Emma Griffin FBI Mysteries by A.J. Rivers (1-21)

1. The Girl in Cabin 13
2. The Girl That Vanished
3. The Girl in the Manor
4. The Girl Next Door
5. The Girl and the Deadly Express
6. The Girl and the Hunt
7. The Girl and the Deadly End
8. Dangerous Waters
9. The Girl and the Secret Society
10. The Girl and the Field of Bones
11. The Girl and the Black Christmas
12. The Girl and the Cursed Lake
13. The Girl and the Unlucky 13
14. The Girl and the Dragon’s Island
15. The Girl in the Woods
16. The Girl and the Midnight Murder
17. The Girl and the Silent Night
18. The Girl and the Last Sleepover
19. The Girl and the 7 Deadly Sins
20. The Girl in Apartment 9
21. The Girl and the Twisted End

Then

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Quick. Simple. Clean.

She knew what to do, and how to do it. When to tighten. When to breathe. When to walk away.

How did she get here? How did it come to this?

It was never supposed to be this way.

Marie clawed at the ground at her sides, the rough surface scraping away the skin of her fingertips and pressing back her nails as she searched for something, anything, to grab onto. She didn’t know if there was anything there. She didn’t know why she was searching.

She wouldn’t be able to pry away the ground and find something to save her. No one was beneath her waiting to take hold and pull her back from the edge.

Her eyes closed tightly, and she could feel the aching burn of tears swirling over their surface. It stung like they were etching the membranes, melting the veins to bring out the blood.

The rush of adrenaline through her body tried to combat the gray coming to the edges of her thoughts and the heavy panic coming to depleted muscles and malfunctioning lungs.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It had never been this way.

I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.

The words echoed through her mind. She knew who said them, but she didn’t. She wished she could make sense of the fragments of voices that hung loosely together in her thoughts to make up the warning. She had only just heard them. Or maybe it was days, months, years before. Someone said them to her. To warn her, to chastise her, to mold her into something she should be, or make her spring back to what she had been before.

She wanted to hear something else as the ache spread behind her eyes and down the base of her skull to her throat. She wanted other words to come to her as the gray settled in.

Her fingers dug harder at the ground and then in the air and then on skin. On hair, on clothes, on blood, on nothing. Maybe she could tatter them all, peel them all away and find something else to hold onto. Something that would remind her heart to beat and her lungs to fill and her brain to fire and pulse and stay awake.

But those were the only words. The same ones she’d heard, coming to her in thin, fragile layers of voices. At least her mind was giving her that. If she couldn’t have strength, she could have comfort.

But it was a taunting kind of comfort.

She was glad for the voices, even if she couldn’t make them form any other words. She was beginning to understand there would be nothing after this, and she didn’t want the last things she heard to be the other sounds around her. She wanted those voices to surround her, to fill her ears and her head, to protect her at least from that part of her suffering. No matter how hard she clawed and reached, she would find nothing to save her life.

But the memory of the voices could save her final seconds. They could shield at least a part of her. Even if they were also tormenting her.

Marie thought she didn’t need to hear that warning, to give it any weight.

She believed she had known what she was getting into. She always had before. It would be just like all the other times. The meeting place didn’t matter that much. It wasn’t familiar, but they rarely were. What mattered was what was waiting there. Like she always did, she would go, get what she needed, and leave. It would carry her through long enough until she needed more, then the pattern would happen again.

She knew the realities. She accepted the risks.

But it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

Something went wrong. She didn’t know until it was far too late to go back, to change her mind, to stop. By the time she realized it, there was nothing she could do.

As her body shut down, she wished she could speak and have the words stay crystallized in the air around her so that they’d be there when someone found her. There were so many things she’d want to say. She wondered what she’d choose. Then there was nothing left to wonder.

Mere steps away, a pair of eyes dry and painful, marked with scattered lines of reflected blood, watched for Marie’s chest to rise again.

The light of a phone intruded on the funeral shroud of night over her.

Then a voice, outside of her mind, beyond the protections of silenced memories, calm and steady.

“It’s me. I have a situation that needs to be cleaned up.”