Page 25 of Girl, Entangled
‘Funny, but you might be-’ Curtis began. His own voice came back to him through his headphones, and amongst the echo was external sound. The floor didn’t rumble this time, but he became aware of a peripheral noise that he didn’t himself create.
This time, it came from the stairs.
Curtis yanked his headphones off again.
JimmyTwoFingers: Curt you look terrified.
PigCake: The headphones are off. Business is about to pick up.
Curtis’s pulse came up. It was damn cold in his office, but sweat formed on his lower back regardless. Curtis slowly rose out of his chair and grabbed the door handle, hoping that whatever made the sound might reveal itself before he actually had to confront anything. He turned the handle, cracked the door open and peered out.
Darkness pervaded the landing area. A gleam from a lamp downstairs provided just enough light for visibility, and Curtis saw exactly what he expected to see, which was nothing unusual. He could see down the stairs and into his hallway, and it was a direct path with no unexpected barriers. For a moment he wondered whether Kate had decided to surprise him, but besides the fact she didn’t have a key, it was past eleven and she’d be asleep by now.
Imagination. Nothing more. Curtis stood at the top of the stairs with his hand on the rail and his heart going at the base of his throat, and he understood, slowly, that he was being an old man in his slippers in a quiet house.
He turned back toward the office, toward the lit screen and the four hundred or so people still waiting in it, and he had already half-composed the line he’d open with – sorry guys, old house, where were we? – when the spare room door came open behind him.
It should have announced itself, but the door simply was not open and then was, and a blur stormed through the darkness with a speed that did not belong to anything that size. Curtis got halfway through turning, got as far as a single raised hand and the start of a sound, before the cold point went into the side of his neck.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Ell.’
Something was nudging her shoulder.
‘Ell. Wake up.’
She came up in stages. The shoulder. The fact of the shoulder being hers. The fact of Luca being attached to the finger doing the nudging. The blinds were shut but the unmistakable glow of sunrise lay beyond them. The clock on the bedside table, which she made her eyes focus on after a count of three, read 06:04.
‘What?’ she muttered.
‘You know the rule? About waking someone up?’
‘Talk sense, Hawkins.’
Luca was annoyingly alert, it seemed, and he was half-dressed and had his phone in one hand. ‘You can only wake your partner up if it’s snowing or someone’s died.’
‘Hawkins, I swear to God-’
‘Check your phone.’
Ella scrambled to a sitting position and blinked away the grogginess. Memories of yesterday returned. The killer, the hanged man, the prison visit. Now Luca was talking about snow and dead people. As far as she knew, Luca had no idea what case she was working on.
Her phone was face down on the bedside table where she had left it last night before going to bed. She’d put it on silent to focus but hadn’t turned up the volume before falling asleep. She picked it up and turned it face up and the screen lit and stayed lit, because there was enough on it to fill the lock screen twice over.
Eleven missed calls. Ten from Ripley, one from an unknown number. The most recent was ten minutes ago, the first an hour ago.
The texts ran underneath. She didn’t read them. She didn’t need to. The pattern alone told her.
‘Jesus. What the hell happened while I was asleep?’
‘Look online. You’ll find it straight away. There’s a video. I assume the case involves you, because your phone’s been flashing like crazy for ages. Either that or you’re having an affair.’
She jumped out of bed, parted the blinds and looked out of the window. The grey Ford was still in the parking lot with two officers inside it. Above them, beyond the lot, beyond the access road, the city was waking up under a clear, thin sky.
It was not snowing.
Her phone began flashing again.
