The Quiet Bones Read online

  Hawk twitched.

  Reilly fished out Hawk’s cell phone and his wallet. He handed them over to Baldwin.

  Hawk’s eyes opened just barely.

  “Damn it, why did you have to come out here at all?” Baldwin was saying. “Why couldn’t you have just left me alone? Why do you have such a hard-on for me, Reilly?”

  “You know, it really wasn’t about you,” said Reilly. “I thought you captured someone I work with. She’s sort of like my partner. Here’s the truth, Baldwin, I’m more concerned about saving her than bringing you in. So, if you let me go, you’d get a hell of a head start.”

  Baldwin snorted. “Yeah, right. Like there aren’t squad cars on their way right now.”

  “No,” said Reilly. “No one else knows I’m here.” He was probably making a mistake giving up that information.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Baldwin. “You’d do anything to get me locked back up.”

  “I do want you locked up,” said Reilly. “But in terms of priorities, she’s ahead of you. Come on, make a run for it. I won’t follow you.”

  “You must think I’m a real idiot,” said Baldwin.

  “If I actually had people coming for you, why would I be telling you to run?”

  Baldwin didn’t answer that. Maybe he couldn’t puzzle it out. Maybe Reilly should be careful not to get too complicated. It might only make Baldwin angry.

  “Maybe you’re telling the truth,” Baldwin murmured. “But if that’s the case, then I might as well kill you. No one would know who did it.”

  Shit. “They’d know. This is your family’s land. When they find the remains, they’d know it was you.” He couldn’t bring himself to say my remains.

  “Who says they’d find anything?” said Baldwin. “I think I could hide two bodies in the woods.”

  Reilly swallowed.

  “All right, Reilly,” said Baldwin. “You got anything you want to say? I’m not a total dick. You get your last words.”

  “Come on, Baldwin. Just go. You know what you said before, about being hunted down as a cop killer? Well, you might think you can get away from that, but when a cop dies, the police don’t just let that go.”

  “Those your last words?” said Baldwin. “Fine. Wake up your buddy, see if he has anything to say.”

  “Oh, I’m awake,” said Hawk, sitting up.

  Baldwin wrenched the barrel of the shotgun to point it at Hawk. “Over there,” he said, his voice tight. “Over there next to him.”

  “So, it’s easier for you to kill us both?” said Hawk. “I don’t think so.”

  “Listen, you asshole, you better move, or I am going to blow your head off.”

  “And after I move, you’re going to blow my head off, am I right?”

  “Fuck,” growled Baldwin.

  Hawk laughed softly. “It’s Colt, right? Colt Baldwin?”

  “So, you know my name. What? You want a prize?”

  “My name’s Hawk,” said Hawk.

  “Look, if you think introducing yourself is going to make it harder for me to blow you away—”

  “Why’d you escape?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t really think you were going to get away, did you?”

  “I would have gotten away, if it weren’t for you fucks. And after I kill you two, I’ll be gone from this place. I’ll be free.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Hawk. “You’ll never be free. You’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even if you get away, you won’t know how long it’ll last. What kind of life is that, anyway? Always ready to run at a moment’s notice? Can’t form any lasting bonds with anyone. And without someone to share it with, what is life even worth?”

  “Shut up,” said Baldwin. “If you don’t shut up—”

  “You’ll blow my head off, yes, I understand. You’ve made yourself very clear. But I don’t think I’m the one you should shoot.”

  “What? You want me to kill Reilly here?” Baldwin snorted. “Some buddy you got here, Reilly.”

  Reilly was listening to this exchange feeling a building anticipation, almost dread. Something was happening, and he wondered if he should be stopping it. He wasn’t even trying. He was only listening to the hypnotic cadence of Hawk’s words.

  Hawk’s voice was like silk. “Not him either. I think, if you really examine the situation here, you’ll see that there’s only one thing you can do. You don’t have any good options, do you? You can kill us, and then go on the run, and eventually someone will hunt you down and put you back in jail. And all the time in between will be nothing but the uncertainty of when. It will goad you, haunt your dreams, and you will never feel a moment’s peace.”

  “Stop,” said Baldwin again, and his voice wasn’t as strong as it had been.

  “You can turn yourself in,” said Hawk. “Go back to your cell. Live inside the concrete with the rage of the other men and wait for your few hours of sunlight each day. Live a life in which you dream of trees and flowers and the sky, but in which your spirit is smothered by being captured. After you’ve escaped like this, you know they’ll never let you out, so you’ll go back and you’ll stay there. When you die, you will have already been dead for a long time.”

  And then it was quiet.

  The seconds ticked by and there was no sound except the wind and the distant chirp of insects in the woods.

  “So?” Baldwin finally whispered. “So, what’s the one thing I can do?”

  “Turn the gun on yourself,” said Hawk in a low voice. “It’s better, you see? It’ll all be over in one quick moment. It’ll be on your terms. And it’s the only way you’ll ever be free. Death is all you have now. You can die slow, a life of suffering, or you can take the easy way out now. Put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. And then, instead of wishing to see the sky, you’ll be the sky.”

  Reilly swallowed hard.

