The Quiet Bones Page 12

Wren shook her head.

  “Thank you,” said Anabelle. She bit down on her lip. “I should go. Um, it was nice meeting you, Hawk.”

  Hawk grinned at her. “You too.”

  Wren waited until the girl was out of earshot and then turned on Hawk. “What the hell?” she said in a low voice.

  “What?” said Hawk.

  “You can’t give alcohol to other people’s children.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What? Are you angry with me?”

  “I’m…” She folded her arms over her chest. She turned to look out at the people gathered on the dance floor. “There’s a whole room of people here, and you’re spending time with the ten-year-old girl. You’re giving wine to the ten-year-old girl.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She turned back to look at him.

  His expression was hard.

  She lifted her chin.

  “You trying to accuse me of something? Go on and say it, then.”

  “I’m not accusing you, it’s only that it’s troubling. I find it very troubling.”

  He scratched the back of his neck. “Why is that? Spit it out, Wren.”

  “Because of… because of everything.”

  “Because of our history? What happened when we were kids?”

  “That, and…” But then she couldn’t say it out loud.

  “And?” He wasn’t about to let her off the hook.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing, I don’t know why I…” She drew in a breath. “Major did it. I know that Major did it. I don’t think you did it.”

  “You can’t let that go, can you?”

  “I didn’t mean it.” It was only that the person who’d lured those little girls into his car would have had to have been charming, would have had to know how to talk to little girls, and she’d never seen Major talk to a little girl like that.

  He leaned close, his voice a harsh whisper. “You ever wonder why, if you’re so convinced that I’m a child murderer, that you can’t seem to stop crawling into my bed?”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  “I mean, if I really am so depraved, what does that say about you?” He turned on his heel and stalked out.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  She followed him.

  Outside the restaurant, she caught up to him. She grabbed him by the arm and turned him to face her. “You knew about it. You knew everything. Major said he talked to you about it whenever you tripped together on the weekend. He confessed it all to you, and you kept it to yourself. You protected him, and you would have kept on protecting him if I hadn’t found that ID card.”

  He yanked his arm out of her grasp. “I’m not going to bother to contradict you. No matter what I say, you just believe whatever you want about me.”

  “Why’d you talk to that little girl?”

  “I just did. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Did you help Major?” A lump was growing in her throat. “Did you capture the girls for him?”

  “No,” said Hawk.

  “Are you attracted to girls that age?”

  “No.”

  “Were you attracted to me when I was that age?”

  “Stop it, Wren.”

  “That’s not a no.”

  “No, all right? No.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not doing this with you. I’m not denying all of your outlandish accusations. I don’t have it in me.” He walked off down the street.

  This time, she let him go.

  * * *

  She went back into the wedding, and she deflected when her dad asked where Hawk was.

  After a few hours, she felt awful, and she started trying to call him. She still thought that Hawk shouldn’t have given the little girl a drink of wine, but compared to the way they’d been treated as kids by adults, it was positively benign. She had read things into it she shouldn’t have.

  The truth was that she kept thinking the worst about Hawk because she was looking for some reason to stop things from getting more serious between them.

  She was afraid of getting close to him.

  Maybe she was afraid of getting close to anyone.

  Maybe she should try facing her fears.

  But when she finally got Hawk on the phone, he informed her that he was at the airport, getting on a plane in an hour.

  “What?” she said. “How did you manage that?”

  “Uh, I called a cab to take me to the airport, and then I exchanged my ticket for a new flight,” said Hawk. “I’m not a moron, Wren. I can do things on my own.”

  “I never thought you were a moron.”

  “Sure, you did. That’s why you don’t want whatever it is between us to be anything more than us hooking up. Because you think I’m beneath you.”

  “I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. “Okay, we need to talk about all this. Can you undo your exchange?”

  “No, that’s needlessly complicated,” he said. “If you want to talk when you get back, we should do that, though.”

  “I wish you weren’t leaving just because we had a fight.”

  “A fight? Wren, you persist in thinking that I’m the worst sort of person that could possibly exist. You think I’m a pedophile and a murderer and a—”

  “No, I don’t think those things. I really don’t. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Maybe it’s better if we both cool off,” he said.

  “Hawk, come on.”

  “Look, I don’t know how to make this clearer to you. I’m angry with you right now. I don’t want to talk to you when I’m this angry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll be back tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So, when you get back, come see me. We’ll talk then.” He hung up the phone.

  Luckily, she didn’t have to worry too much about explaining Hawk’s absence to her father or Paul, because they left early the next morning for their honeymoon. When she left, she had to lock up the place and turn off the air conditioning. Then she took a plane home, alone.

  * * *

  Wren pulled into the driveway of her cabin. It had been a long drive back from the airport, and she was planning on dropping off her bags and then going out to find Hawk and talk to him.

