CHAPTER TWELVE
Ella rushed down the hospital corridor, burst into Mia’s room and pointed her gun at the masked man waiting for her. The plague doctor mask that Mia had blown to shreds, somehow restored to its hideous glory. The man had Mia’s head locked in one arm, a knife to her throat.
She knew better than to wait. She couldn’t talk to this man, couldn’t rationalize with him. He was a walking ball of chaos and the only way she’d be safe was when the ground swallowed his dead body.
Ella fired without hesitation. Six rounds deposited into his skull, sending the man down to hell where he belonged. She ran over, stamped on his corpse, and shattered every inch of him to dust. The only ending he deserved. No mercy, no sympathy, just absolute obliteration.
“Ripley, are you okay?” Ella cried.
Her partner said nothing, just sat still in her hospital bed like a mannequin, eyes locked on the doorway. When Ella followed her vision, she saw a horde of people blocking off the only exit. Twenty, thirty souls. Stocky men holding shotguns, seven-foot giants wielding machetes. They all wore the same plague doctor mask. Only one of them, the central figure, had revealed his face.
“So, this is how it ends,” Tobias said.
There was no ultimate showdown, no explanations, no epic battle to signal the end of their rivalry. The masked men descended on the agents, and that was when Ella’s conscious brain seeped from the dream world into reality.
The nightside table buzzed. Ella shot up in her hotel bed and pushed the hair off her face. She familiarized herself with her surroundings. She was in the Cravenwood Hotel in Pennsylvania, not a hospital room in Washington, D.C. She looked over to her bedside table, phone flashing despite the early hour.
It was 7am and Mia was calling her. Ella grabbed the phone, must have been eight rings in.
“Ripley. Hello? Are you alright?” she asked.
“Sorry it’s so early Dark. Did I wake you?”
“Yeah, but I’m glad you did. What’s up?”
“Good news and bad news,” Mia said. “Someone came for me. Last night.”
“What?” Ella shouted, jumping out of bed and grabbing her clothes. “Tobias? What happened?”
“No. Not Tobias. It’s no one you know. But seriously, I’m fine. I just wanted to tell you.”
Ella pulled on her pants, top, and boots. There was no time to shower. She needed to get back to D.C. The active case would have to wait.
“Well who was it? Did he attack you? How do you know it wasn’t one of Tobias’s men?”
“Relax, Dark. It’s fine. Remember when you did that case down in New Jersey?”
“Yeah.” The medical murderer case, Ella recalled. It was only two weeks ago but it felt like a lifetime.
“I was sent out on assignment in Manhattan. I chased down a couple of suspects. They got away when that girl I was partnered with blew up that gas station. One of those guys I was trailing, some sucker named Billy Barber, came back for me. I don’t know how he found me.”
Ella threw her stuff into her bag. “Okay, I’m coming back.”
“No you’re not. Stay put.”
“Where were the guards? Edis promised me you’d be secure. Day one and someone’s already got to you.”
“It was my own fault,” Ripley said. “I asked the guard to get me a coffee, that’s when this asshole struck. But it’s alright, I took him out. Popped a few stitches in the process, but I’ve had worse.”
“No, it’s not good enough. I need to know you’re in safe hands or I can’t focus. I was worried before, now I won’t be able to focus on a damn thing.”
“I’ve got more cops here now, plus they’re bringing my dogs down. This was just a freak accident. You need to focus on your case. Have you made any headway?”
Ella sat on the bed and thought things over for a second. It seemed too much of a coincidence that someone would attack Mia so close to her battle with Tobias. What were the chances Tobias put her attacker up to this? It could have indeed been a freak accident, but it could just as well not have been. She didn’t quite know what to think. All she knew was that the next time she spoke to the director, she was going to rip his head off.
“No. Absolutely nothing. We had a big list of suspects and none of them had anything resembling a criminal record. All squeaky clean.”
“So?” Mia asked. “Not every unsub has a history of violence. Some just start killing without any prior indication.”