Girl, Alone (An Ella Dark FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

by Blake Pierce

  “Shut up and stay on the ground. I’m the one with the gun, right?”

  “Are you sure you’re an FBI agent? Your right knee keeps jittering. Your pupils are dilated. You keep furrowing your brow. You know what that tells me? It tells me you’re scared. You’re new to this job, aren’t you?”

  “You say anything else and you’re going straight to hell.”

  But he ignored her. “What is it you’re scared of? Never detained someone before? Waiting for backup and worried they’ve forgotten about you? That must be a terrifying thought, isn’t it? You’re all alone in here with a pure psychopath, and the only way out is to become a murderer yourself. You’re worried doing that would make you no better to me, not to mention all of the knowledge you could extract from me when I’m behind bars.”

  Ella gently pulled the trigger a little tighter. The more he spoke, the more she was worried that the only way out would be over his dead body. She didn’t want that. It would feel like a slap in the face to his victims’ families. Death was easy. Life imprisonment wasn’t.

  Intimidate him. Let him know you’ll pull the trigger if you have to.

  A silence lingered in the dorm room. She saw something in his face change. “Question, is there anyone else in this house?” he asked.

  “Not a soul,” she lied. Truthfully, she didn’t know herself. “Sorry, but you’re not getting your precious Bundy murders tonight.”

  He smiled. “I could still get one.”

  “Really? Because I’ve got six bullets with your name on it.”

  “Bullshit. You want me alive.”

  It frustrated Ella that he knew what she wanted. How did he know? Psychopath’s intuition, Ella thought.

  “I couldn’t give two shits if you live forever or die today,” she lied.

  “So, what are you waiting for?” he asked. “I’m right here.”

  “The police will be here any second,” she said, praying that her words might somehow make it true. Truthfully, she had no idea if Ripley, Harris, or anyone else was indeed on their way. What if they were still searching for Dr. Richards at the hospital? What if they’d taken him in for questioning?

  No, there was no way they’d abandon her like that. Ripley promised she’d get here once she’d scouted the hospital.

  Her thoughts took over, and for a brief flash, her laser focus on the suspect’s head slipped. Her Weaver Stance dipped for just a second, and the suspect noticed.

  A moment of weakness was all it took.

  The man reached out, grabbed the oak log off the bed, and swung it toward Ella’s hands. It collided against her knuckles with a sickening thud, sending her handgun flying out of the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  He lashed out toward her and struck her around the side of the head, sending Ella out of the bedroom and onto the rough hallway floor.

  Her vision blurred as an excruciating, throbbing sensation relieved her of any capable thought. For a second, she was immobile. Time stood still for longer than seemed possible.

  And then he was above her. Between his legs, she saw her Glock 17 lying on the distant ground, out of reach. Suddenly, the oak log came toward her again, threatening to obliterate her skull into a thousand pieces.

  Ella threw up her forearm, blocking the blow and then sliding out from underneath the man above her. She jumped back to her feet in one swift motion, ignoring the overbearing ache in her skull and the shrill ringing sound in her ears. She found herself at the end of a hallway shrouded in darkness. There was a brief filter of light coming from the bedroom she’d hidden in, but not enough to brighten the entire corridor.

  She felt closed in, with the only escape being out into the blackness into the waiting arms of a serial murderer. Suddenly, she heard heavy breathing. A figure emerged from the shadows and launched into her again, but Ella skirted around him and ran back into the bedroom. She dropped down and searched for her handgun.

  It wasn’t there. Of course not. It was in the hallway.

  Footsteps again. “Looking for this?” He appeared at the doorway, now brandishing a weapon in each hand. He pointed the gun at her and laughed. “Looks like I’m gonna get my kill after all. An FBI agent and a hot young bitch all in one? Things have turned out better than expected.”

  It was the first and only time in her life she’d stared down the barrel of a gun. She thought back to the shooting range, all the newbies she saw who had clearly never handled a firearm in their lives. They all struck the same pose. This guy’s was no different. Ella could tell he’d never touched a gun before.

