Wren Delacroix Series Box Set Read online

  He swore underneath his breath, until he was shocked out of it by a third shot.

  Then he froze, worried. What the hell was going on out there? He needed to get out of this basement.

  Wait a second. He specifically remembered Camilla handing him the key to the padlock. She had given it to him and he had unlocked it and opened the door and peered into the dark basement. And what had he done with the key?

  He reached into his pocket.

  “Oh, am I lucky or what?” he thought, pulling the key out.

  He tried to shove his fingers through the crack in the door.

  Hell, that was a tight fit.

  He winced, popping his fingers into his mouth, and then he leaned on the door, trying to give himself more space.

  He tried again. This time, he got his fingers through, all the way up to the knuckles. He yanked them back and wedged the key between his forefinger and middle finger. Then, slowly, carefully, he pushed his fingers back out, this time with the key.

  He inched them up toward the padlock.

  Contact.

  He stopped. Okay, now, he had to get the key into the lock. It would be so much easier with the use of his thumb, but there was no way his whole hand would fit through that crack.

  He wiggled his fingers.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  The key slipped out of his fingers and fell down to the floor, making a tinny clatter.

  He swore softly, and then wondered who was close by to hear. It sounded like the shots had come from outside of the house. Had Kyler shot his wife? Shot her more than once? Maybe the last shot had been for himself. If so, no one could hear Reilly, but no one was coming back for him either. He really needed to get out of this damned basement.

  He crouched down and picked up the key.

  Tried again.

  Dropped it again.

  But the third time he did it. He managed to get the key into the lock. Now, it was just a question of turning it, which wasn’t easy either. He had to nudge it little by little through the crack.

  Finally, though, the padlock popped open.

  He reached through the crack and knocked it out of the hook it rested on.

  The door opened.

  Reilly tumbled out into the kitchen.

  He decided to stay low.

  Kyler might still be out there. He might have shot Camilla more than once.

  Crouching down, Reilly moved as quickly as he could through the kitchen. At the doorway, he paused, hiding himself, looking out to see anyone.

  There was no one there.

  So, he moved through the hallway and back to the front door. He peered out of the window.

  Outside, he saw two bodies on the ground. He saw someone at the fence.

  “Wren?” He stood up.

  Wren gripped the fence. “Reilly! You’re all right.”

  He opened the door and sprinted over to her, surveying the scene as he did. Camilla was dead, a shot to the head from that rifle. And Kyler was down too, blood at his throat.

  “I shot him,” said Wren. “He killed Camilla. He was about to shoot me. I should have taken cover instead of shooting back. I just didn’t think.”

  “How do you have a gun?” said Reilly. He was working at the catch on the gate, opening it to let her in.

  “Maliah told me where you keep your spare,” she said.

  He opened the gate. But now that it was open, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to let her in, or he just wanted to get out. “My gun, huh?”

  “I know, I’m not supposed to have a gun, let alone fire it. I don’t have a permit. I don’t have—”

  “We better say I did it,” said Reilly, holding out his hand for the gun.

  She gave it to him.

  “Tell me everything that happened,” said Reilly. “We’ve got to figure out what to say.”

  Her jaw worked. “Look, Reilly, you can’t lie for me.”

  “Trust me, it’ll be better this way,” said Reilly. “Less paperwork.”

  “But…” She looked up at him with wide eyes. “Have you ever killed anyone before?”

  Reilly shoved the gun into his holster, which was empty, because Kyler had taken his other gun. Where the hell was that weapon? “No,” he muttered. “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m…” She nodded.

  He nodded.

  They held each other’s gaze for a minute.

  Then Reilly drew in a breath. “Okay, look, did you call this in already?”

  “I tried,” she said. “I wouldn’t have come alone, but when I tried to call the local police, they knew who I was, and they were being dicks.”

  “Jesus,” said Reilly. “Wait, how did you even know where I was?”

  “I called your phone. Camilla answered,” said Wren. “She told me Kyler was going to kill you and then she hung up.” She looked at the woman’s lifeless form, nostrils flaring.

  “So, then you called the Cardinal Falls police?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And then they wouldn’t help, so I called Maliah, and told her to call the police. She told me about the other gun, and I came here. So, I have no idea which department is coming or when.”

  “Great,” he said. “We got to fix this fast.” He stroked his chin, trying to think. “So, I had two guns. They got one away from me, but I had the other. But how did I get on the other side of the fence to shoot Morris?”

  “You…” Wren chewed on her thumbnail. “I don’t know.”

  “I got out,” said Reilly, pointing at the house. “I got out, and I was going for my car to call in back up. But then Morris saw me.”

  “And he came after you, but he had Camillia as a hostage,” said Wren. “You tried to talk him down, but he wouldn’t be talked down. He talked about the Crimson Ram needed sacrifices and then he shot her. Twice. Once in the leg and then…”

  “And so I shot him,” said Reilly. “But I wasn’t fast enough to stop him.”

  “Sounds about right,” said Wren. She covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Hey,” said Reilly. He put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I can’t let you lie,” said Wren.