  But there was another car parked in front of her cabin. A man was leaning up against it, and it took Wren a moment to recognize him, but then she did. Oliver Campbell. He had been in school with her, a few years ahead of her.

  Oliver Campbell’s father Adrian had been one of the first victims of the FCL. He was a doctor who, along with orchard owner Benjamin Smith, had been planning to file a suit against the Fellowship. He and Benjamin had been very vocal about it, and so Vivian had sent her army after them.

  Adrian and Benjamin had been shot to death. Their wallets had been taken to make it look like a robbery gone wrong, and that was what everything had thought about it, for a long time.

  It wasn’t until Karen and Terrence Freeman had gone to the authorities and confessed, in detail, to all of the murders that the FCL had committed that anyone knew differently.

  Understandably, Oliver didn’t like anyone associated with the Fellowship. Like the other boys in school, he’d taken to calling Wren and the others “culties.” Unlike the other guys, he was never one to hook up with any of the girls and brag about it. He’d steered clear. Of course he had.

  So, what was he doing here?

  She parked her car, got out, and shut the door.

  Oliver came around the front of his car and gave her a tentative wave. “Uh, hi there. I’ve been waiting for you for about a half hour. I was about to leave.”

  “Well… was I supposed to know you were coming?”

  “No, no.” He scuffed a toe against the ground, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I should have called or something first. I considered friending you on social media, but I had this feeling you wouldn’t respond to my frie
nd request.”

  “Why are you here?” She knew it was rude to be so blunt, but she didn’t know how else to say it. She was foundering here.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “We do?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, we do. I was hoping maybe you’d come on a drive with me. We could chat for a bit. What do you say?”

  “Uh…” She pointed to her trunk. “I have bags. I should get them inside.”

  “Okay.” Oliver nodded.

  She opened the trunk and got out her luggage. She took it up onto her porch and opened her front door, which she hadn’t even bothered to lock. Not a lot of theft on the compound. She didn’t like the idea of Oliver skulking around, though. From now on, she’d lock up. She opened the door and stashed the luggage inside. She turned back to him.

  He was standing at the foot of the porch steps. “I think it would be better if we went on a drive to talk. That way, we’re not on anyone’s home turf.”

  “It’ll be your car,” she said.

  “Well, you can invite me in if you want. We’ll talk in your house.”

  “I don’t want you in my house.” It came out before she could stop herself.

  He took a step back. “Look, I know that we’ve never spoken before, but I’ve never done anything to you.”

  “You’ve never done anything for me, either,” she said. “And considering everything with my mother and your father—”

  “You know about that?” he said sharply.

  She stopped short. “I meant that my mother ordered your father’s death. Everyone knows about that.”

  “Yeah.” Oliver looked down at the ground.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that,” she said. “I never… Vivian is a horrible person, and I have nothing to do with her. I’ve never even visited her in prison. For all I care, she can rot away locked up. She’s… I hate her. And I’m sorry, so sorry about your father. You have every right to… to hate this place. I get it. Just… for whatever it’s worth, I didn’t have anything to do with it. I would never hurt anyone like that, so…”

  Oliver raised his gaze to hers. “My sister Emmaline, she needs a blood marrow transplant. It’s complications with leukemia. It’s really bad.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, completely thrown by this change of subject.

  “Well, I’m hoping you can help.”

  “Me?” said Wren.

  “You’re my half sister,” said Oliver.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Wren buckled herself into Oliver’s car, feeling as though she’d been flattened by a slab of concrete.

  Oliver started the car. “After my father died, my mother found some letters from your mother to my father. She was angry with him, because they’d had an affair, and she was pregnant, but he wouldn’t help her out financially. My mother was grief stricken, but she felt for your mother. She tried to reach out. She wanted for Emmaline and I to know you, and she wanted to know you, too. I guess she wanted another piece of my dead father to love or something. I don’t know. I was angry with him. I hated him for what he did. But my mother…”

  Wren shook her head. “This is insane, what you’re saying. My mother and Adrian Campbell? How could that possibly be? He hated the FCL. She hated him.” Adrian Campbell is my father?

  “I don’t know that it started out that way.” Oliver pulled the car out onto the road. “My father’s hatred may have been influenced by whatever falling out happened between him and your mother.”

  “But then… then everything was personal,” she said. Adrian Campbell is dead.

  “I guess,” said Oliver.

  “And… and the profile for Vivian, it’s all… That changes everything.” I’ll never get to know him.

  “What?”

  “It’s what I do. I profile serial killers,” she said. “If Vivian killed because of personal resentment, then that changes everything. Her first murder, it was motivated by revenge or… I…”

  “Your mother extorted money from my mother,” said Oliver. “She never let my mother get to know you, but she convinced my mother to write her check after check.”

