Page 71 of Girl, Remembered

‘Not really. I want to know who these three men are, and why this guy in white has Edis’s Glock 19.’

‘You already know.’

Yes she did, but she needed someone else to know. ‘And this guy with the Smith & Wesson over here. You took that gun from the store earlier, didn’t you?’

‘I did,’ said Doyle.

‘And Beard over here with a carving knife. Guns not your style?’

‘Shut up!’ Doyle screamed. ‘You figured out my clues. Well done.’

‘Your clues didn’t give me shit. I found this place because there was blue paint at the gun store earlier, and Edis has an electric blue everything. Oh, and it helps there’s a goddamn electric blue Mustang parked outside.’

‘That’s not true. I lured you here myself.’

‘Lindsey, if you wanted to meet me, all you had to do was ask. All of these cryptic games – what was the point?’

‘You’re the profiler. You tell me.’

‘It’s pretty simple. You’re not as unique as you think. It all comes back to the same reasons every insecure loser kills people.’

Doyle raised a brow. ‘Which is?’

‘Childhood trauma. Daddy made you sleep in shallow graves. You had no running water, so you had to drink your mom’s vodka. Mom watched it all happen and did nothing. Any of that ring a bell, Lindsey?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘And then there’s the other part. You’re a stalker. I took away what you love the most, which is Creed, so just killing me isn’t enough. You need to destroy my whole world, because I destroyed yours. You think that me putting Creed to death retroactively invalidates what he did for you, which was feed your dad to his alligators, and free you.’

Doyle was gracious enough to smile. ‘Keep going.’

‘Most female killers are motivated by one of three things: jealousy, money or revenge. When it boils down to it, this has just been one big revenge mission, but you were too scared to face me head on, so you recruited guys like these three losers to do your bidding. You’re just an angry, miserable old bitch. How am I doing so far?’

Silence reigned. Edis was swaying, and Doyle was barely visible behind him. Ella could only make out her face.

‘Well, I hate to say this Ella Dark, but you’re wrong.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Trust me, you are. I couldn’t care less about my mom and dad. That was thirty years go. Some of us let things go.’

‘The irony,’ Ella said.

‘I’ll give you one more chance to figure it out, and then it’s curtains for you and Mr. Edis here. Go on.’

Ella racked her brain.

Doyle was a mission-oriented revenge killer with stalking tendencies, and that was all it boiled down to. If it wasn’t that, when what the hell was she supposed to say? And even if she landed on it, what was stopping Doyle just shaking her head and laughing again? Wrong. And no matter how right Ella was, Doyle wasn’t going to put her gun down and just hand herself over.

Shit.

Think.

Something flickered at the broken window.

It could’ve been nothing. Could’ve been the streetlight catching a shard of glass still stuck in the pane.

It wasn’t.