CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ella followed Alma into the house, Luca close at her heels. She led them through a maze of gleaming hardwood and tasteful neutrals with unsure steps, like she was a stranger in this home she'd presumably cleaned a hundred times.

But Ella couldn"t blame her. The place had an unlived-in quality, more mausoleum than man cave. They entered a gleaming kitchen that looked like it had been transplanted straight from a Pottery Barn catalog. Stainless steel and marble at every turn, with a professional grade espresso machine hulking on the counter like a chrome gargoyle. Alma gestured for them to sit at the massive island, but Ella remained standing, too amped up to sit. Alma did the same, hugging herself or holding herself together. Ella couldn't tell.

She gentled her approach, kept her body language loose and unthreatening. The last thing they needed was Alma bolting like a spooked deer.

‘When was the last time you saw Mr. Toledo, Alma?' Ella asked.

The housekeeper twisted her fingers together. ‘Two days ago. He was...he seemed fine. Normal.' She shook her head, a ripple of dark hair escaping her severe bun. ‘I don"t understand how this could happen.'

Ella bit back a sigh. Money might buy a lot of things, but it couldn"t stop a bullet or a blade or a pair of concrete shoes.

‘Did he have any meetings scheduled for last night? Any events on the calendar?'

Alma"s forehead creased. ‘I...I don"t know. I only come by twice a week to clean and maintain the pool. I don"t have access to his personal schedule.'

Ella and Luca exchanged a weighted glance. If the pool was serviced that regularly, there was no way Toledo had been drowned in it. The water would"ve been fresh as a daisy, not the stagnant cesspit that had clung to his bloated corpse.

Another dead end. Another thread snipped before it could even start to unspool.

Ella tamped down on the frustration bubbling in her gut. Beside her, Luca shifted subtly, angling himself towards Alma like a flower seeking sun. Laying on the golden boy routine like a second skin.

‘I know this must be a terrible shock,' he murmured, ‘and we hate to press you at such a difficult time. But anything you can tell us, anything at all...it could make a world of difference in finding who did this.'

‘Look, I hardly saw Mr. Toledo. He doesn't come home until I leave, so we only saw each other in passing.'

Alma wavered. Her gaze darted to Ella, then skittered away. She watched the girl carefully, clocking the minute tremors, the flares of her nostrils. Alma was a delicate little fawn, with her fluttering pulse and liquid eyes. She was chewing on words unsaid, as though there some secret was trying to claw free.

The woman had something she wanted to say but didn't.

‘Alma,' she said, quiet but firm. A velvet glove over an iron fist. ‘Is there something you"re not telling us?'

The housekeeper flinched like she"d been slapped. For a long, airless moment Ella thought she might shatter altogether, might collapse into glittering shards right there on the imported tile.

The housekeeper blinked, pulled back from whatever far shore she"d been walking.

‘Yes,' she whispered. ‘Yes, there"s something else.'

Ella and Luca shared a look, a crackle of anticipation. Of dread, laced with the promise of revelation.

‘Something I probably should have told the police a long time ago. But I was just so scared, so sure they wouldn"t...that he"d...'

She trailed off, lost in some distant hell of memory and menace. Luca made an encouraging noise that steered her back on track.

‘Follow me,' Alma said.

And then she was up, moving. A slip of shadow, a drift of lemon polish and lavender Fabulouso on the stale air. She led them out of the kitchen and down a narrow hallway, footsteps hushed on the plush carpeting. They passed a series of closed doors – bedrooms, bathrooms, linen closets filled with overpriced sheets – before stopping at one Ella would"ve pegged for a broom cupboard.

Alma produced a key from her pocket with shaking fingers and slotted it home. The lock disengaged with an audible snick, and the door swung inward on well-oiled hinges.

The room beyond was barely larger than a walk-in closet. Nearly every inch of wall space was taken up by floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with industrial-sized bottles of bleach, ammonia, drain cleaner. An arsenal of chemical warfare.

