AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She turned her cell to loudspeaker and nudged Ripley. ‘Go ahead, chief.’
'Well, we got a message from your head honcho. Apparently, he's sending someone else in. You guys are off the case.'
‘Yeah,’ Ella said, ‘but we’ll be damned if we’re not checking every lead before we go. The night isn’t over yet.’
The chief said, ‘Got it. Well, since you’re not officially on the team anymore, I guess I can’t tell you that we just had a call from someone. A lady named Lauren Phillips.’
‘Who’s that?’ Ripley asked. ‘What did she say?’
‘Too much to explain, but she says she just saw our perp in the flesh. You need to get here.’
Ella picked up the pace as she stormed towards her vehicle. She’d seen the name Lauren Phillips on the Lincoln High group page, but hadn’t connected her to the clique.
‘You’re with her now?’ Ella scared.
‘Yes. Poor thing is too scared to move.’
‘We’re coming, chief. Where are you?’ Ripley shouted.
‘I’m in a playground.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
The woman sat on a rusty old roundabout, staring at her hands as though they were unrecognizable in the moonlight. Her breath was short and ragged, as though any second she might undergo transformation into a werewolf. Ella moved in, taking a seat beside her and putting one hand on hers. Her skin was cold to the touch.
‘Lauren, we’re the FBI. Do you want to go somewhere less freezing?’
The woman – a thirty-something brunette in just a pink t-shirt – recoiled at Ella’s touch. It was the signs of someone in a state of shock, Ella concluded. Whatever had happened, this poor woman was only now processing the gravity of the incident.
'No,' Lauren snapped. 'I want to stay here in case he's gone back to my place.'
‘Is that where this all started? At your place?’
Lauren cupped her face, warding off a new flood of tears. She shook her shoulders loose as though she was about to head out onto the field for a sixty-minute game.
‘My place. About half nine this evening,’ she said. ‘I heard noises. Scratching noises at my window. I pulled open the drapes and there he was, this ghost. Pale white, like no human I’ve seen before. A creature, back from the dead.’
Ella listened intently, observing the nuances in Lauren's movements, the tremble in her voice. The questions came thick fast, the most important of which was: if Lauren had been in close contact with the killer, why was she still alive?
‘And after you saw this figure, what happened?’
‘He just... vanished. But he left something behind. An envelope, right at my front door. Inside, there was this cryptic puzzle, a riddle. It... said I had to come here, to this playground, if I wanted to live.’
Ella's mind churned. The pattern was unmistakable now: a series of calculated moves designed to instill maximum fear. 'You solved the puzzle?'
‘Somehow. It was this crazy mix of letters, made no sense. I just began switching letters around until I got something. It said, Meet me at the playground, ten PM, or you will die. I didn't know what to do. I was terrified. I came here, hoping... I don't know what I was hoping for.’
An almost identical message to the others.
Same command, same time, same threat. Only the location was different.
‘And what did you find?’ Ella's question hung in the air, thick with expectation.
‘I saw him. He followed me here.’ Lauren pointed to the swing set across the park. ‘He arrived, didn’t say a word, then he… left something for me.’
‘What did he leave?’ Ella’s voice was calm, but her thoughts were a maelstrom.
Lauren shuddered, her voice a tremulous whisper. ‘Another note.’ She dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Ripley threw on a pair of gloves and pinched it out of Lauren’s hand. She read it aloud.
