She froze mid-swipe.
It was Sophie Draper.The first victim.The opening salvo in LaChance's one-man murder spree.
But this shot was different.Intimate.Invasive.Not some glossy crime scene photo snapped from a safe distance, but an extreme close-up of Sophie's face.So tight, Ella could count every eyelash.
The world telescoped down to a pinprick.Ella’s fast breathing suddenly short-circuited, caught behind a blockade of something too terrible to name.
Because this picture had been taken post-enucleation, Sophie no longer had human eyes.
In the bloody eye sockets lay two glistening, polished marbles.
Ella's fingers trembled as she pinched the screen and zoomed in as close as the phone let her.Her blood flash-froze, and her brain took a holiday hand in hand.All that existed was her and the phone and the secret it had tried so hard to hide.
She could see a reflection in Sophie’s eyes.
A face.
Sophie’s killer.The Angel Maker.Right there in black and white.
This face was thin to the point of gauntness.Steep angles, cheekbones that could cut glass.Bushy hair that stood on end, a patchy beard that clung to the jaw.
And unless Ella was going crazy, that wasn’t Drago LaChance staring at her.
But if not LaChance, then who?
Someone with access to his phone, someone who could upload these trophy shots without LaChance even knowing.
The gears ground so hard in Ella’s head that they may as well have sparked.The pieces were there – scattered like shells after a massacre – and all she had to do was line them up and pull the trigger.She was one neuron away from blowing this case sky-high.Just needed that last little nudge to send her over the edge.
Her hand fell to her pocket.Something firm pressed against her leg.Something she’d forgotten she had.
Ella fished it out and stared a hole in it.
An empty pill bottle with a prescription reading: Mr.E.Borgman, Cytoxan (Cyclophosphamide) tablets, 25mg.
‘E.Borgman,’ Ella said.
The pieces she'd been juggling for days suddenly clicked into place, revealing a picture so obvious she wanted to slap herself silly for missing it.She'd been too blinded by her own tunnel vision to see beyond what her stupid brain had been telling her all along.
Yes, these murders were aboutHalo of Blood.
But maybe the author had nothing to do with them.
Maybe this was the work of a deranged fan.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Ella wasn't much for epiphanies.She preferred her revelations concrete, preferably with a hefty paper trail and a side of irrefutable physical evidence.
She bolted out of her office and down the corridor until she reached the holding cells.They were her gateway to enlightenment or damnation; the jury was still out on which.Ella burst through and made for the last cell on the row.
And there, crumpled on the bench like a used tissue, was none other than the man of the hour himself.Drago LaChance, in all his sniveling glory.Ella clanged her hand on the metal bar.
‘LaChance!I need to talk to you,now.’
He flinched so hard that Ella thought he might shed his skin.His head snapped up.He looked like he hadn't stopped crying since she left him.
‘Why?’