But Alma ignored the hazmat supplies, crossing straight to the far wall on unsteady legs.

There, at waist height, was a built-in row of drawers. The kind handymen installed for stashing extension cords and spare outlet covers. All the fiddly bits that kept a house humming.

Alma pulled one open, and the runners shrieked in protest.

‘I collect Mr. Toledo"s mail,' she said. Her voice was far away, faded and brittle as an old photograph. Ella edged closer, trying to see over the other woman"s hunched shoulders. Alma was clutching something in one hand. An envelope, Ella realized.

No, more than one. A thick stack of them stuffed haphazardly into the drawer like the world"s most depressing game of Tetris.

‘Every few weeks, like clockwork, these...these would come. I tried to throw them away, at first. Thought if I got rid of them he"d never have to know. Never have to see the horrible things they said.'

With shaking fingers, Alma plucked the first envelope free. Held it out to Ella, a wax-sealed warrant for a guilty conscience.

Ella took it gingerly, hyperaware of the potential for prints, for trace. Up close she could see the scrawl of Ricky Toledo"s name and address, the lack of return labels. She slid the single sheet free with a rasp of dry paper on dry paper.

The sheet inside was unremarkable. Plain white copy paper, the kind that jammed a thousand printers a day. But there, in stark black strokes like spilled ink – a message. Short, crude, with the choppy print of a child"s scrawl.

YOU'RE DEAD.

‘Jesus,' Luca breathed at her elbow. He"d pried open another envelope to reveal a matching threat, this one even pithier.

WATCH YOUR BACK.

Ella rifled through the rest with rising horror. Each one worse than the last, a vicious promise repeated ad nauseum.

DIE DIE DIE.

YOU MADE A MISTAKE.

TRECHEROUS SCUM.

Death threats. Dozens of them, spanning God only knew how long. A concentrated campaign of terror, all aimed squarely at Ricky Toledo"s smug, grinning face.

Ella looked up and met Luca"s grim expression. His jaw pulsed, the muscles jumping like a livewire. This changed things. Shifted the playing field in a direction she wasn"t sure she liked.

‘Did Mr. Toledo ever see these?' Luca asked, holding up a particularly lurid SLIT UR THROAT.

Alma shook her head miserably. ‘No. I...I couldn"t. He had so much on his plate already, the campaign, the council. I didn"t want to add to his stress.'

Unbelievable. The guy had death threats on his ass and he was just bopping along, blissfully unaware. And Toledo wasn"t just some two-bit hood clipped over a drug deal – he was a public figure with potential enemies swarming out of the wallpaper.

Luca said, ‘Alma, do you have any idea who these might be from? Any major enemies? Any strange faces hanging around here?'

‘No. None. I don't know about the man's work life at all.'

‘You did the right thing. Bringing these to us,' Ella said. ‘I know it couldn"t have been easy, living with this hanging over you. But I promise you, we're going to get to the bottom of this.'

She pulled out her cell phone and snapped a series of photos, making sure to get multiple angles on the handwriting. If they could match it to a suspect, tie a name to the rage, then they might just figure out who drowned this politician and dumped him in a field.

A spark of excitement fizzed in her chest. They had a thread. Not just a thread – a whole tangle of them, just waiting to be unraveled. It was something. More than something – it was the first solid break they"d caught since clapping eyes on Toledo"s soggy corpse.

Luca was still talking to Alma in low, soothing tones, easing as much information out of her as he could without sending her over the edge. Ella left him to it – he had the better bedside manner by a country mile.

She thumbed through her contacts until she found the one she wanted. Amelia Chau, digital wunderkind and queen of the Cyber Division. If anyone could wring a viable lead out of this mess, it was her. The woman had never met a firewall she couldn"t scale or a data trail she couldn"t follow.

Ella wandered out into the hallway, hit the call button and brought the phone to her ear. It rang once, twice. Then a click and a rush of white noise.

