A Caress of Bones: a serial killer thriller (Wren Delacroix Book 9)

by V. J. Chambers

  She was gripping Reilly’s hand tight—too tight. She kept thinking he was going to ask her to ease up, going to say that she was hurting him.

  But he was gripping back, and he was sweating too, little glistening bits of it on his brown skin. He wasn’t looking at her. He was glaring across the courtroom at the back of Hawk’s head.

  She couldn’t look at Hawk.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening.

  How had they gotten to this point? How could it be real that Hawk might be getting out of jail?

  When the district attorney tried to bring up the possibility of Hawk being a danger to young girls, Hawk’s attorney objected, pointing out that Hawk wasn’t charged with any crimes, even though he was aware it was a pet theory of Wren Delacroix to blame him for Major Hill’s crimes.

  The judge had sustained it, and said there would be no more mention of anything outside the purview of the case at hand.

  So, that didn’t leave much.

  There was not much to argue that Hawk would kill again when they were limited to talking about the murder of Karen Freeman.

  Wren gripped Reilly’s hand harder as they got down to it, and he squeezed back. They didn’t look at each other.

  She wasn’t really surprised when the judge said that Hawk would be released pending his new trial, but she let out this noise at the words, anyway, this wounded-animal cry.

  Everyone in the room turned to look at her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Tears were coming. Of course, tears were coming, because she cried about everything.

  She wanted to run, but she stayed. She stayed and watched while Hawk and Deborah Nielson kissed and while Deborah sobbed and clung to him and offered her prayers of thanks to the Lord.

  There were a lot of former members of the FCL there. They all seemed to have banded together behind Hawk. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. She had thought the community shattered in the wake of David Song’s arrest. He had been living among them under a different name, hiding in plain sight, but once he’d been in custody, he’d confessed everything. Earlier the year before, he’d been sentenced to life in prison. Well, several life sentences to be precise.

  Everyone had left the compound, and Wren had assumed that was the last gasp of the Fellowship of the Children of the Lord. But now she wondered.

  She could never say for certain whether Hawk was only paying lip service to the Horned Lord or if he were really off his rocker and thought that he was a vessel for the Crimson Ram. Certainly, on numerous occasions, he’d indicated to her, seemingly sincerely, that he thought that they were meant to kill together, or that he was supposed to kill for her, and this was all at the edict of the antlered deity.

  Wren didn’t believe any of that shit.

  But if Hawk did… well, maybe he’d convinced the remaining members of the group to support him because he was blessed by the Lord. Hell, even if he didn’t believe it, he could have convinced the group. If there was one thing Hawk was good at, it was convincing people to do things. Reilly had actually watched Hawk talk a man into shooting himself.

  This was why she had been worried about the thing with Deborah Nielson. When she’d heard that Hawk had a girlfriend, she’d been concerned, because Hawk had been obsessed with her for a long time, and his breaking that obsession meant something. She didn’t know what, but now she was looking at it. Hawk had supporters.

  Hell, this was how he was paying for that slick defense lawyer of his, Skip Taylor. He’d gotten these people to believe in him, and they were footing the bill.

  She worked at swallowing her tears.

  Reilly put his arm around her, and she burrowed against him for strength, but she could feel that he was trembling as well, and she didn’t know if that was fear or rage or both. Neither of them were particularly in control.

  She waited and she watched as Hawk left the court room, free, holding hands with Deborah, surrounded by former members of the FCL.

  He didn’t speak to her, but he locked eyes with her.

  She looked into his nearly colorless gray eyes, and she felt as if she was gazing into a vast abyss, as if there was nothing behind them but madness. It was she who broke their gaze, not him.

  She and Reilly stayed in the courtroom until it emptied, clutching each other, neither speaking.

  Finally, they left together.

  They drove home and their new house seemed too big. Wren was suffocated by all the space and all the rooms.

  She wanted to crawl into the linen closet on the first floor, tunnel into the stack of blankets stored on the floor, wrap her arms around her knees, and make herself small.

  Instead, she took Reilly by the hand and dragged him upstairs to their bedroom. She pushed him backwards onto the bed too hard, and she knew she shouldn’t be rough with him, because he wasn’t healed yet, but he was fierce against her, too, and when she climbed onto him, straddling him there, he tugged so hard on her shirt that he ripped it.

  She flung aside the pieces of it and pushed up his shirt. She put her mouth on the scar from his gunshot wound.

  He hissed.

  She kissed his brown skin, the black curls that gathered below his belly button. She unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down to his knees.

  He was inside her before they had both shed their clothes.

  After it was over, they lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, neither touching each other.

  “He’s not dumb,” Reilly said eventually. “He won’t kill again.”

  “If it was a matter of intelligence driving his bloodlust, he’d never have killed in the first place,” she said.

  Reilly didn’t answer this, acknowledging it with his silence.

  She found her ripped shirt and turned it this way and that, surveying it.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “I don’t even think I realized I did that.”

  “Don’t be weird about it,” she said, not willing to have this conversation on top of everything else.