  She took the chance.

  “You’re not going to kill anything with the safety catch on, are you? You moron.”

  There was no safety catch on, but he didn’t know that. Doubt crept into his face. She saw it instantly, and the moment his attention dropped, Ella flung herself toward him and grabbed him by the wrist. She maneuvered beside him as he frantically pulled the trigger, firing two shots into the floor. She brought up her knee and slammed it into his spine as she pulled his entire body backward. He remained on his feet, but Ella was able to push the gun from his hands.

  His elbow came from nowhere, striking her temple and sending her back out into the hallway. Ella realized that he was physically competent, unlike her profile suggested. He was fast, rugged, and fought like a street thug. She could tell he wasn’t formally trained, but he had strength.

  Realizing this, she felt panic set in. She composed herself and focused, but a moment of weakness overcame her. He turned around and charged at her, pushing her against the wall with a heavy crack. His fist lunged at her, but Ella managed to duck. He hit the window, cracking a pain of glass and bringing back reddened knuckles coated in crystalline shards.

  Ella stumbled into the communal room where blackness reigned. She tried to get her bearings, but suddenly felt a hand around her neck. No air could get into her lungs. Her body fell weak and her legs began to tremble as the man smothered her, lowering her to the ground as he suffocated the life from her. He put his body weight on hers, keeping her pinned down. She couldn’t move.

  She’d always heard that when death was coming, you knew it. Worst of all, you accepted it as an inevitability. She could do nothing but think back to the techniques to use when being choked from her old martial arts classes, recalling only one. But if they would give her some extra seconds of life, she was going to take it. There would be no death tonight, not hers, not his.

  She pressed her tongue against the top of her mouth to bow out the underside of her chin. It created a minor space between his thumbs and windpipe, and she felt a slight relief. It awarded her a few seconds of clarity, which was enough to let her subconscious recall a second technique. The most powerful technique in the book—providing it was used on an amateur. Given his lack of handgun ability, Ella could only assume that his fighting skills weren’t up to par either.

  Through the agony and torment, Ella smiled. She looked her attacker in the eye and did her best to grin.

  If you kick and scream, that just tells them it’s working.

  The hesitation inched in. His grip loosened as he readjusted his position, believing that he was doing something wrong. In the fleeting moments, Ella was able to take in a heavy breath. Less than one second was all it took.

  With renewed vigor, she pushed his one arm flush against his body and leaned to the right. He launched his fist toward her face, but she’d created too much distance for him to hit. Ella used the momentum to roll aside, pushing him off her and down onto his back in one swift movement. With her free arm, she thrust her elbow into his nose, feeling bone and cartilage shatter with a nauseating crack. A fountain of blood gushed forth, coating the man’s face with a crimson mask. She followed up with more punches, pounding until her knuckles bled. One crack to his left eye renewed the injury left in place by Alex, nearly dislodging his eyeball from its socket. The man cried out in pain, pathetically trying to kick Ella off and protect himself, but she felt noth
ing. No pain or remorse. She reached behind, caught his leg, and twisted his ankle to an angle which no human bone could endure. She kept the pressure on his knee so that his leg wouldn’t rotate with the twist, and like wet tissue paper, his ankle bone snapped, incapacitating him in a heap on the ground.

  Ella collapsed off him, scrambled to her feet, and ran back to where she’d dropped her gun. She scraped the floor, finding various debris, eventually landing on her pistol. She picked it up. When she returned, he was trying to crawl away. Ella stood there, blocking the exit.

  “No way out.”

  They locked eyes once more, him on the ground and her standing tall. Any fascination she once felt was now overridden with fury. Her body felt like it could break at any second, much less her mind. To come face to face with a serial killer had been something of a morbid fantasy since she was a little girl, and to catch one was something that could surely never happen in her lifetime. Now, both of those fantasies felt infantile. There was nothing special about the man before her, and every fiber of her being told her that the world would be better off if he was six feet in the ground. It took all her willpower, all her moral fiber, to not lodge a bullet between his eyes.

