Girl, Betrayed (An Ella Dark FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 18) by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2024-04-03T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ella bulldozed through the throngs of onlookers in the Lionheart Assembly Hall's lobby with Ripley in tow. A cacophony of hushed whispers and muffled sobs swirled around them, feeding the dread that churned in Ella's gut. An officer nodded curtly and unlocked the doors for them.

The moment they stepped into the theater, Ella’s breath hitched. There it was—the ghastly centerpiece of their investigation. Suspended upon the stage within a colossal glass tank, a young blonde woman floated. Her eyes, wide and vacant, bore into Ella's very soul. The water, once clear, now held a tainted pallor, a fluid shroud wrapping around the victim's lifeless form.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ripley muttered under her breath, hand subconsciously creeping up to brush her throat as if to assure herself it was unbound, free.

Ella forced herself to move closer, her every instinct screaming to turn away, to unsee the horror before her. But she couldn’t—she was the barrier between chaos and order.

‘Who could do something like this?’ Ella asked herself. She approached the stage slowly, avoiding the shards of broken dreams scattered across the floor. Ella’s stomach churned at the sight in front of her, bringing up a bile-inducing storm of revulsion and anger. It was more than just the visual horror of the scene; it was the cold, merciless intent behind it that clawed at her insides.

She tried not to think about the poor woman’s final moments. Locked in a glass cage, suffocating in front of a thousand people. A death without dignity.

‘Remember what I told you back in Sturgeon Bay?’

Ella did. On their last case, they’d met a killer who’d drowned his own mother. Ripley had told Ella a story about an old sailor friend who’d fallen overboard and got tangled in the sails.

‘Drowning. It’s agony,’ she said.

‘Yup. The bittersweet part of crashing into a wall or plunging sixty feet into concrete is that you’re gonna die on the spot. But this? This woman suffered.’

They stood there for a moment, lost in the tragedy before them, then a voice from the darkness behind them cut through their reverie.

'Agents,' Magozzi's gruff voice announced his approach before he appeared from the backstage shadows. 'Just call this the plague house because everyone in the building is quarantined. No one's leaving.'

‘Good.’ Ella only half-glanced at Magozzi, her eyes still tethered to the grotesque spectacle. ‘That means our killer’s amongst us. They can't hide among the crowd forever.’

Ripley asked, ‘Chief, why wasn’t this act shut down? We said to shut down any dangerous acts. Getting locked in a water tank seems pretty dangerous to me.'

Magozzi surrendered. ‘My guy who checked this act out didn’t think it was dangerous enough. He had no idea there’d be a water prison involved.’

"Unbelievable. This is exactly what we were trying to prevent."

"I know, I know. It's a mistake. We should have been more thorough."

Ella took a breath, trying to calm the anger boiling in her veins. Mistakes happen, she knew that. But this mistake had cost a life.

‘Well it’s too late for apologies.

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