  “If it’s you with this gun, it’s a mess. You’re not a police officer. You have to say it was me.”

  “God, I said I would help you with this case, but I’m nothing but trouble.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “If you hadn’t shown up, Morris would still be alive. I might be dead. So, I don’t really see that as trouble. I think you might have saved my life.”

  * * *

  It was very late when Wren got back, and she hadn’t slept well the night before, so she felt like she was warmed over death as she drove into the compound. The police had finally shown up, both the locals for the area and a few officers from the Cardinal Falls department. They’d arrived at roughly the same time, and it was a half-hour drive there, so Wren wasn’t exactly sure how it had all gone down, but it was pretty clear that no one had made coming out there a priority.

  Once they found all the bodies, though, everyone was properly panicked.

  She’d had to repeat her story a bunch of times and write it up officially, sign her name to it. In the new version of events, she had arrived soon after Reilly had shot Kyler Morris. She wasn’t a witness to any of it, which meant that it was all on Reilly’s version. He just had to make sure he didn’t screw it up and forget it over time.

  She didn’t like the fact that they’d lied, but she appreciated that Reilly had done that for her. She shouldn’t have fired his gun. When she’d taken it, she hadn’t thought about the repercussions. She’d only thought about making sure that Reilly was okay.

  It would have been better if they could have arrested Kyler and brought him in for questioning. It would have been better if they could have been sure that he had nothing to do with the murders. That was how it seemed, anyway. He’d killed the guy in his freezer, but he hadn’t murdered any little girls. He wasn’t their killer.
r />   So, in the end, she’d killed a man, and Reilly had been in danger, and the world had turned upside down, but they were no closer to stopping the bastard killing those little girls.

  She felt wrung out.

  She was exhausted.

  And yet, she didn’t go home. Instead, she drove to Hawk’s house and pounded on his door until he woke up and answered it. It was late enough that even Hawk was asleep.

  He was only wearing a pair of ratty pajama pants when he answered the door. The fabric had been worn nearly through in spots. “Wren,” he said when he saw her.

  She thought about saying, You need new pajama pants, but that wasn’t why she’d come. “Have you ever killed anyone, Hawk?”

  “What the hell? You’re waking me up for this?”

  She pushed past him into the house. The door opened onto his living room. She sat down on his couch and pulled her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them.

  He shut the door.

  “I need to know if you have,” she said. “Maybe it was back when my mother was sending you out. You were there for the Walkers, right? And also at the tower, with Eli Brown. And if you were there, maybe you were at the Johnsons’ too?”

  Hawk looked down at his bare feet. “Why the fuck are you talking about this?”

  “Did they make you do it?” she said. “Maybe they made you. Maybe they put the gun in your hand, and you had no choice—”

  “Stop.”

  She started to rock. “Have you ever killed anyone, Hawk?”

  “Wren, are you all right?”

  “I have,” she said, looking up at him. “I did it. Tonight. I didn’t mean to. It happened so fast.”

  “What are you talking about?” He came across the room and sat down next to her on the couch.

  She rocked faster. “I had to. He was crazy. He was going to shoot me, but I shot him first. Still, you’d think it would feel like something. It’s a big deal, snuffing out someone’s life. One minute he was breathing, the next his throat was exploding blood and…”

  “I’m confused, little bird.”

  “It doesn’t feel like anything.” Wren let go of her knees. “I don’t even feel guilty. I thought I’d feel something. Regret or sadness or…” She lay her head back against the couch and just breathed, trying to make her breaths even and calm.

  Hawk didn’t say anything. He furrowed his brow instead, and he didn’t look at her.

  In a minute, she turned to him, and she took him in. His bare skin was scarcely illuminated from the scant light that came in through the window outside, the light of the moon, and he looked young again, vulnerable.

  “No, I’m lying,” she said. “I do feel something. It’s there, just under the surface, and I’m pushing it away. I’m trying so hard not to feel it, but I do feel it. I feel… triumph. Vindication. Power. Excitement. Exultation.”

  His gaze crawled over her body up to meet her eyes.

  “You think that makes me my mother’s daughter?”

  “Little bird, you’re nothing like her.”

  And that made her want to cry, even though nothing else that had happened that night had. Trust Hawk to know exactly the thing to say. She threw herself into his arms and he caught her.

  She put her lips on his and he kissed her back.

  She ran her fingers over his back, over the muscles that encased his rib cage.

  He pushed her back into the couch, and she wrapped her legs around him. She tangled her hands in his hair.

  His lips against her temple. Against her cheekbone. Against her neck.

  She gasped.

  He grunted.

  She shut her eyes and he was all she thought about. Nothing else. Only Hawk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Later, naked on the couch, they spoke in whispers, even though there was no one who could hear them.

  “I swear to you, I only ever watched,” he said. “Back in 2001, at the Johnsons, I was only thirteen years old. I think I was the youngest there. I don’t even think that Major was there. He was there the next night, at the tower, but we didn’t know what that was going to be. No one was supposed to get hurt that night. Anyway, I never killed anyone. I promise you. I didn’t.”

  “I believe you,” she whispered.

