Girl, Taken by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blake Pierce
Published: 2021-05-18T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On either side was a row of ground-floor apartments, small and inexpensive by Ella’s quick calculations. She had an idea of what James might be like as a person, but if experience had taught her anything it was that you could never fully realize someone on presentation alone. She expected a creep, a fiend, but predators often knew how to blend in with the crowd. Mia drove them the four miles from the precinct to Bainbridge in less than ten minutes. Dusk began to set in as they turned the corner into the street James Newark called home.

They parked at the bottom of the road as not to raise suspicion or to scare the suspect into running. The agents stepped out and headed towards the end of the street, slowly and casually. To any prying neighbours they could just be insurance sellers. At the end of the row, they stood in front of the suspect’s residence.

“Here. Fifty-seven,” Mia said.

There was a small driveway missing a vehicle. The small patch of garden beside it was immaculately presented with trimmed plants and fancy brickwork. Mia knocked on the door while Ella stood beside her and discreetly peered into the curtainless window. She couldn’t make out much in the darkness other than a couple of blinking lights.

They waited but no response came. Mia knocked again, this time with force.

No answer.

“He’s not home. Son of a bitch.” Mia pulled out her phone, but Ella held up her palm. She moved closer to the window and peered inside without caution.

“Ripley, there’s something in here.”

“What?”

“Movement. I saw it in the back.” Ella could see through the lounge into a small kitchen area at the rear. Amidst the shadows, something shifted, black on black.

“You sure?”

“Positive. Listen. Did you hear that?”

They froze. From the rear of the house, something shuffled, like the brush of overgrown grass against feet.

“Come on,” she shouted, hurrying towards the rear gate. Her heart began to pound. She’d seen something and that thing had fled, fuelling her belief that this was their man. Ella shouldered the gate with a raucous thud, shaking it on its hinges. She tried again and again, rocking it in place but not breaking it down.

Too sturdy, she thought. Too many deadbolts on the other side, perhaps. “Forget it,” she said, jumping up and grabbing the ledge above. Ella hoisted herself up using the side wall as leverage, stepped on top of the gate and dropped down onto the other side. It was a lofty drop, landing onto a concrete pathway. Her ankles absorbed the impact, but she had too much adrenaline in her system to feel pain. Behind her, Mia did the same.

Ella ran along the side of the house into a tiny back garden. There was a 10-foot-high perimeter fence on every side. “He can’t have jumped over that,” Ella shouted, hoping Mia had caught up. She appeared beside her.

“He definitely could,” Mia said. “This guy is a nimble motherfucker. He can climb trees like a pro. Scaling that would be easy for him.

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