Page 25 of Girl, Remembered

‘No. I never know.’

‘You just… wing it?’

‘Don’t we all?’ Ella let the comment hang and signaled to the warden, who was flanked by two corrections officers. ‘I’m ready. Terrance, keep an eye on Winters throughout. If he tries anything, like trying to kill himself, send the guards in.’

Dever wrinkled his nose, like he didn’t appreciate being told what to do by somebody two pay grades below him. Ella had long stopped caring about Dever’s expressions. Vernon had shown her this morning that he cared. Dever, as far as she could tell, was about as useful a trapdoor on a submarine.

‘Whatever you say.’

Ella made for the door. The warden unlocked it and ushered Ella inside. He shut it behind her and the clunk traveled through the floor and up her spine. Now it was just the two of them, and the last time these two had met had been in a forest in Greensboro three months ago. He looked at her in surprise and, if Ella expression-reading was on the ball, delight.

‘It’s you,’ Winters said.

Ella took a seat opposite him. ‘You remember me, then. Because I remember you.’

‘How could I forget? Miss Dark.’

‘Correct.’

Winters’s wrists were shackled together and his legs were chained to the floor. He was sturdy through the shoulders but not tall, and nothing about him would have caught her eye on a train platform. He looked like an insurance salesman, not someone who’d decapitated his own mother and killed a grand total of nine people.

‘Why are you here? Why am I here?’

Ella folded her hands on the table and decided the fastest way through this was straight through the middle. ‘Do you recognize the name Lindsey Doyle?’

Winters’s eyes went somewhere for half a second, up and to the left. It was the direction people’s eyes went when they were retrieving information rather than inventing it.

‘I don’t believe I do.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I wasn’t aware I had. Is it because I looked upward and to the left? You of all people must know that NLP is old hat.’

‘Couldn’t agree more. Have you been reading psychology books in jail?’

Winters grinned. ‘There isn’t much else to do. My life is over, thanks to a certain person.’

‘Your life was over when you met this person.’ Ella placed her cell on the table, screen-up, pre-loaded with the picture of Tracy Doyle. Ella had sneakily taken the picture the first and only time she’d been to the D.C. Jail.

Winters peered at the screen without leaning forward, keeping his shoulders exactly where they’d been. He flinched at the moment of recognition, then re-glossed his exterior with a pose of indifference.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Don’t play dumb.’

‘I’m not.’

Ella smashed her fist onto the table. She didn’t have time for games. ‘Listen, Gabe, I get it. I ruined your life. You thought you’d gotten away with it for 25 years, and then I came along and busted you. That pisses you off.’

Winters folded his arms, but not before re-checking the picture on Ella’s screen. ‘Doesn’t take a genius to work that out, does it?’

‘No, and I’m not a genius. I just know a thing or two about people, and every limb in your body is telling me you recognize the woman on this screen. Your jaw’s tight on the left side, not the right. You uncrossed your ankles the second I put the phone down and you haven’t crossed them back. You keep glancing at the screen and then straight at me, like you’re checking whether I noticed you looking. This woman is Lindsey Doyle, and she’s in the D.C. Jail right now, telling us all about your little relationship.’

Winters’s arms stayed folded but his shoulders dropped an inch, and the chain between his ankles went slack where before it had been drawn tight against the floor bolt. Until now, he’d exhibited tight, restrained body language, but all of that fell apart with Ella’s outburst.

‘Relationship,’ he said. ‘Is that what she called it?’

Got him.