level. She searched for the man’s name and got fifteen hits dating back over thirty years.
Ella rapidly scanned the names and took in their surface details. Sexual homicide in California, possible serial slayings in Michigan, human trafficking in Oregon. She reached the end of the exact matches, scoured them again, checked for anything that might fit the modus operandi of her father’s killer. Home invasion, dead of night. Ella didn’t know exactly how the assailant had killed her dad and his autopsy reports made no mention of ruptures, wounds, or bruises. However, Ella vividly remembered the blood on his bedroom floor because that’s what had prompted the scream that alerted her neighbors.
But she knew that memory – even hers – was a fickle thing. Memory was shaped by perspectives, biases, as time weary as the physical self. If there had indeed been no blood, then her father’s killer would have opted for a silent death with poisoning or strangulation.
None of the names on the list bore such elements.
Ella rocked back and forth on her chair, scraping the kitchen floor with its legs. She pressed her palms against her eyes and suddenly felt the exhaustion take her like a river current, slamming her against a rock formation made up of the past few days’ events. She’d only got back from another case in California yesterday, a case that had seen her do battle with a music-obsessed serial killer named the Maestro. She still had the man’s amateur melodies strangling her brain which, as pleasing as they were, reminded her that her heroism was but a speck on the world’s evil stage. The villains would keep coming until the sun consumed everything. A sobering thought, but she prayed that finding this single individual, this mystery tormenter who’d lived in her nightmares for over two decades, could somehow bring a sense of closure that capturing other killers couldn’t. Her old nemesis had told her finding her father’s killer wouldn’t change a thing. She’d still be the same person as before only with a slightly higher body count. The damage was already done, he’d said. Undoing lifelong trauma was an insurmountable task and someone so familiar with psychological fallacies should already know this.
Ella pushed her hair back, stared out of her window at the dimly lit streets. She discarded the mental baggage and thought about her own journey to this bizarre life she’d found herself in. From a rural farm town in Virginia to a coveted spot in the FBI’s Intelligence Unit to Special Field Agent alongside one of the Bureau’s living legends. Thirteen solved serial cases in just over a year, one successful capture of the FBI’s Most Wanted killer, one death count, all before the age of thirty.
If she retired tomorrow, would it all have been worth it?
Her eyes scanned the names again.
Logan Nash.
The unknown perpetrator who’d unknowingly set in motion a life of law enforcement for an innocent five-year-old. Whoever this man was, he was the one responsible for where she was now. As a kid, she’d wanted to be a tractor driver, a trailblazer for female labor workers in the farming community. She’d wanted to wake up at five a.m. each morning, get her hands dirty, and master the art of self-sufficient agriculture. She’d be an invisible hero, preserving the economy and helping the world from behind the scenes. Then she’d pass her knowledge down to the next generation, disappear into the shadows, and return to dust when the time was right.
Logan Nash had sent her down a different path.