  Baldwin let out something like a sob. “I’m going to shoot you.”

  “Are you?” breathed Hawk.

  “Yes,” Baldwin said.

  And then the gun went off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Baldwin thudded against the ground, the back of his head blown out, a gaping hole that glistened in the darkness. The air smelled like blood and meat and smoke.

  Reilly let out a throaty yell.

  Hawk stepped over Baldwin’s body, reaching down to take his gun.

  “Don’t,” Reilly said.

  Hawk paused, looking up at him.

  “Don’t. It’s evidence. You don’t need it. Wren’s not here. He’s not a threat anymore.”

  Hawk hesitated.

  “Don’t,” said Reilly again. And then, realizing it: “I’ve got to call this in.” A man was dead. Another man was dead, and this was going to be so much paperwork. Also, he wasn’t sure, but maybe he was going to have to see the shrink double. Did watching a man commit suicide have the same sentence as shooting one?

  “Well, he’s got our phones,” said Hawk. He moved, but he didn’t pick up the gun. Instead, he extricated their cell phones from Baldwin’s pocket. He handed Reilly his and stuck his own in his pocket.

  “You convinced him to kill himself.”

  “Can’t convince someone to do something like that,” said Hawk. “They have to already want it.”

  “Yeah, okay, how’d you know he wanted to commit suicide?” Reilly got to his feet. His legs were shaking.

  “Didn’t,” said Hawk. “Guess I just got lucky.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Yes, I care. A man just shot himself in front of us—”

  “He was going to kill us.”

  “He said he was, he talked big, but—”

  “He’d killed people before, right? That’s why he was locked up?”

  “Well, it was different. He panicked. He was trying to rob the store. It wasn’t pre-meditated.”
<
br />   “And this would have been different how?”

  “This doesn’t bother you at all?” Reilly was incredulous.

  “Didn’t say that,” said Hawk, and his voice cracked a little.

  Reilly looked down at his phone. He unlocked it with his fingerprint. “I need to call this in.”

  “I was outside the Walker Massacre,” Hawk said in a low voice. “I could see through the windows. I saw Lexi shoot the little boy. He was screaming. His mother was on her feet. She put him behind her, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her back. And then Lexi shot his mom, and he screamed and screamed. Then she shot him, right in the… the face. Right under his—”

  “Stop,” said Reilly.

  “I guess I got desensitized young.”

  Reilly shut his eyes.

  It was quiet again, and he could still hear the insects chattering, but the scent of blood left its acrid tang in the night air, and Reilly still felt cold. Where the hell was Wren?

  “Did you learn that from her?” Reilly found himself suddenly saying, and he didn’t know why he was saying it.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Convincing him to shoot himself,” said Reilly. “Did you learn that from Vivian Delacroix?”

  No response.

  Reilly waited, and then he unlocked his phone again. The screen had gone blank again in the interim. He pulled up his phone app and punched in numbers. He put the phone to his ear, but there was only silence.

  “He was going to kill us,” Hawk said. “And I didn’t do it. He did it himself.”

  Reilly yanked the phone away from his ear. What was wrong? Hell, there wasn’t any service out here, was there? “We need to go back to the car,” he said. “I’ve got a radio in the car. No cell service out here.”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Hawk.

  “No,” Reilly agreed. “You didn’t.”

  * * *

  It was hours later that Wren finally realized that she could bend the tree without trying to rip it free of its roots. At the bottom, down here where it was secured, it wasn’t very flexible, but up top, it was much more pliable. She bent the tree over to the other side of the well, and it caught on the rope ladder right away.

  She was exhausted at this point, but this success was so exciting that it galvanized her, and she kept going, forcing her sore muscles to continue to work, biting down on her lip as she concentrated.

  She wasn’t sure how long it took. It felt like it was quick, maybe only ten minutes, but she had no real sense of time out here.

  Then the rope ladder tumbled all the way down to her, and she pulled on it, testing it, thinking how horrible it would be if it weren’t secured…

  Except it was, and she started to climb.

  She climbed and climbed and reached the top and crawled out of the well.

  When she got out, she worried that Oliver would be there, that he’d been sitting around watching her, laughing as she tried so hard to escape, and that he would simply put his foot into her chest, and she’d go tumbling back down into the well, her stomach floating during the free fall.

  But no one was there.

  She lay flat on the ground next to the well and panted and was so happy to be free that she didn’t even know how to deal with the emotion.

  But she couldn’t stay here. She had no idea when Oliver would be back. She had to go. Of course, she didn’t know where she was. The well was in a clearing, but all around were trees. She was in the middle of the woods somewhere.

  She forced herself to get to her feet and start walking again.

  Walking hurt.

  She was tired. She was bone tired. She had never felt this tired. It was amazing she could move, but she had to move, so she did.

  She picked a random direction and walked that way, into the woods.

  She hadn’t walked for long before she noted that sky was lightening. Dawn was on its way. It gave her hope, it kindled within her the will to keep moving, even through her soul-crushing exhaustion.

  And that was when the trees started to thin out and she could see a barn in the distance.