  He kissed her, one of his large hands settling on her belly. “We needed it,” he whispered against her mouth.

  “Yes,” she whispered back. “Because this is very, very fucked up.”

  He broke the kiss and looked down at her.

  She traced her thumb over the outline of his chin. “And we haven’t done it like that since… well, not in a while anyway.” Their lovemaking had been sweet and soft ever since they’d discovered her pregnancy. There was the fact he was wounded, too, which had meant there had been a period of time in which they couldn’t do it it all, and then when they’d had to be very careful, anyway.

  “He’s bad, Wren, but we can take him,” said Reilly. “We took him down before, didn’t we?”

  She nodded.

  “We’re together, now, and we’re stronger together.” He sucked in a breath. “You’re strong. You take everything I give you.”

  “Every inch of it,” she said, arching a wicked eyebrow.

  He rested his forehead on her shoulder, chuckling softly.

  She clutched him to her.

  REILLY lay awake that night, feeling even more anxious than usual. He had to admit that he wasn’t sleeping too well as it was. It was typical for him to lie awake in bed next to Wren, who went to bed early and slept late.

  He had forgotten this anxiety, but he’d had it before, when Janessa was pregnant. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten it, but when he started to feel it again, it all came rushing back, along with some acutely uncomfortable memories of what it was like having an infant. The sleeplessness, the crying, the exhaustion, the neediness of the little being, who would take everything that he had to give and still need more when that was over. And he’d been young when Timmy was born. He was in his early thirties now, and he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to handle this.

  Wren was tough, of course. She was extraordinarily resilient. But the toll this was all going to take on her body, it was astronomical, and she would need him, and
it was his fault that this had happened, and it was his role to protect her and the baby.

  Why had he thought he could do this?

  That didn’t even bring into account the idea of Hawk Marner being free.

  Reilly did not think Hawk was going to be pleased by the news that Wren was pregnant.

  Reilly knew that Hawk still felt possessively about Wren, and Reilly was still recovering from the damned bullet in his gut, and…

  Well, he was anxious.

  He couldn’t sleep.

  So, when the phone call came in from Jim McNamara at the Cardinal Falls Police Department, it didn’t wake him even though it was after midnight. He was still awake. Wren, however, stirred next to him, rolling over, blinking her eyes in confusion.

  He’d already answered the phone. “Reilly here.”

  “Reilly, it’s McNamara,” greeted the voice on the other end of the phone. “We got a body.”

  Reilly sat up straighter. “Really? What are you talking here?” They didn’t work with the Cardinal Falls department, so if they were getting a call about a body, there must be a reason.

  “Well, the body is in that, um, that pose?”

  “The readiness pose?” It was something from the FCL, a way to lay during meditation, with one leg pointed out straight and the other folded to make a triangle against the other leg.

  Wren sat up straight, eyes wide. “What? A body? Already?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said McNamara. “That’s what it’s called.”

  Reilly’s voice was hoarse. “Is it a kid? A little girl?”

  “Looks to be in her early twenties,” said McNamara.

  Reilly closed his eyes, relieved, but then horrified at his relief, because this twenty-something-year-old girl was somebody’s daughter too. Someone’s heart would break when they discovered she’d been murdered.

  “You guys want to come to the scene?” said McNamara.

  “Text me the address,” said Reilly.

  “Absolutely,” said McNamara.

  They said their goodbyes and hung up.

  Wren was already out of bed and getting dressed. “I take it it’s not a little girl.”

  “Early twenties,” said Reilly. “You sure you’re up for this? If you need to sleep—”

  “How could he do it so quickly?” said Wren, yanking her nightshirt over her head.

  Reilly gazed at the skin she’d uncovered. Her stomach was still flat, and she didn’t look pregnant at all, except for the fact that he thought her breasts might be a little bigger—maybe she was just a little softer in general, all over, which he liked.

  “Cai,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Stop staring at my tits and talk to me.”

  He smirked. “Sorry, but your tits are distracting.”

  She threw her nightshirt at him.

  It caught him in the face, and he plucked it away. “We don’t know that it has anything to do with him,” said Reilly.

  “It has to.” She tugged a bra down over her body, grimacing. “These don’t even fit anymore, and I just bought the bigger ones.” She’d never been the type of woman to wear much of a bra. They never had underwires or lace or anything. They were thin, stretchy things, but he liked them just as much as something frilly, because when he was feeling her up, he could always feel actual skin and not three layers of padding.

  But he didn’t need to be thinking about Wren’s bras or her breasts or even her pregnancy. He shook himself and got out of bed. He stepped into the jeans he’d been wearing last night, which he’d thrown over the back of a chair. “If it does have something to do with him, we won’t be able to work the case.”

  “It’s obviously connected to him,” she said. “And we have to work the case. This is a serial killer, and that’s what we do.”

  “This is not a serial killer. This is one body,” said Reilly. “When we get there, we stay back. We do not get too close to the body. We don’t touch anything. If this is Hawk, we have to be well clear of it.”

  She hesitated. “We probably shouldn’t go to the crime scene.”

