Page 50 of Girl, Remembered

Tracy went quiet. Her eyes slid past Dever’s shoulder and she found Ella for the first time.

She lifted a finger and pointed through the glass.

‘You.’

Ella held still. ‘Me what?’

‘You started all of this. Lindsey only wants you.’

‘No,’ Ella said as she stepped closer to the cell. ‘Lindsey wants me to suffer. If she wanted to kill me, she would have, so why hasn’t she?’

‘Kill you? Lindsey never wanted to kill you.’

Two dead friends, one dead ex-boyfriend, one attempt on Luca’s life, one attempt on Ripley’s, not to mention last night’s battle with a giant executioner. If that wasn’t Lindsey trying to kill her, Ella would hate to see what trying looked like. ‘She has a funny way of showing it.’

Tracy’s mouth twitched. Disappointment sat there, like Ella had failed some test she didn’t know she was sitting. Ella didn’t have time to read into it. She needed a name, a street, a direction. Anything.

‘Where is she, Tracy?’

‘Why should I tell you anything?’

‘Because more people die tonight if you don’t.’

‘I… can’t help. I promised I wouldn’t.’

‘So what? You want to end up dead, like Lindsey’s other lackeys? Two of them committed suicide this morning, and something tells me she’s going to ask the same of you pretty soon. Is that what you want?’

Tracy looked away. ‘Purification,’ she said. ‘Lindsey talked about that.’

Ella stepped right up to the glass, close enough to see the fine cracks in the reinforced pane, close enough that Tracy had to tip her head back a fraction to hold eye contact.

‘I’m not unlike you, Tracy. My childhood wasn’t so great either. My dad was murdered when I was five and it took me twenty-five years to find out the truth. I still think about it now, but I never let it define me. Lindsey did. I don’t know why she hates me so much, or why she loves Creed so much, but what you and her are doing isn’t right. Lindsey’s holding a grudge against herself, and she’s taking it out on innocent people, just like your dad did.’

‘You don’t know anything about my dad.’

‘I know enough, because Terrance told me. You can help end this tonight and maybe, just maybe, you might not spend the rest of your life in prison.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘It’s exactly that simple. There’s no advantage to protecting your sister anymore. The longer this goes on, the more chance you have of dying in a jail cell. So, from one struggling kid to another, let’s stop this.’

Tracy touched the burn on her cheek. She held it there. Dever joined Ella at her side.

‘I don’t know where she is,’ Tracy said, at last.

‘We don’t believe that,’ Dever said.

‘It’s true. I only came to this city for the first time two weeks ago. Lindsey has been coming here for months. She has somewhere she hides out, but I don’t know where it is.’

The disappointment was a thousand stings at once. Ella worried for a second that she might cough up sick.

‘She never mentioned anywhere? You must have been in contact. Where did you stay before you ended up in here?’

‘In my car,’ said Tracy. ‘Lindsey has somewhere, but…’

Tracy’s tone changed on the last word. Ella recognized it as the abrupt stop before the reveal of something the revealer wasn’t sure they should voice.

‘Tracy? But what?’ Ella asked.