The Blackout Girl ✔️

chapter thirty-nine

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Depending on how you examine the story, Delaney Robinson was her own victim.

She set herself up for failure, for capture. If there was one thing about a crisis anyone can be certain of, it's that they're often irreversible. Sometimes, people spend the rest of their lives trying to make amends, start anew. They stand in their wreckage, a product of personal failures and shortcomings. Often, there's never a recovery.

A murder investigation is a lot like a game of cards. Each tell of a player indicates a lead or a chance to run headfirst into a dead end. The clues are random, shuffled in with insignificant details. It takes perfect timing to reveal your hand. No one ever stops to ask what happens when you misread the cards. No one ever stops to wonder how a win can become ill-fated and sour.

For the violent crimes task force, Delaney Robinson was the culprit. They walked away with all of the money, the glory, the bets on the line. As far as Agent Price and his team were concerned, they were done. The deck was stuffed back into the box, and they set up for a new round.

Little did they know, they would be revisiting the old game soon enough.

* * *

It was the second time the agents were dragged from the comfort of their own homes to come to the office at a late hour. Nolan had only gotten a handful of minutes to himself before he was called back to check out a crime scene. Much like with Quinton Robinson, the killer had stuck late. She could hide in the dark that way, slipping under the radar. It seemed to be a critical part of her ritual.

When he'd arrived at the house, Nolan didn't know what to think. He wanted it to be a false alarm from a paranoid police department. He hoped it would be a false alarm, something they could write off as a misunderstanding and put the public at ease again.

Nolan was sure that, deep down, everyone knew it was the same woman. They just weren't ready to admit it.

Dallas PD had called when they saw his wounds. Price had, in turn, contacted each member of the unit. They were all at the field office within the hour. Nolan had gotten dressed and driven there in less than twenty minutes. Since he and Darren got there first, they were sent to look at the man's house.

Nolan and Darren had ignored the residents gathering around the police line. He deliberately avoided glancing in the direction of the cameras, hoping to enter without any hassle. The reporters were wild, looking for anything they could clip into a clever sound bite and go viral with.

It was so public. The nature of a connected, technology-driven world was that everything was a click away. As soon as 911 was called, people came at the first sign of blood. They were like sharks. Once there was a good story, the world was running to get a piece of the action.

Nolan held his breath as the floor creaked under his sneakers. He could smell the metallic scent of the victim's blood from where he was standing in the foyer. The man couldn't have been stabbed far from his current position. That much was clear.

"Mr. Esperanza was found in the kitchen," a cop informed them before Nolan could ask. "On your right."

The floor was caked in crimson, splatters of it on the walls. Nolan could make out the shape of a body, but it seemed that it was the only evidence of a dead man anywhere in the room. There was gore, but there was no corpse.

Darren scowled, surveying the space. "Did the coroners bag him already?"

The officer was at a loss. "Uh, no."

"Where's the body?" Nolan asked. "Did the killer take him with her? It seems unlikely, given the physical strength it would take to—"

"He survived," the cop interrupted.