  He rolled onto his back, streaming with blood and seemingly about to breathe his last breath. “You know what Bundy said? When they caught him?” he shouted between breaths.

  Ella trained the gun at his forehead one more time. “Yes. I do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He said I wish you’d have killed me.”

  “Kill me right now. I want you to.” He scowled at her. “Come on, try it. Killing feels incredible. Don’t you want to know how it feels?”

  “No,” she said, although the truth wasn’t quite as clear, even to her.

  “If I’m locked away, they’re going to write letters to me. You know that, don’t you? I’m going to be an icon. Like Bundy was to me, I’m going to be to them. We serial killers are your sons and your husbands. We’re everywhere, and there’ll be more of your children dead tomorrow. Why not kill me now, so I don’t inspire anyone else?”

  Ella pointed the gun between his eyes. She squeezed the trigger gently until she was at the biting point.

  “You want me to do it?”

  He laughed maniacally, hammering his fist on the floor beside him. “Fuck yes I do. I’m not going to prison.”

  Ella moved closer, gun trained on him. She brought it down and pressed the barrel to his forehead.

  “No!” screamed a voice from behind. A horde of footsteps sounded alongside it, thundering in from the patio area. “Ella, don’t you dare shoot him. Yield the gun. It’s over.”

  Ripley appeared with Harris close behind. Ella dropped back onto the floor, keeping her gaze on the man she’d been inches away from killing.

  Ripley and Harris both rushed down to the suspect and restrained him. Harris locked him in handcuffs. Ripley ran over to Ella and gently lowered her gun. She said nothing, but no words were needed. Ripley wrapped her arms around Ella and held her as tears filled her eyes. Beyond the distant broken window, blue and red lights illuminated the early morning streets. Two more officers arrived, entering through the front door this time. They helped Harris escort the suspect to his feet. He struggled to stand up on his surely broken ankle.

  “Are you hurt?” Ripley asked.

  Ella wiped her eyes. “From head to toe.”

  “Come on. We have to get you to the hospital.”

  Ripley walked Ella out of the center and into the cool night air. The fresh trickle of rainfall felt good against her face, soothing her wounds and bringing her back into the real world. There would be no death tonight, at least not in this town.

  Three squad cars sat on the pavement outside the recovery center. Harris and two officers crowded around the suspect as they gently loaded him into the backset. Ella realized that after everything she’d been through with him, she didn’t even know his name. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to know.

  “Hold on a second?” she asked Ripley. “I just have to do something.”

  Ripley nodded and waited by her vehicle. Ella walked over to Harris and the other officers. The back door of their car was still open.

  “They always look so different in chains don’t they?” Harris said. “Want to say anything to this creep before we lock him away for good?”

  But he interrupted her before she could speak. “Oh, I think we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  “No, we won’t,” she said, slamming the car door shut in his face. “I’ve got better things to do.” She turned and walked back to Ripley.

  “What was that about?” Ripley asked, unlocking the car.

  “You told me not to romanticize these people or this job.”

  “I did, and I stand by it.”

  “That was me not romanticizing it,” Ella said. She’d always thought that the day she came face to face with a serial killer would be the most insightful and captivating experience of her life. But it had happened, and it was nothing like she imagined. She’d always imagined serial killers to be a different breed, like they harbored a secret about life which no one else knew. She thought they’d have insights which went beyond the most hardened philosopher.

  But the man she’d fought with was not special or memorable or fascinating. He was human, like her and Ripley and everyone else she’d met the past few days.

  “Good,” Ripley said. “Now you’re really learning.”

  “I’m not going to let these people consume my entire life anymore,” Ella said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  It was ten o’clock in the morning on a new day and the world looked different, she thought. She’d had spent the night recovering in Saint Mary’s Hospital after being treated for her injuries, and her diagnosis was that she’d be back to full health after a few days’ rest.

