CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Mia Ripley stared at the storage complex through the windshield.

1456 Industrial Park Road. The location of Martin’s storage unit, at least according to the files he’d tried to torch.

This was it. The moment of truth. The crossroads where the fog of delusion lifted and the cold, hard reality came crashing in. Part of her wanted to run, to peel out of this place and never look back. Pretend she”d never seen those files, never smelled the smoke from Martin”s burning life.

But she couldn”t. The doubts had burrowed deep, and now they gnawed at her guts like starving rats. She had to know. Had to see with her own eyes the truth of the man she”d given her heart to.

Even if it destroyed her.

Mia regarded the rows of uniform units and drew breath after breath. She held the steering wheel tight. Stalling. She was delaying the inevitable, and she damn well knew it. Like a fool, a coward.

Get it together, woman, a voice hissed in her head. You’ve faced down the worst America has to offer, and you’re scared to walk into a storage unit?

No. God no. She was the scourge of scumbags, and what was another scumbag to the pile? Even if that scumbag was someone she’d foolishly shared a bed with. No man, no matter how deep under her skin, was gonna make her tuck tail and run.

She wrenched the key from the ignition and relished the pain of the metal biting into her palm. She used it to center herself, to uncoil the diamond-hard knot of rage that had seen her through a thousand worst storms.

Nothing was going to hold her back from facing the truth in all its ugly glory.

Ripley hauled herself out of the car and strode towards unit number eleven. It was a plain white garage door, nothing she hadn’t seen before. The padlock hanging off the clasp leered at her like a one-eyed whore.

For a moment, she just stood there. Staring at that hunk of rust and spite like it held the secrets to the universe. It was time to rip off the Band-Aid and let the poison drain.

Ripley fished her keyring out of her pocket and navigated to the slim piece of metal nestled between her car and front door keys. The little nugget had been a gift from Ella once upon a time. Ella, the lock and key expert, the woman that could best a padlock or deadbolt or mortice lock without blinking. If Ella was by her side, they’d have breached this door an hour ago and left no sign of any intrusion. If Ripley’s memory was on point, Ella told her to only use this device when it was shit-hits-the-fan-o’clock.

Well, the hour was nigh. The bells were tolling, and the piper was coming to collect his due.

As she inserted the piece of metal into the padlock, Ripley couldn’t help but think of the rookie and hope she was surviving somewhere out there. She worked the pick in a circular motion, hardly the deft touch of a safecracker. A twist, a click, and the shackle popped free.

The door yawned open on squealing hinges, a gaping maw hungry for her hopes, her dreams, the tattered remnants of her happily ever after.

Last chance to walk away, that small, craven voice whimpered. To go back to the lie, to the pretty fiction you”ve wrapped around yourself like a security blanket.

But Ripley had never been one for soft landings and easy comforts. She was a creature of hard edges and brutal truths, of festering wounds lanced and cauterized. She didn”t flinch from ugliness - she grabbed it by the throat and made it look her in the eye.

She stepped over the threshold and let the darkness swallow her. The door swung shut at her back with a clang like a dungeon gate.

For a long moment, she just stood there. Breathing in the musty air, the cloying tang of secrets left to molder. Letting her eyes adjust to the murk, picking out shapes in the gloom.

First, she saw the barrel. Squat and black, dominating the small space with its chemical musk. A sweet-sick bite of kerosene that coated her tongue, seared her sinuses and watered her eyes.

There must have been gallons of the stuff in there, Ripley reasoned. Enough accelerant to turn a body into a grease-spot. To erase a man so thoroughly, even dental records would be hard-pressed to identify the crispy critter left behind.

Just like Martin had tried to do to himself. Dousing his life in gasoline and striking a match, leaving nothing behind but scorched earth and questions without answers. Burning his bridges, salting the earth so nothing could grow in his wake.

Opposite the barrel – a wooden chair. Straight-backed and sturdy. At its base was a red stain, a rust-brown smear soaked deep into the concrete.

Ripley”s gorge rose, her gut twisting like a fist around a knife.

She didn”t know what this was, so she stood there, paralyzed, afraid to take a step in any direction. She breathed deep, letting the sting of kerosene scour her nasal passages raw.

What now? What did you do when the world tilted on its axis, when the foundations of your reality crumbled like so much sodden drywall? When you feared the man you loved was a monster in a human suit?

There was no protocol for this. No training manual, no procedural handbook for navigating the bombed-out ruins of your own psyche. She wanted to scream. To rage, to tear at her hair and rend her clothes. To give voice to the black, seething thing clawing at her insides, ripping her apart from the inside out.

Had she missed the signs? The red flags, the warning klaxons blaring in the night? Had she been so blinded by her own desperate need, her aching loneliness, that she”d ignored the snake in her bed?

Or had he just been that good? The consummate chameleon, the silver-tongued serpent. Spinning his lies, his half-truths and obfuscations, weaving a web so silky-sweet she”d gladly stepped into it.

Grim laughter bubbled up her throat. Some detective she was. Some profiler, some hunter of monsters. She”d welcomed one into her heart and let him sip from her veins. Now, she was paying the price for her own stupidity.

Ripley”s thoughts cut out at the harsh trill of her cell phone. The ringtone reserved for Ella. Fumbling it out of her pocket, she stared at the screen, at her friend”s name flashing insistently.

Ella. Ella, who”d tried to warn her. Who”d seen through Martin”s mask, who”d begged Ripley to open her eyes. Ella, who must be worried sick. Who”d moved heaven and earth to find her, to bring her back from the brink of...what? Madness? Oblivion? The kind of heartbreak there was no coming back from?

Ripley”s thumb hovered over the button. The urge to answer, to unburden herself, was overwhelming. She needed Ella like she needed air right now, but she couldn”t do it. She couldn”t face the concern or the pity in her friend”s voice. And beneath it all was a flicker of shame, wounded pride and the tattered shreds of her ego bristling at the thought of admitting that Ella had been right. That Ripley had been a fool, a patsy, just another mark for a con man to fleece.

No. She had to do this alone. Had to face her demons on her own terms, in her own time. She owed Ella that much - a clean kill, a monster put down and a mess mopped up before her partner ever had to glimpse the carnage.

The phone fell silent. She slipped it back into her pocket.

And so, Ripley did the only thing she could.

Ripley crossed to the barrel in a daze, one foot in front of the other like a dead woman walking. She levered herself on top of it, sat down, and wouldn”t move until all of this was over.

And she waited.