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

  “Cai, go deal with your pregnant girlfriend and the thirty-five cases you’re working at once and don’t worry about me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I can do that.” He grinned at her.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly. “I do appreciate it.”

  “Of course.”

  MALIAH chewed on her bottom lip, watching Trevon, waiting to see how he was going to react.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “They’re coming to take the bodies away?”

  “Yeah,” said Maliah. “You see why, though, right?”

  He looked out through the window that separated his office from the rest of the lab. Then he looked back at her. “Yeah, sure, I get it. But I… I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” she said, reaching out for one of his hands. “Come on, that’s not even a question.”

  “Half the reason we even have this case is because of me and my lab, though,” he said. “So, if I’m out of the equation, then shouldn’t Delacroix and Reilly be out of it, too? You’re saying there’s a strong possibility that this is all the mastermind of Hawk freaking Marner, so… I mean, I’m not wrong, am I?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

  “But are they stepping down?” said Trevon. “If they take it from me, are they giving it up, too?”

  “I don’t know,” said Maliah.

  “Should we talk to them about doing that?” said Trevon.

  She sighed. “You let me talk to Reilly.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Trevon with a grimace.

  “What was that?” She tugged on his hand, moving closer. “Was that the jealousy again?”

  He shook his head. “No. No, sorry. I really don’t feel anything like that. I’m just…” He groaned, resting his forehead against hers. “Fuck, Maliah, I’m so tired.”

  “Me too,” she whispered.

  He kissed her.

  She shut her eyes and opened her mouth to him. Everything around them seemed to have gone to hell very quickly, but this—between them—was sweet and warm and safe. She clung to him and the kiss deepened.

  Finally, their lips parted, but they stayed close, foreheads pressed together, breathing together.

  He planted a soft kiss at the top of her forehead and pulled away. “Let’s go to bed.”

  She smirked.

  “To sleep,” he said, chuckling tiredly. “But I want… with you, if you don’t mind?”

  “I don’t,” she said.

  “I shouldn’t even be here when they get the bodies,” he said. “We should just get out of here now.”

  “I can wait to talk to Cai,” she said.

  “It’s Cai, is it?” But he was grinning. He wrapped an arm around her waist.

  She rested her head on his shoulder and shut her eyes. “Let’s go to bed.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “IT’S Queen,” said the voice on the other end of Wren’s phone.

  Wren was in her nightgown, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Is everything all right? Please don’t tell me you have another body.”

  “No, no one’s dead,” said Queen. “But I don’t know if things are all right.”

  At that moment, Reilly barreled into the room, phone in hand. When he saw that Wren was on the phone, he stopped short. He must have gotten news.

  Well, when it rained, it poured. “What’s going on?” said Wren into the phone.

  “It’s Connor,” said Queen. “Poppy’s son? He’s gone missing.”

  “What?” said Wren, getting up off the bed. “But I just talked to him and confirmed that he was getting a new foster placement. He wouldn’t run away, would he?”

  “I can’t be sure,” said Queen. “I wanted you to know, however. I’m not sure if it’s worth your coming up here about it. I know you’ve got stuff going on down there, too.”

  “We do,” said Wren, looking up at Reilly, who was obviously bursting with news. “Hold on a second.” She lowered her phone, raising her eyebrows at her boyfriend.

  “They rushed the DNA at the new lab,” said Reilly. They’d had the bodies sent to D.C., to another FBI lab which had no personal ties to the case. “And they found trace DNA matched to Kayden Rush on both of the bodies.”

  Wren let out an audible breath.

  “We’ve got an arrest warrant for him,” said Reilly. “But we’re going to let Cardinal Falls execute it. Both because it’s probably wise for us to keep our distance, and because we need to get some sleep. They’re going out there tonight, though, so hopefully he’ll be booked by the morning, and we can go and talk to him.”