  “And at the Johnsons, it was only supposed to be Conrad. That’s what your mother said. She said to haul his ass out into the open and butcher him to death. But it didn’t go down that way. In some ways, it was worse, in some ways better. On the ride over, I was in the back of the truck with them. They were talking. There was all this talk about stabbing and slicing and blood and the holy color of crimson.”

  Now, she felt guilty, but it wasn’t for killing Kyler Morris, it was for opening up this tidal wave in Hawk. Now that he was talking about it, he couldn’t seem to stop.

  “But we had guns, too. Garrett had a gun. He was all big talk about stabbing and bathing in blood, but then we got there, and he didn’t want a knife, he wanted a gun. He went up the steps first, and we all went behind him, and we went into the bedroom, and he just did it. Just pulled the trigger and shot.”

  Wren pressed herself closer against him, as if that mattered.

  But Hawk didn’t seem to notice. “It was loud. I’d never been that close to a gun going off, and it was so loud. It hurt my ears, and I hunched up, and then there were more shots and I backed away and there was the wall, and I remember I put my hands over my head, and I remember thinking that I just wanted to disappear, I wanted to melt into the wall, and I wanted to cease to exist. I didn’t look until the noise was over, and then when I did, they were both dead. I don’t know. Lexi said she woke up—Mrs. Johnson—and that’s when they shot her, but when I think about it, I always wish that she didn’t, that she just went to sleep peaceful and never woke up, but I know that shot woke her up, because it was loud. So loud.”

  She found his hand. She wound her fingers around his.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t usually talk about it.”

  “I didn’t mean to bring it up,” she said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I… I’m sorry.”

  “What you did, it wasn’t the same,” he said. “You shot a bad man.”

  “Are there bad men?” she said. “Garrett Edwards? He was involved in every single one of the murders. He was one of the leaders. He always took charge. But when I remember him, I remember a guy who’d hug everyone when they came in the door. I remember how he used to laugh, how his laugh was so big, it filled up any room. I remember how he used to give me those hard-tack candies. You remember those?”

  Hawk didn’t say anything.

  “Why’d he do it?” she said. “You think he liked it?”

  “You didn’t like it,” said Hawk, and now he was getting up from the couch.

  “You’re not me. You don’t know how I feel,” she said.

  He disappeared out of the living room and into the kitchen.

  She found him there, naked, leaning into the refrigerator. He came out with a beer. Then he noticed her. “You want one?”

  “No,” she said.

  “This how it’s going to be? You just going to show up sometimes?”

  “That a problem?”

  He leaned against the counter and opened the beer.

  She liked this, their casual nudity in the darkness. She went to him, pressing her body into his. His arm came around her, resting on the curve of her hip, and it felt as natural as if they’d done this a million times before. “Can I stay?” she whispered. “I’ll leave in the morning.”

  He kissed her forehead and set the half-drunk beer down on the counter. He led her back the hallway to his bedroom.

  * * *

  She woke up late and called Reilly to apologize, but he answered in a bleary, sleep-ravaged voice and suggested they come in around noon.

  Hawk was still asleep. She climbed over him and got out of bed. He rolled over and snored.

  She went back t
o the living room to look for her clothes. They were all on the floor next to the couch, everything except her bra, which she couldn’t find anywhere. She put on her underwear and jeans and then hunted around for her bra.

  Finally, she decided it could have gotten stuck under the couch cushions and she pulled them aside.

  Sure enough, there was her bra.

  She picked it up and began putting it on. As she was hooking it closed, she spied something else in the couch. It looked as if it had been jammed into the couch, as if someone was trying to hide it.

  She pulled it out.

  It was an ID card for Lassiter Academy, a private K-8 school over in Harpers Ferry. There was a picture of a smiling girl on it. Jenny Smith.

  She dropped it as if it had burned her.

  She backed away, rubbing her neck.

  Then, she twisted her bra around and put on the straps. She shrugged into her shirt. Barefoot, she paced in front of the couch, looking down at the ID card, trying to figure out what the next thing she did was. Trying to figure out how she was feeling at that moment.

  Reilly, she thought. Call Reilly.

  She pulled out her phone. Her hands were shaking.

  And then she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and Hawk was in the doorway.

  He was still naked.

  Something about that made her feel as though she might lose it. The sight of all of his body, of his penis, which had been inside her, and now…

  Don’t engage him. Don’t talk. Get out of here, and call Reilly and then the two of you can figure out what to do. Don’t let him know you know.

  “Little bird?” he said.

  Right, so how do I explain away the fucking ID card? Her heart was pounding. She looked around for her leather jacket. Spied it, hung over the back of an easy chair. She grabbed it. “Um, I gotta go.”

  He scratched his stomach. “Of course you do.”

  She started for the door.

  “If you give me a minute to get dressed, we could get coffee,” he said.

  “Oh, um… no,” she said, opening the door. “No, that’s fine.”

  “Too much to be seen in public with me?”

  She stepped out the door. “No, I’m just late.” Almost free. Almost—

  His fingers closed around her upper arm. His voice at her ear. Deep. “Wren.”