Girl, Erased by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Suspense, Police Procedural, Women Sleuths, Thrillers
ISBN: 9781094372884
Google: _WkQEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Blake Pierce
Published: 2022-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Footsteps woke her up.

They weren’t Ripley’s. They were heavier and more carless. Ella stepped out of her bed. The lights from passing cars outside their window cast orange squares against the curtains, hypnotically dashing right to left.

Outside was still dark, so it must have been the middle of the night. She never woke early, unless something interrupted her. Maybe it was Ripley, pottering around, getting ready early?

No. It wasn’t Ripley. Ella knew her rhythm. Shadows moved and danced against the far wall, but something told her that those shadows didn’t belong to Ripley. She wasn’t sure how she knew. Partner’s intuition, maybe, the same way she could tell when Ripley was angry or irritated or focused. They had a different presence, an alien aura.

Ella feigned sleep but kept one eye open. The shadows melted off the walls and manifested right in front of her, lightly treading between her and Ripley’s beds.

She only caught a glimpse, but there was enough to tell her that she was right. There was someone else in their room. She suddenly felt sick and dizzy. There was an icy chill in her fingertips.

Then the darkness consumed her. For a few seconds she saw nothing except brief flashes of light, but when her eyes adjusted to the room’s conditions, she saw the outline of a man holding a knife in his hand. He was standing over Ripley as she slept. Ella tried to scream, but no sound came out. She jumped out of bed and tried to run towards him, but she was locked in place. The intruder didn’t even notice Ella, focussing only on her partner. All she could do was watch.

In a series of violent thrusts, the figure plunged the knife into the heart of her sleeping partner. The sudden attack rendered Mia completely motionless. She couldn’t struggle or fight back or make an escape. She was at the stranger’s mercy.

Ella managed to escape her bed, but then froze in place, as though her feet were nailed to the ground. Then, everything came in small fragments, as though the picture had been smashed to pieces and she was assembling the jigsaw back together. Blood seeped from the bed onto the carpet. Ripley screamed at Ella to get out of the motel. The attacker turned around, pulled down his hood to reveal a strange mask. Two huge eyes, a long beak. The Executioner was here. Leaving her partner in a bloody heap, he launched towards Ella with his blade pointed towards her.

Her heart stopped beating. Her throat became agonizingly dry. She was on her side again, back in bed, one leg much colder than the other. Reality came crushing back, and she was suddenly aware that she was looking at the back of her eyelids.

She opened her eyes, adjusting to focus on the curtains a few feet away. A trickle of sunlight seeped through. She sat up in bed and grabbed her phone off the table beside her. 6:30am. Only now did she realize that this masked intruder existed in her dreamworld, not in reality.

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