  Wren sighed. She picked up the phone and held it to her ear. “Detective Queen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think we can come up there. Keep me posted with anything you know?”

  “Will do,” said Queen.

  Wren hung up the phone. She tossed it on the bed and groaned. “How are we supposed to just go to sleep, Cai? We should be there when they arrest him.”

  He sat down next to her. “We should not. Who was on the phone?”

  “Queen. Connor’s disappeared.”

  “Ran away?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wren. “I really don’t know.”

  “I have an idea to distract ourselves and help us sleep, for the record,” he said.

  “Oh?” she said.

  He gave her a wicked smile.

  She snickered. “Oh, very original, Cai.”

  “Do you object?” said Reilly. “If you’re not feeling up for it, that’s fine.”

  “I guess you’re feeling up for it?”

  “Oh, um…” He looked down at his crotch. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  She snickered again.

  He kissed her neck. “I will be very gentle with all the parts of you that are sensitive, I promise. I want you, Wren. Do you want me?”

  “Yes,” she hissed, and shut her eyes.

  REILLY glared at the ceiling, annoyed that his idea to help them sleep had not worked.

  Should sleep now. Once the baby comes, I won’t sleep a full night for God knows how long, he thought to himself.

  But he couldn’t sleep. Apparently, not even ejaculating was enough to soothe him off to dreamland.

  Wren was curled up on her side with her back to him, a pillow between her knees, her ass pressed against his thigh. He knew soon the bed would become a pillow nest to cradle her belly. With Janessa, he’d been relegated to the couch for the last two months of the pregnancy, as much because of the pillows as because he’d been called in to work in the middle of the night too often and he hadn’t wanted to wake her.

  Wren was asleep.

  He smoothed his forefinger down her spine, feeling the notches through her nightshirt. He rolled over onto his side, spooning her, his hand going around to splay over her belly. He nuzzled his face into her neck and resolved that he’d just lay like this, that he didn’t need to sleep, that all he needed was the closeness of their bodies and the wonder of the idea that they had created a little life together. Surely that was the only thing that mattered. Surely Hawk Marner’s threats paled in comparison to that.

  His phone rang.

  He grunted, rolling over to sit up and answer it. “Reilly.”

  “It’s McNamara,” said the voice on the other end.

  Reilly grunted. “It’s bad news. I can tell from your tone.”

  “All I said was my name.”

  “Out with it.”

  “Rush wasn’t at home. His girlfriend wasn’t there either,” said McNamara.

  “Did you go in?”

  “Yup. Looks like they packed a bunch of stuff. They’re running.”

  “Shit,” muttered Reilly.

  “We got roadblocks going up. I’ll let you know if we find him, but we might be too late to stop him leaving the area. I’ll get to work putting out a BOLO.” That stood for Be On the Look Out.

  “Thanks,” said Reilly. “I could come in to help out with the paper
work if you want?”

  “Nah, it’s cool. We got this,” said McNamara.

  “I was awake,” said Reilly. “It’s not like I’m sleeping.”

  “Well, you should,” said McNamara. “Sleep, that is. After that baby is born—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” muttered Reilly, groaning. “You call me if you know anything. The second you know anything at all.”

  “Sure thing,” said McNamara.

  Reilly hung up and peered down at Wren, who had slept through it all. He yawned and settled back against her warm, soft body. Maybe he’d sleep after all. Somehow, knowing that he wasn’t missing the arrest made him feel a little less keyed up.

  TREVON was lying on Maliah’s bed, naked. A sheet was flung up over him, but it only reached up so far, and his entire chest was uncovered, as was one of his thighs. She was contemplating a patch of hair that gathered on his lower stomach and grew thicker and thicker before disappearing under the sheet as she sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. She was eating ice cream out of a pint-sized carton. She was only wearing Trevon’s shirt, which skimmed down past her ass if she was standing up, but was hiked up because of the way she was sitting. She was probably giving him lots of little indecent glimpses of what was between her legs, but she didn’t care, and he wasn’t complaining.