  “Probably not,” he said. “But let’s not pretend we can stop ourselves.”

  She drew in a breath, thinking this through. “Yes, true. We have to go.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE trunks of the trees were lit up because they’d brought out lights and set them up to illuminate the area.

  The body was stripped naked, carefully arranged in the readiness pose, her eyes closed, her hair arranged over one shoulder, spilling down to curl around one of her breasts.

  Organized, thought Wren upon seeing it. Then she thought, Hawk always dressed his victims.

  Hawk was certainly driven by sexual desire as much as any other serial killer, but he’d never molested his victims. Well. She didn’t know. He’d never penetrated his victims. There had never been any evidence of that. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been doing other things to them, undetectable things that left no trace. She couldn’t say.

  But the nudity of the body, it wasn’t like him.

  On the other hand, when they’d arrested him, he’d killed Oliver Campbell—who didn’t fit his profile at all. He was the wrong age and the wrong gender, and Hawk had done it for Wren. He’d been protecting her, or else getting revenge, or… well, it had happened after Oliver had hurt Wren, at any rate.

  So, Hawk had been evolving.

  Maybe he was evolving to older girls?

  “He’s alibied up,” said McNamara at her shoulder.

  She turned. She and Reilly were standing at the edge of the scene. They hadn’t gotten close, and they hadn’t examined the body. “Hawk?”

  “Yes,” said McNamara. “First thing we did was send someone out to talk to him.”

  “Really?” said Wren. “How do you even know where he is?”

  “Oh, he’s out on the compound,” said McNamara.

  “The…?” Wren shook her head. “No. We sold the compound.” She swallowed. “To some strange, mysterious LLC, which didn’t disclose what they wanted to do with it.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Fuck. We sold the compound back to the FCL. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Well, there are a bunch of people out there,” said McNamara. “Moving right back into those cabins. Anyway, Marner was happy to talk to the officers we sent out to interview him. He’s been there the whole night, celebrating his release in front of thirty eye witnesses.”

  “Who would lie for him,” said Wren. “They’d say anything if they thought that the Crimson Ram wanted them to.”

  “I don’t know,” said McNamara. “You got to be pretty stupid to go out and kill a woman the night you get out of jail, don’t you?”

  “The nudity doesn’t fit,” muttered Reilly.

  She turned to him. “I was thinking that, too, but… I don’t know. He could be evolving. Before, the murders were all about me, and he’s moved on from me, so maybe he’s changing his victim profile.”

  “We’d like to send the body to your lab,” said McNamara.

  “But should we?” said Reilly. “Is that going to be a problem for the DA?”

  “We cleared it with the office,” said McNamara. “You guys have a state-of-the art facility, and your lab guy is a boy genius or something, so we don’t want to take any chances. If there’s evidence, we want it found.”

  “Okay,” said Wren. “Well, if it’s okay with the DA, I agree. We want Trevon on this.”

  “This is also a similar part of the woods to where Everly Green told us that she was taken a few months back,” said McNamara.

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Wren. “I remember that. It was right before we went out to California. And she was drugged with the same substance that Hawk used?”

  “Exactly,” said McNamara. “We speculated on the possibility of a copycat then. If so, if this is the same guy, this time he got the job done. This girl wasn’t as lucky as Everly Green.”

  “So, this really might not be Hawk,” murmured Wren.

 
“If it’s a copycat, he might have done this as homage to Hawk,” said Reilly. “A celebration of his being released from jail.”

  “Or,” said Wren, “this guy is working under the direction of Hawk. Hawk is having him kill for him on purpose. This way, he has a fall guy built in when he does decide to kill again. It’s like Major all over again, only this time he talked the guy into actually doing it.”

  “But who could that be?” said Reilly. “We have all his conversations in jail recorded, so if he’s grooming someone from jail, we’ll be able to tell who it is.”

  “He could have started before he was arrested,” said Wren. “We need to look into people in the FCL. We can’t let this go.”

  “Oh, we’re not letting it go,” said McNamara. “We had a nice stretch of time there when there was no serial killer stalking our sleepy, rural community. It was nice. We’d like that back.”

  WREN considered calling Jeremy Rowland, their real estate agent, who’d not only helped them sell the FCL land, but had helped them buy their house, and screaming at him.

  But it wasn’t really his fault.

  Instead, she asked Maliah to dig into the Sunrise Ventures, LLC, which was what she should have done in the first place. How could she have sold the place off without doing her due diligence?

  If they were connected to the FCL, Maliah would figure it out, and she’d find digital proof.

  Then, she sat down on the couch and cried.

  Stupid, stupid pregnancy hormones.

  Reilly found her sobbing, and he gathered her into his arms and held her.

  She cried herself out and then she rested her cheek on his firm chest. “You don’t really think that it’s unrelated to Hawk, do you?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Do you remember that time that I went out to kill Jimmy Nielson?” she said.

  He heaved a huge sigh. “I don’t know that we’ve ever acknowledged that out loud,” he murmured. “We’ve never admitted that’s what you were going to do.”