  She had a room with a view, and outside she saw the first sun since she’d arrived in this strange little part of the world. The events of the previous night, and in fact the past five days as a whole, didn’t seem real to her yet. No doubt they would in time, but even with the soreness around her throat and the scars on her cheek, it felt as though she’d dreamt everything, from the plane ride here to the horrors of the night before.

  A nurse popped her head into Ella’s cubicle. “Ms. Dark, you have a visitor.”

  Ripley walked in, dressed in a casual jeans, a loose-fitting top, and brown jacket. Ella had never seen her so informal. “Still alive, Rookie?” She took a seat on the edge of her bed. “What’s the verdict? Will you live to fight another day?”

  “I’ve got a damaged windpipe, a few bloody knuckles, and a couple of scars on my face. He concussed me too. I’ve got to take some antibiotics for my throat injury and after that, I’ll be good as new. Well, almost.”

  “You did an incredible job. A lot of people would have shot him right there and then, out of fear and convenience. But you kept him alive for us. An alive suspect is always better than a dead one. That’s something I probably should have told you, but there’s no better teacher than experience.”

  A part of Ella wished she’d shot the man dead as soon as he entered the dorm room. She knew that when the dust settled, she’d recreate the scene in her mind over and over again, playing out every possible result. “I know. That’s why I did it.”

  “You’re gonna be playing the what-if game a lot over the next few months, and maybe even the next few years. What if he’d escaped, what if he’d have gotten to the dorms before you. Things like that. There’s no cure for it, you just have to meditate on it and get past it. But someone of your strength should be able to do exactly that. You took down a killer single-handedly. Not many people on earth can say that.”

  “If you hadn’t shown up, I might have killed him.”

  “I’ve shot more people than you’ve had hot dinners but you don’t see me bragging.”

  Ella laughed. The moment hung in the air. “W
ho was he, anyway?” she asked reluctantly.

  “His name was Austin Creed, worked on an alligator farm around here. Neither the sheriff nor any of the officers on the force had heard of him before. He was a total nobody. No criminal history, no DNA in the database, absolutely nothing. To look at his life, you’d think he was a model citizen.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “Yes, while you were relaxing in bed, some of us were working,” Ripley joked. “He confessed to everything. Sang like a canary, even. Once they know their game is up, they can’t wait to confess. This guy blurted it all out without asking. He knew all of the intricate details of the crime scenes, even told us how he found all of his victims. Harris and a few officers went to his house this morning and found jewelry and ID cards belonging to the victims. We talked to some of his neighbors and co-workers too. No one had a bad word to say about him.”

  “What was the house like?” Ella asked, curious.

  “If I saw that house under other circumstances, I’d assume this guy was your run-of-the-mill everyman. It was as normal as normal can be. Well kept, clean. He even had a chirpy little dog running around. Pup was well looked after too, by the looks of it.”

  “Was the dog’s name Crunch?”

  Ripley shot her a look of surprise, then held her hands palm up. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Bundy’s dog was named Crunch.”

  “Well, that just confirms things even more,” she laughed. “He’s our man, no doubt about it.”

  “Thank God,” Ella said.

  “God had nothing to do with it. This was all you.”

  Ella stretched her legs, feeling a little numbness in them. “But my profile was completely wrong.”

  “No, it wasn’t. A psychological profile is a diagnostic tool to guide and predict, and that’s exactly what yours did. It’s not rigid science, despite what some textbooks might tell you.”

  “I think I found that out the hard way.”

  “Creed was a loner, a manual worker, lived in the area and had a rough childhood. In fact, the only thing that wasn’t accurate was the history of sexual deviances, and just because there are no records of any sex offenses having taken place, it doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. You were close, and sometimes that’s the best result you can hope for.” Ripley stood up. “Anyway, are you ready to get out of here? There’s a flight back to D.C. in four hours. I bet you’re dying to get home.”