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Ripley laughed. She pulled on the handle of one of the glass cabinets, but the door didn’t rotate on its hinges. Instead, a small section of the wall behind the cabinet opened up. The cabinet and the wall were joined together.
“Light the way,” Ripley said. Ella did as her partner took charge.
Through another passageway into and a pitch black room. Ripley again found a light.
Here it was. The Collector’s shrine to Tobias Campbell. Everything was present: hanging nooses, an urn presumably holding his mother’s ashes, remains of Tobias’s burned cabin where Ripley first caught him, even possessions from Tobias’s prison cell. A painting of a winged horse, a miniature horse figurine, a mannequin of Tobias in his prison jumpsuit. Ella knew these images very well.
Everything from Tobias’s life was here.
Including the man himself.
Slumped in a single leather chair sat Tobias Campbell, cigarette between his fingers, unfazed at their intrusion.
Ella tapped the wound on her leg to ensure this wasn’t some pain-induced hallucination. She had to check this was real. Their mythical monster was in front of her, alone, unarmed, vulnerable.
Ripley aimed her Glock at him. Ella did the same. They had eleven bullets left in their combined chambers, and Ella wasn’t leaving until they’d emptied every bullet into his skull.
Tobias smiled and took a drag on his cigarette. He bellowed out smoke then held the cigarette to his eyeline.
“Funny aren’t they, cigarettes?” he asked. “We knowingly inject ourselves with chemicals, fully aware they’ll probably kill us. But we do it because we’re addicted. We’re dependent on the rush, aren’t we Mia?”
Ella glanced at the urn sitting atop a bizarre altar behind Tobias. He always kept his mother’s ashes with him. Only now did it occur to her that Tobias had also killed his father – just like her unsub from earlier. Another parallel she should have picked up on sooner.
And this little fact reminded her that Tobias always had something up his sleeve.
“Shut up,” said Ripley.
“How are things going over in Washington, D.C.? Have they found anything in the sewers yet? I’d love to know.”
“It’s been seventeen years,” Ripley said. “Seventeen years of you toying with me. Tonight you’re going to die. I want you to know this before I empty this chamber into your temples.”
Tobias smirked and extinguished his cigarette. “If you wanted to kill me so badly, you’d have done it by now.”
“Ripley, just do it. Stop stalling,” Ella begged. She couldn’t shake the feeling Tobias had a backup plan here. She had a good mind to do it herself and get the hell out of here.
“Oh Miss Dark, I didn’t see you there. Lost in Mia’s shadow, like you will be for the rest of your career. Mia, you should have heard what Miss Dark said about you in our little meetings back in Maine. My word, she certainly had some issues.”
Even faced with death, Tobias couldn’t resist the urge to play mind games.
“She was probably right,” Ripley said.
“Certainly. But there’s a reason you won’t kill me, isn’t there? You’re missing something. Something you’ve been obsessing over for seventeen years.”
Ella saw Mia shift her weight around. A sign of anxiety. Ella curled her finger around the trigger, ready to end this once and for all. The more Tobias talked, the more chance of something going awry. This was the closest they’d come to killing him and they had to take the damn shot.
“I really don’t care,” said Ripley.
Tobias stood up and caressed one of the nooses in his hands. “Please. You want to know what I told those girls to make them kill themselves, don’t you?”
Ella relieved pressure on the trigger.
“You couldn’t figure it out. All those psychologists and criminologists and detectives couldn’t figure it out.” Tobias pointed at Ella. “Even Little Miss Brains over here couldn’t work it out.”
Tobias was a lot of things, but he was rarely a liar. No one had indeed uncovered this little part of his history. Ella would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious.
“It’s unfathomable to people like you that someone could convince a person to commit suicide with just words. Now that’s real power. Not guns or knives. That’s why you need me. You’ve never known anyone like me.”
“So, are you going to tell me or not?” Ripley asked.