  Trevon had gone out to get the ice cream earlier.

  The afternoon had gone like this:

  They’d come home, and they’d gotten into bed to take a nap. But they’d ended up in each other's arms in the bed, and then they’d ended up kissing, and then they’d ended up making love—a languid interlude that had been slow and thorough and culminated in both of them falling asleep immediately afterward.

  When they’d woken up, it had been dark outside, and they were hungry. They’d contemplated ordering food, but the Doordash estimates for delivery were long, and Trevon was convinced that he could go and pick something up quicker than that.

  She’d put in an online order, and Trevon had gone to pick it up, but he wasn’t any quicker than the Doordash estimate, though he claimed it was because he’d stopped to get the ice cream as well.

  They’d eaten food and then she’d been in the kitchen, putting away leftovers and cleaning up and Trevon had come in to help her, but they’d just ended up having sex with her up on the counter. He’d picked her up—he was stronger than he looked, she thought—and set her there and whispered dirty things in her ear. Wider. Show me everything.

  He’d made her touch herself while he thrust into her, and she’d had an orgasm that she could only describe as transcendent. She’d never felt anything like that before. She felt like she was just waking up, as if she’d been asleep for years, throughout her entire marriage and even her affair with Cai, and now she was just now getting it, understanding what it was even supposed to be like between men and women, and she was…

  Well, she was a little bit smitten.

  “You’re hogging the ice cream,” he said.

  “I could give you some,” she said. “But then you might cover yourself up with that sheet, and that would be a crime against all that is good.”

  One side of his mouth quirked up. He reached down and gave the sheet a shove, exposing three more inches of that thick hair and lots of other interesting bits of his flesh.

  She giggled and scooted up to him, handing him the carton of ice cream.

  “Fuck,” he breathed. “Your mouth is cold.”

  “Is it bad?” she said, lips against his skin.

  “I did not say that,” he said. “I did not say that at—”

  He was interrupted by his phone ringing.

  She lifted her head to look at him.

  “You’re stopping?” he said. “Fuck that phone. Seriously. Not the least bit interested in that.”

  She laughed. “What if it’s about the case?”

  “Why are they calling me and not you?”

  She shrugged and turned back to his body.

  “Fine,” he grunted, sounding annoyed, as he swung his legs off the bed.

  She watched him walk away, grinning at the curve of his bare back and the swell of his ass.

  His phone was in the pocket of his pants, and he fished those up off the floor and answered it. “Hello?” Immediately, he stood up straight, his eyes going wide.

  She could tell it was bad. She sat up, tugging down his shirt to cover herself.

  He stood there, frozen, naked, horror all over his expression. “Wait. Wait, no, what are you saying?” His voice cracked. “Come on, you can’t do that, okay? That’s crazy, and you’re wrong, it’s not that way.”

  Maliah got up off the bed, coming for him.

  He held out a hand to her, warding her off. “Let’s talk about it, okay? Why don’t you tell me where you are, and we can talk. It’s not over or anything. You told Detective Reilly you would fight it in court. I mean, what happened to that, huh?”

  Maliah felt cold all over. “Is it Kayden?”

  “You don’t want to do this,” said Trevon into the phone, his voice stronger. “I think that’s the reason you called me. If you wanted to do it, you just would have done it, and—” He was quiet, listening.

  “What’s he saying?” said Maliah.

  “Let me talk to her.” Trevon’s voice cracked again. “Please? If it’s the end, you should at least let her have—” Another pause. “Fuck you, where are you?” He snarled into the phone. “Tell me, you bastard, you fucking goddamned—” He broke off in a sob, pulling the phone away from his ear. “He hung up.”

  “Kayden has Mischa?” guessed Maliah.

  “Yes,” said Trevon.

  “I’m calling Reilly,” said Maliah, hurrying out of the room. “I guess he wouldn’t tell you where he was.”

