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

  “Well,” said Reilly. “Is it him?”

  She took a glorious sip of warm, wondrous coffee. “Didn’t I just get finished explaining I don’t know?”

  “You do, though,” said Reilly. “You have an unerring instinct about this sort of thing.”

  “Not when it comes to him.” She shook her head. “He fools me.”

  “No, he doesn’t, or we never would have caught him.” Reilly gazed at her. “Answer without thinking. Is Hawk involved?”

  “I don’t know,” she said immediately.

  “I don’t accept that,” said Reilly. “You’re just tired. You get some rest, and then—”

  “If he is involved, we have nothing to tie it to him,” said Wren.

  “The bodies were found behind his house,” said Trevon.

  “Circumstantial,” said Reilly. “Given everything else that’s going on. But I’d like to see him accuse us of picking up dead bodies and moving them there.”

  “Or of killing?” said Wren, taking another drink of coffee. “Maybe that’s his plan. Pin it on me.”

  “That’s insane,” said Reilly.

  “It’s possible that Hawk didn’t know,” said Wren. “Maybe he and Kayden Rush had no interaction whatsoever, and Kayden only did the things that he did as a sort of homage to Hawk, because he looked up to the other killer. It’s not an exact copycat situation, after all. And the drugging of Everly Green with the injectable substance that Phineas Slater favored, well, that’s tying it to me and Reilly. It seems like something a guy would do who was following the news, not like something Hawk would do. I can’t think he’d copy someone. He’s original.”

  “True,” said Reilly. “So, you don’t think he’s involved?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wren. “Maybe that bit with the injection was Kayden improvising. If so, I might also think that Kayden killing Mischa at the end was his idea.” She turned to Maliah. “Maybe that’s why Hawk seemed so surprised.”

  “How do you figure that?” said Reilly.

  “Well, when we talked to Kayden, he seemed gung-ho on this idea to fight us and prove his supposed innocence. And that fits well with something Hawk might want. But maybe Kayden realized the gig was up and that he was going to prison, and that his life was going to be a long, hard fight against the system, and we had his DNA on bodies. So, maybe he just… gave up.”

  “You don’t think Hawk talked him into killing himself?”

  “How does that help Hawk?” said Wren. “The only way I can see Hawk doing it is if he felt Kayden was out of his control and that he needed to silence him.”

  “But if that’s true, how does he control him enough to convince him to kill himself?” said Reilly quietly.

  “It’s all so confusing,” said Wren. “It’s tangled up. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

  “You need to get some rest,” said Reilly.

  “We all need some rest,” said Wren. “Maliah and Trevon, why don’t you get out of here?”

  “We really are sorry for going out there,” said Maliah.

  “You shouldn’t have,” said Wren. “But everyone’s all right, so let’s just move on from that.”

  After they were gone, Reilly said they should get some rest too and got out the car keys.

  She shook her head. “No rest for us. I may not have any idea about Hawk, but I’ve got an idea about Poppy.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “I think I know where she is,” said Wren.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “HELLO?” said Annabelle Evans on the other end of the phone.

  It was later in the morning, because dawn on the east coast was still the middle of the night in New Mexico. Wren had spent her morning making phone calls to places in New York state and getting various elements arranged.

  “It’s Wren Delacroix with the FBI,” said Wren. “Is Connor with you currently?”

  “W-what?” said Annabelle.

  “You know that you’re not going to be keep him there in secret. It’s not a good situation for him. He’s technically a kidnapping victim at this point, and when he’s found, he’ll be hauled back to foster care in New York. You can’t even enroll him in school without risking his discovery. What kind of life is that for a kid his age?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Annabelle’s voice was unsteady.

  “You want to keep your nephew with you,” said Wren. “I think Indigo wants that too, or she wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of taking him halfway across the country to you. I think she’s been planning it for a while. Not a lot of things matter to Indigo, but her son does. You do. She protected you, and she protects him.”

  “Look, I haven’t heard from Indigo—”

  “Tell her that I’ll make her a deal. I can get it all set up, nice and legal, for Connor to be with you. You can have custody of him. I’ll make sure of it, that it’s airtight. You can adopt him. He’ll never go back to PLL, and he’ll never go back to foster care. But she needs to come in, because there are other cousins and sons who she doesn’t protect, who she hurts. She knows she can’t stop. She needs to come in. You tell her for me?”