  Oh, hell, she knew where she was. This was the old Burney farm. She remembered, because they used to have parties out here when she was in high school, parties in that barn, because no one lived out here anymore, and it was far enough away from houses for the noise not to bother anyone. But she was close to the road. She was going to make it out of here.

  Unfortunately, she was not walking in the direction of the road.

  She reoriented herself and began to head through the fields. She knew where she was going now.

  * * *

  “What I don’t understand is why you brought him out there,” Lopez was saying.

  “You know,” said Reilly, “I don’t understand it either, but seriously, we’ve been doing the runaround here for hours. I need to go, and you need to let Hawk go too, because, as I’ve explained, Wren Delacroix is missing.”

  “We’re not holding you,” said Lopez, gesturing around his office where he and Reilly were talking. Through the windows, covered in open slatted blinds, Reilly could see Hawk sitting at a desk in the other part of the office, drinking Coca-Cola from a can. “How could we? There’s no crime. Unless you’re lying to me about what happened for some reason.”

  “I’m not. Why would you say that?” Reilly folded his arms over his chest.

  “I don’t know, Reilly, you’ve been acting kind of guilty ever since we showed up. Maybe that’s because you were technically out of our jurisdiction—”

  “I had to call our department,” said Reilly. “We’re the ones who arrested Baldwin in the first place.”

  “Yes, so nice of you to saddle us with the paperwork of dealing with his dead body.”

  Reilly’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

  “It only makes sense,” said Lopez, “if you have something to hide, and you figured that I would take you at your word.”

  “I don’t have anything to hide,” said Reilly quietly.

  “He killed himself?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Pretty much. He kind of monologued first. How many times are we going to go over this?”

  “What kind of guy escapes jail to shoot himself?”

  “He did it because he was caught. He would have rather died than gone back to jail.”

  “But he had disarmed you, you said. He could have shot you.”

  “But he knew that if he did that, he’d be hunted down and hauled back to jail, and that he’d never get away, not after killing a cop.” Reilly felt like an idiot, going over this again. Maybe if he weren’t stretching the truth a little bit, he would have refused to. The problem was that the situation didn’t make sense, not really. If Reilly hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have believed it himself.

  Which was why he didn’t see any reason to tell anyone that Hawk had talked a man into shooting himself, because who would even believe that?

  Besides, it got in the way of Wren. They needed to be finding Wren, not dallying with all of this. Hell, the sun was coming up outside the window.

  “You know, you say all that, and it sounds rational, but I feel like you’re leaving something out,” said Lopez. “Why’d you go after this guy on your own? Why didn’t you call in your information?”

  “Because Wren is missing,” said Reilly. “I didn’t have time for procedure. I thought he had her, and I thought he would hurt her. I had to move as quickly as I could.”

  “Right,” Lopez said quietly.

  “It’s not like that,” Reilly muttered.

  Lopez looked at him sharply. “It had better not be. We’ve already dodged a bullet with Maliah Wright. I don’t know if the two of you are aware, but those forms for interoffice relationships need to be filled out for extramarital affairs too.”

  Reilly flinched.

  Lopez sighed. “I don’t know what you want from me. I
had someone call the Cardinal Falls department. They’re out looking for Delacroix right now.”

  “What? They hate her in Cardinal Falls. They’re probably having a party because she’s disappeared. Hell, they’re probably responsible.”

  Lopez raised his eyebrows at Reilly.

  “Look, we’re just going to have to do this later,” said Reilly. “I have to go now.”

  * * *

  Hawk tapped a foot against the pavement while Reilly unlocked his car. He didn’t have one of those fancy clickers for his car anymore, one that could unlock all the doors with a push of a button. He’d had one, but then he’d lost it, and they were crazy expensive to replace, so he’d just been going without for years now.

  Reilly reached over and opened the passenger side door.

  Hawk got in. “It took you long enough in there.”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” said Reilly.

  “Is it because you insisted we stick to a story?” said Hawk, buckling his seatbelt. “They knew you were lying, right?”

  Reilly started the car. “Look, it doesn’t matter what you said to the guy. He made the choice. You said that you couldn’t have convinced him of it if he didn’t really want it, anyway, right? So, whatever. There we are. It’s not even really a story, it’s just leaving out impertinent information.” He pulled the car out of the parking lot.

  “Well, whatever the case, we were in there forever,” said Hawk. “And what the hell are we going to do about Wren?”

  “You should be thanking me, anyway. I kept you off their radar, and you could easily be on it.”

  “For what? Talking?”

  “Are you forgetting that you were a suspect only weeks ago? And that you have ties to Major Hill? And that you’re, you know, creepy.”

  “Creepy?” Hawk laughed.

  Reilly gripped the steering wheel. “Whatever. Wren likes you, and you care about her. That’s obvious. So, I mean, that’s enough for me. Let’s just figure out where she might be. You were talking about making a list of all the people in Cardinal Falls who might have it out for her?”

  “I thought we decided that was a waste of time.”

  “It was when we had the lead on Baldwin,” said Reilly. “But now, we have nothing else, so we’ve got to start somewhere.” He jerked a thumb toward the back seat. “There’s a notebook and pen back there.”