  “Oh,” said Wren, laughing helplessly. “Well, that sounds like something she’d do. She was very opportunistic. I always thought she had people kill because she was testing the boundaries of her power, but now I see she used it to punish Adrian for what he…” She stopped talking suddenly, because a sob had risen up in her throat, out of nowhere, and it took everything within her to keep it from bubbling out of her. I’ll never get to know him.

  “You know when it finally stopped?” said Oliver. “When my mom found out that she’d been paying off my dad’s murderer.”

  Wren swallowed hard, finally swallowing the last vestiges of that sob. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, it’s all bad,” he said. “But you can help, maybe. You’ll get tested for the bone marrow. You’ll do that for Emmaline.”

  “I…” Wren hugged herself. “Look, this is a lot to take in.”

  “You’re not going to turn me down,” said Oliver, and his voice cracked. “I won’t let you.”

  Wren turned to him, and something went through her, an awful thrill. She had heard something in his voice, something that frightened her. “What do you mean, you won’t let me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Oliver, gripping the steering wheel.

  “Where are we going?” said Wren, looking out the window of the car. “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’re just driving,” said Oliver. “Say that you’ll help me.”

  “Okay, I’ll help. Now take me home.”

  “Take you home?” He sucked in a shaky breath. “You’re just saying it, aren’t you? If I take you home, then you’ll take it back.”

  “Where the hell are you taking me?” she said. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “Nothing,” said Oliver, his voice very high in pitch.

  She took a deep, steadying breath. “I promise I will help, Oliver. I will get tested. I will donate the marrow to your sister.”

  “To our sister.”

  “To… our sister.” She felt that sob rising again.

  “I don’t believe you.” Oliver’s voice was even higher in pitch now.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you hate me. Why would you help me?”

  “I don’t hate you,” she said. “Now we’re family, so we shouldn’t hate each other. Trust me, Oliver. Take me home.”

  A tear rolled out of Oliver’s eye. “I can’t.” He was defeated. “Damn it, I can’t.”

  “What are you going to do? Keep me captive and forcibly extract my bone marrow? You can’t do that on your own. You’d have to have a doctor who would be complicit in that.” But hell, his father had been a doctor, so what were the odds that he did know another doctor who’d be willing to help out? “Oh, hell, Oliver, this really isn’t necessary.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Wren looked at him and then she looked out the window. She didn’t think, because if she thought about it, she would have stopped, and she had to get away from this guy.

  One hand unhooked her seatbelt. One hand opened the door.

  She hurtled herself out of the moving car.

  * * *

  Hawk knocked on the door of Wren’s cabin.

  He waited.

  Nothing from within.

  “Little bird?” he said. “I know you’re here. I can see your car in the driveway. Come on. Answer the door.”

  Silence.

  He knocked on the door again. “Wren? You in the shower or something?”

  Another long pause.

  He stepped back, surveying the door, and then he stepped closer, putting his palm flat against it. “Look, I was hard on you. I shouldn’t have been so hard. Coming home without you, being here without you, waiting…” He sighed. “Can we talk? Please?”

  Still no response.

  He sighed. He shoved his hands in his pockets
, studied his shoes. Hesitated a little longer, and then turned and went down the steps of her porch. He started across the driveway, trudging with his head down, as if there was resistance in the air around him, as if he was fording a river against the current.

  Suddenly, he stopped.

  He turned back to the house.

  Lifting his chin, he went back to the door. He turned the doorknob. It was locked. He furrowed his brow. “Wren?” Now, there was a note of something else in his voice. Something was wrong.

  He backed away and climbed down off the porch again. He went around to the back of the house and peered into one of the windows. It looked into Wren’s bedroom, and it was open, a breeze from outside fluttering her blue curtains inside. “Wren!”

  Nothing.

  “Hey, I’m coming in,” he said. “If you’re all right, if you’re pissed at me, now’s the time to say something, okay? I’ll back off if you just locked me out.” He waited.

  Nothing.

  He reached in and knocked the screen out of the window. He climbed into the bedroom. “Wren!”

  He strode through the house, room after empty room. In the living room, he found her suitcase sitting next to the locked front door. He knelt next to it. “So, you came home, and you put your suitcase down, and then you left in a hurry.”

  He ran his fingers over the luggage.

  “Probably something with work,” he said, nodding. He stood up. “Yeah, maybe there’s another body or something.” He took his phone out of his pocket and dialed, holding it to his ear.

  A phone began to ring. In Wren’s suitcase. Well, not her suitcase, her carry-on bag, which he remembered she’d shoved everything into, including her purse, because they only let you have the two bags on the plane, and they’d carried on their suitcases.

  He hung up, jamming his phone into his pocket. “Why’d she leave her phone?” He knelt back down and got it out of her bag. “She must have been in a hurry. Upset. Maybe if there was another body…” He shook his head. “But how did she know about the other body without her phone? Unless Detective Reilly was here…?” He set her phone down on the end table next to the couch in the living room.

  He wandered into the kitchen and found a pad of paper she used to write herself reminder notes.