  “Come in, like, turn herself in? Like, get arrested?”

  “There’s no death penalty in New Mexico or New York. I have a signed agreement, faxed to me, from the district attorney’s office in the area in Kansas where she killed, swearing not to pursue it there either. Apparently, it’s pretty rare they go for the death penalty in Kansas anyway. So, yeah, she’ll go to prison, and that’s not an easy life, but I think she knows it’s necessary.”

  “No death penalty?” whispered Annabelle.

  “New York is hungry for her case. She killed two guys there, but I have an agreement that they will allow her to serve out her sentence in New Mexico, and I know there’s a prison only a half-hour’s drive from where you live, Annabelle. You can visit. You can bring Connor. He can know his mother. She can know her son, watch him grow up. Is she going to get that on the run? Ask her what’s the most important thing to her, ask her if it’s really the thrill of the kill?”

  “HEAD games, Agent Delacroix,” came the soft lilt of Poppy Morgan over the phone.

  It was 3:13 a.m. the next day.

  Wren blinked hard as she sat up in bed. Reilly was already stirring next to her. “Poppy, you called. I was hoping you would.” The caller ID had come up as blocked, but she wouldn’t have expected Poppy to give out her number so easily.

  “Well, you’re smart,” said Poppy. “I see why they bring you in to hunt down the bad ones, but you still don’t know where I am.”

  “Not in New Mexico?”

  Poppy ignored the question. “But you like to play head games, so you must figure, why go looking if you can bring me to you? And you’re right. I like the sound of this deal you’re offering, I can’t deny it.”

  “Here’s the spiel you wanted when we first met,” said Wren, settling against the headboard in her bed, smiling. “You’re not a bad person, Poppy.”

  Poppy laughed. “I’m not?”

  “Okay,” said Wren. “You are. But on a spectrum of sociopaths, you’ve got more empathy than some. Whether the empathy wins out or the desire to kill for your own enjoyment does is a toss up, I guess, but sometimes the empathy wins. You love your son.”

  “I try,” said Poppy. “I think it’s easier because I didn’t have to change his diapers or listen to him squall. I don’t think anything would have turned me off him more than that.”

  “Is that what you think?” Wren smirked. “It’s all right to admit weakness, Poppy. In some cases, love isn’t weakness anyway. In some cases, it’s strength.”

  Poppy scoffed. “Oh, now you’re beginning to sound like everyone else, Agent Delacroix. I got this feeling you understood me, but maybe I was wrong.”

  “You love him,” said Wren. “You can’t help it. You want to protect him. Just like you wanted to protect Annabelle, your cousin.”

  “Ma
ybe,” said Poppy in a hard voice, “but it’s going to get me locked up in prison.”

  “It might be a relief,” said Wren. “Not having to kill anymore? It feels good, I’m sure, that release, and I know… the way the bodies look when you’re done…” Her mouth was dry. She shook herself, shaking away an image of Doug Sanders. “But then there’s the cleanup and the running and the worst of it—that feeling at the back of your neck, knowing that the law is after you, that they’re just waiting to find you and bring you in. So, when you do come in, it’ll be a relief.”

  Poppy chuckled. “I want it in writing. All of it. Every single aspect. Jail in New Mexico, no death penalty, Connor adopted. I want documentation, and I want a lawyer to look over it. And only then, only then do I come in.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything different from you,” said Wren. “You’re making the right choice, Poppy.”

  “You’re a manipulative bitch.”

  “Takes one to know one,” said Wren.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE transfer happened in New Mexico. Wren would have flown out if she hadn’t still been up to her knees in paperwork on the deaths of Everly Green, Kayden Rush, and Mischa Peters. She was also feeling more and more pregnant by the day, and it was better if she stayed put.

  Poppy got all her guarantees, and Wren made sure that her promises were going to be fulfilled. It was a good bit of coordination, a lot of work, incorporating lots of different entities across several states. If one piece didn’t come together, the whole thing fell through, so Wren knew it all had to work, and she toiled tirelessly until it was in place.