‘If it isn"t my favorite Luddite,' Amelia chirped. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?'

‘Amelia, I need a favor.'

A dramatic gasp down the line. ‘Miss Dark, admitting she needs help? Hold the front page.'

"Can the sass, and I"ll get you a six-pack of Mountain Dew."

A considering pause. Then, ‘Twelve-pack.'

‘Done.'

‘Alright, lay it on me.'

‘I've got some handwriting I need analyzing. If I send you a bunch of pictures, can you work your magic?'

Amelia said, ‘Just to remind you, I"m not actually a wizard. I can"t just snap my fingers and divine some rando"s identity from a grocery list.'

‘Nothing so pedestrian. I've got a fistful of death threats. Condense search results down to the Virginia area. Within fifty miles of a town called Liberty Grove.'

‘Zip ‘em over. I'll put them through the usual databases.'

Relief loosened the snarled mess of Ella"s shoulders. Amelia was flighty and sarcastic and fueled primarily by junk food, but she was also the best there was. If anyone could crack this coconut, it was her.

‘Thanks, Am. I owe you one.'

‘More like a dozen, but who"s counting?' Keys clattered like rainfall through the speaker. ‘Give me an hour.'

‘Roger that. Over and out.' Ella moved to end the call, but then Amelia"s voice crackled through again, gone suddenly soft and hesitant. Stripped of her usual caustic wit.

‘Hey, uh. Ella?'

Something in Ella"s chest went tight. Dread pooled like battery acid. ‘Yeah?'

A staticky sigh, like Amelia, was scrubbing her face with one hand. "You"re not with Mia Ripley by any chance, are you?"

Her blood ran cold. ‘No. She"s...' Ella decided not to go into the finer details. ‘She's not with me.'

Amelia"s pause was telling. Weighted. A palpable shift in gravity.

‘It"s just...the Director called me about an hour ago. Asking me to track her phone, ping her last location.'

Ella"s fingers went numb. ‘Track her? What the hell for?'

Another pause. Heavier this time, loaded with something Ella couldn"t parse. Didn"t want to parse.

‘She's not answering her calls. Her phone is off, so we can't get a trace. And she's not at home.'

The words hit her like a block of wood to the skull. Ella's brain rattled, jumping from one imagined scenario to another. Ella actually staggered, one hand shooting out to steady herself against the wall.

‘Mia's… missing?' she asked.

‘Yes. I thought you might have-‘

‘No,' Ella cut her off. She thought of the last time they'd spoken, the last words they"d hurled at each other in the heat of anger and betrayal. ‘I saw her this morning. About five hours ago.'

This wasn"t happening. Couldn"t be happening. The universe wasn"t that cruel to snatch her best friend out from under her. There had to be some mistake. A crossed wire, a miscommunication. Mia was probably holed up in some fleabag motel, drowning her sorrows in a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Licking her wounds and cursing Ella"s name.

She couldn"t fall apart. Not here, not now. Not with Ricky Toledo"s killer still on the loose and Luca waiting for her to take point. She had a job to do.

And she had to believe – had to trust – that wherever Mia was, she could take care of herself. That she was safe, and whole, and would come swanning back into the office with a cocky grin and a fresh stack of paperwork before retiring for good in a few months.

She had to, because if she didn't.

Ella shook her head. Rejecting the thought before it could take root, sink poisonous claws into her psyche. She pulled the phone back to her ear, dragged the ragged pieces of herself into something resembling a functioning human.

‘Keep me posted,' she gritted out. ‘Both on the handwriting and...and Mia. The second you hear anything.'

Amelia"s voice was gentle, almost pitying. ‘You know I will. Speak soon.'

She ended the call and let her hand fall to her side. The phone dangled from her limp fingers, suddenly ten times heavier. A millstone around her neck, dragging her into an abyss with no bottom.

Mia was missing.