Page 30 of Girl, Remembered

Simon Varro, the behemoth human being who Ella had impaled on an iron maiden last night, had been a sewing teacher.

‘Holy crap,’ she said.

If Doyle had learned that stitch from somewhere, from someone, the list of candidates who could teach a woman surgical needlework wasn’t long. And Simon Varro sat right at the top of it. If Varro had taught her, and if the teaching had happened somewhere he trusted enough to bring a mentor into his own private space, then that space would have to be private.

And she’d been in Varro’s house last night. There was no pond, or redwoods.

Just then, Ripley burst into the war room sporting, for some reason, an unlit cigar in her mouth. ‘Dark. Do you like what I did with the place?’

‘It’s lovely. Don’t tell me this case has driven you to nicotine?’

‘No.’ Ripley removed the cigar with two fingers. ‘I swiped it from Vernon’s office when he wasn’t looking. I just like how they smell. How did it go with Winters?’

‘I got some stuff we can use. Come on, I’ll tell you about it in the car.’

‘The car? Why?’

‘I need to go see a seven-foot monster, and I don’t want to go alone.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Before leaving her hideout, Lindsey Doyle had discovered that two of her subjects were dead.

The news had not been forthcoming with names, but the locations, Louisiana and Wisconsin, were enough to convey the facts. Tanner and Borden had complied with the Purification Protocol, and so Doyle’s chances of escape had increased that little bit more.

But the math, simple as it was, didn’t add up.

She’d sent three signals out, not two, which meant Gabriel Winters was unaccounted for. He’d either not seen the signal, or had seen it and disobeyed it. The thought jammed a phantom knife in her ribs. She’d trusted Winters, although that trust was months old now. Maybe jail had changed him this time.

Doyle then noticed her hands were not steady on the wheel. She re-applied her grip. Lindsey Doyle didn’t shake, not for men, not for anyone. She cast the intrusive thoughts to one side and focused on the task at hand.

Although she knew that the game was ending soon, she had not entirely given up on the prospect of escape. If Lindsey saw the opportunity to flee once Ella Dark was dead, she’d be a fool not to take it. She just needed to amass the ammunition – quite literally – to aid that escape.

Genesis Gun Supply was on a two-lane road outside Warrenton. Doyle pulled up at the bottom of the street and checked her appearance in the rear-view mirror. She didn’t have any disguises left, so she’d had to improvise. She’d thickened her brows with a pencil a shade too dark, drawn her lip line half a centimeter past her actual mouth and taped a wad of gauze inside each cheek until her face was two inches wider than actual. She’d finished the appearance with a pair of cheap reading glasses and a cardigan two sizes too big to distort her shape. She couldn’t have picked herself out of a crowd of one.

Lindsey exited the car and made for the store. It was only a small place, and she was banking on it being empty. Surely there couldn't be many people itching to buy firearms at 2PM on a Thursday. Her thoughts were confirmed as she walked inside and saw no one, except for a lone man behind the counter. He glanced up in surprise, which was quickly replaced with eagerness. Lindsey was betting that he didn't get many women in here, let alone ones coming in alone.

‘Afternoon,’ he said. He was sixty, maybe, and heavy through the middle. He pushed his reading glasses up into thinning hair. His name tag read DARRELL. ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’

'Please. My husband left me a box of ammunition, and I have no earthly idea what to do with it. I've brought some with me. Can I show you?'

‘Go ahead.’

Lindsey planted six rounds on the table, the rest still in her pocket. ‘They came in a box, but they fell out in the car. Then I lost the box under the seat. Honestly, it’s not going well today.’

Darrell flinched towards the panel that separated the counter from the store. ‘Ma’am, if there are bullets rolling around your car, you want to grab them right away. If the sun beams through the window onto them – boom. I can help you grab them-’

'Oh, no. I picked them all up. There were only six.'

Darrell counted the rounds on the table. ‘Only six? In a box?’

‘My husband hunted deer with the other fifty-three.’

‘That would make fifty-nine,’ Darrell laughed. ‘And I thought I was bad at math.’

‘He saved the other bullet for himself.’

Darrell’s smile folded up and put itself away. He set down the rounds he’d been about to count a second time and pushed them back toward her. ‘Sorry, miss. Foot in the mouth. I didn’t mean that.’