CHAPTER FORTY

Luca's world swam into focus one blurred smear at a time. His tongue was a dry wad glued to the roof of his mouth, and the left side of his skull throbbed like a rotten tooth. The last thing he remembered was Ghostlight Books. Finding those pictures, the ghost stories. Ella's name on his lips and then – nothing. A blank space where memory should be.

No, wait. There was something else. Fractured impressions that bubbled up through the sludge. Bound and gagged in a claustrophobic box that bounced and vibrated, which his rational brain now explained away as being trapped in a car trunk. Then he vaguely remembered being dragged by his ankles through a maze of corridors as his peripheral vision picked out horrors that seemed too extreme for a mere scare attraction. A hospital room featuring a woman birthing a monster, a nursery of deformed children, a decapitated priest wearing the head of a bat. But for all Luca knew, it could be his damaged brain playing tricks on him.

Then he felt something stir in his limbs. Sensations clawed back into his nerve endings. He could move of his own accord again.

Welcome back to the land of the living.

No. Not quite. This was a long way from the living, because while he could squirm and jolt and rotate his neck, he couldn't do much else.

Luca blinked his surroundings into view and saw he was in some kind of barn or warehouse, but one designed to look like a child's bedroom. Above him, cobwebs clung to rotting support beams in a desperate bid to hold the place together.

And when he looked down, he saw he was tied to a chair. Legs shackled with rope, wrists bound behind his back, something oily jammed in his mouth and plugged there with duct tape. Luca tried to spit but it just clogged his mouth up and forced him to take deep inhales through his nose.

Where was his gun? His cell? His car? He couldn't feel anything pressing against his thighs, so he guessed that his attacker had confiscated them and probably ditched them far away from here.

And what was that smell?

It reminded him of that old petrochemical plant he interned for when he was sixteen. That chemical cocktail of whatever-the-hell that cut right to the bone and left no room for anything else.

But through all this, one thought hit Luca the hardest: this was the room he was going to die in.

He'd found Ghostlight Books on his own. Followed the trail from Amanda Krafton's car to the shop, and hadn't had time to inform Ella of his whereabouts. Hell, he'd even taken Amanda's diary - the thing that led him to Ghostlight Books in the first place – with him, and God knows where that diary was now.

Luca had made a rookie mistake. A series of rookie mistakes, if he was being honest. And when was a better time to be brutally honest with yourself than on your last day alive?

He felt himself sinking. Not literally, because he was tied to this chair until the unsub decided to either kill him or free him. But inside, in that deep-down place he rarely wanted to visit, despair wrapped its bony fingers around his guts and squeezed.

This was it. Game over. No bonus round, no extra lives. He'd finally pushed his luck too far, and now the reaper had come to collect.

And that cosmic loan shark was a real bastard, because this was not how Luca Hawkins had planned to punch out. He always imagined he'd go down with dignity, taking down some scumbag with a shield in one hand and a smoking Glock in the other. Dying for something that mattered.

But here, he was just another body for some psycho's kill count.

And worst of all, Ella wouldn't know what really happened. She'd be left with nothing but questions and a taunting killer. He knew this psychopath wouldn't be able to resist rubbing his victory in Ella's face. He'd call her, leave clues, breadcrumbs to follow. The bastard would want to make it personal, to draw it out and watch her suffer.

And Ella, stubborn, never-say-die Ella, would run herself ragged chasing every lead, pushing herself past the breaking point. She'd blame herself, wouldn't stop until she'd turned over every rock and ripped apart every shadow.

Idiot, he castigated himself. Stupid macho idiot. You just had to play action hero, take off after the bad guy with some half-cocked plan.

You're not indestructible, Hawkins, she'd tease. Leave the dumb hero crap to Steve Rogers and them.

But Ella got it. Deep down, beneath the eye-rolls and the banter, she understood. Knew that the only thing that scared him more than dying was letting down the people who depended on him.

His family. The team.

And her.

Didn't make it any less dumb, playing Don Quixote. There was a fine line between bravery and bone-headedness. The only difference was which side the body landed on.

He pictured her face. Ella's face. Sometimes felt like that was all that got him through the ugly days – just knowing she was out there, fighting the good fight.

They'd had a good run, him and Ella. Beat the odds that said office romances never lasted. Defied all the naysayers who'd clucked their tongues and said it'd never work, not with two careers, two hard heads always butting.

If he had to go – and it was looking more and more like he did – he guessed there were worse last thoughts to have than her laugh, her smile. The way she looked at him when she thought he was being particularly dumb. Which was often.

The maudlin thought drifted up just as a new noise pierced the miasma.

Footsteps.

Luca froze as the tread drew closer. The crunch of something heavy on concrete. The deliberate pace of a man in no particular hurry.

He knew that walk. He'd heard it before, filtered through layers of drywall and bad reception.

And then, from behind, the slow clap of hands. Mocking applause for an audience of one.

‘Welcome to a real haunted house,' the voice said. ‘Only difference is, nobody knows this one exists.'

And then a trickle of liquid seeped from an overturned barrel, and Luca realized then what he'd smelled earlier.

It was the unmistakable scent of gasoline.