  “No.” Trevon’s voice wasn’t strong. “Holy fuck, tell me he called me to fuck with me.”

  “He’s threatening her?” said Maliah. Phone in hand, she reentered the bedroom.

  “He says that if they’re going to arrest him, that it’s over, and that if it’s over for him, it’s over for her too,” said Trevon in a quavering voice. “He’s lying, right?”

  “I…” Maliah didn’t know what to say. She put her phone on speaker and dialed Reilly.

  It rang.

  Trevon went and sat down on the bed. He dragged a hand over his face. His entire body was trembling.

  “Reilly,” came a slow, sleepy voice. “Is this McNamara? You find him?”

  “It’s Maliah,” she said.

  “Hey,” said Reilly, sounding more awake. “What’s going on?”

  “Kayden called Trevon,” said Maliah. “Just now. He’s taken Mischa, and he’s threatening to kill her.”

  “He’s going to kill himself and take her with him,” said Trevon. “He’s lost it. We have to find him.”

  “Right,” said Reilly. “Okay, well, we’ve got the entire Cardinal Falls police department out there doing a manhunt for him right now, so it’s basically just a matter of redirecting resources. We got to figure out where he is.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” said Trevon.

  “Call him back,” said Reilly. “See if he picks up the phone.”

  “O-okay,” said Trevon. He lifted his phone and moved his fingers on the screen. He put it to his ear.

  “Put it on speaker,” said Maliah.

  Trevon shook his head. “It’s going straight to voicemail. I think he turned it off.”

  “Can you trace the phone from the number, Maliah?” said Reilly.

  “Um, maybe,” said Maliah. “If he’s turned it off, then no, but I can trace the last cell tower it pinged. To do that, I need software that I only have at work.”

  “Okay, well, let’s meet at the office, then,” said Reilly. “And as soon as we have a location, I’ll go out there and send a nice collection of Cardinal Falls finest as well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “DID you hear any noises in the background?” Reilly was saying.

  T
revon ran a hand through his hair. He kept doing that, and it was making him look disheveled. “Uh… I don’t think so.”

  They were all gathered in Maliah’s office. It felt strange being there in the middle of the night. Maliah was sitting behind her computer, waiting as the program she needed came up. “Okay, Trevon, give me your phone.”

  “I’ll just read you the number,” said Trevon, taking his phone out of his pocket.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He read it off and she typed it in to the computer.

  “Wait,” said Trevon, “I might have heard something. It sounded like music, kind of like that music we heard when we went to the FCL compound, Maliah.”

  “When you did what?” said Reilly.

  “Uh, right,” said Trevon. “I guess you probably wouldn’t approve of that.”

  “It’s on,” said Maliah. “His phone is on. I don’t know why it went to voicemail. It’s… at his house. It looks like it’s been there all afternoon, and I don’t see a call to you from that number, Trevon.”

  “Well, this is the number he called me from,” said Trevon, looking back down at his phone screen. “You want me to read it again?”

  “Is there a way to fake a number and call from a different phone?” said Reilly.

  “Oh, sure,” said Maliah dryly. “There’s an app for that.”

  “We just had people at his house. He’s not there,” said Reilly.

  “Fuck,” said Maliah.

  “He would have known we’d trace it,” said Trevon. “Of course he wouldn’t have used his own phone.”

  “Yeah, that was too easy,” said Maliah.

  “He could be on the compound, right?” said Trevon, turning to Reilly. “You said that there’s a good chance that Hawk Marner and Kayden Rush are working together somehow, didn’t you?”

  “Well, I don’t recall you and I having any conversations like that, thank you Maliah, but yeah, we’re working on that theory as a possibility,” said Reilly. “And if Hawk is involved, then Kayden’s doomed, because I personally watched Hawk talk a man into shooting himself. We’re pretty sure he convinced Major Hill to kill himself as well.”