  And then Poppy turned herself in at a gas station parking lot. Wren watched it, because one of the cops filmed it on her cell phone. Poppy wore a white scarf and a pair of sunglasses. She walked across the asphalt in a gray pants suit, high heels clicking as she swayed her hips.

  She didn’t resist when she was handcuffed, and Wren got contact from Annabelle that she and Connor would be allowed to visit in a week’s time.

  She watched alone, because Reilly was off helping his father with some damage that had been done to his father’s house. A big picture window had been broken that morning, and Reilly had rushed out there to do what repairs he could, even if they were just boarding it up while they waited for some professionals to come and install the new window.

  She watched with her hand on her belly, and she thought of her own mother and her own darkness, and she shouldn’t have been so startled when she felt the lurch inside her, the small flutter of tiny limbs.

  But she was, and tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Hello there,” she whispered. “Hello, my little one.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  She wasn’t expecting anyone.

  Getting up, she crossed the room to open the door.

  Hawk was standing on the stoop, slouching against the door jamb. “Little bird.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “YOU shouldn’t be here,” she said. She was surprised at her tone, which was mild and calm. She thought she would be angry when she saw him, or that she’d be afraid, but she wasn’t.

  It was Hawk, after all. It was hard to be afraid of this man, even knowing what he was. Too easy to recall his arms around her when she was nine and he was sixteen, too easy to be swayed by the velvety timbre of his voice.

  “Well, I asked my lawyer, and he said that you haven’t filed a restraining order against me.” He gave her a little smile. “I’m not allowed to leave the state, of course, on account of some argument that I’m a flight risk, but you live two miles down the road from me, so that’s not a problem, little bird.”

  She regarded him. Inside her womb, the baby gave a mighty kick, and her hand went instinctively to the movement.

  Hawk’s gaze went there too.

  For a moment, they were both looking at her stomach.

  “Well,” said Hawk softly, “I suppose I should have figured he’d be sure to knock you up as soon as he could. Anything to stake his claim. Caius is a lot of annoying things, but he is not an unintelligent man, and he knows his grasp on you is ephemeral. He wants something to tie you to him. But it won’t matter.”

  “It was actually an accident,” said Wren in a dry voice, rolling her eyes. “And if you’re just going to do that—” A memory swam up inside her, cutting off her words.

  Her straddling Reilly in that room at Love Over Want, and then his suddenly being inside her, thick and huge.

  “I’ll move off.”

  “No, no. Don’t do anything.”

  She remembered the way he’d trapped her there, pinning her to him as he wrapped his firm, strong arm around her waist, holding her against him, holding him inside her.

  “I want you to go,” she said to Hawk.

  “Sure, I figured that,” said Hawk. “I will. I just have a few things to say is all.”

  “I’ll say it for you,” she said. “You and I are meant to be together. We should kill together. The Crimson Ram has decreed it and you’ve seen it in some dark vision and—”

  “Little bird.” He cut her off. “You mock our Lord, but it only shows your ignorance.”

  “Do you really believe it, or is that part of one of your plans? If it’s really necessary, you’ll simply claim insanity, because you’ve always presented yourself as believing in the Horned Lord? How many plans do you have, Hawk?”

  He sighed, and he was ruefully considering her stomach. “I hate it that you’re carrying his child.”

  She rolled her eyes again. “I’m going to get my gun.”

  “Oh, please do,” he said, giving her a smile. “Maybe that’s what the Lord wants. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever been to you, little bird. I wanted to love you, but he made me hurt you. Maybe you need that hurt to claim your power and birthright.”

  She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.

  When she got back, gun in hand, loading the magazine and snapping it into place, he was inside, leaning against the closed front door, hands in his pockets.

  She approached, gritting her teeth. She went right up to him, pressing her body into his, fitting the barrel of the gun under his chin.

  He let out a groan. “Fuck.”

  “I hate you,” she said, but her voice came out breathy and affected.

  “I know,” he whispered. “But I don’t hate you. Not even knowing you’re pregnant, that he’s tainted you, that he’s gotten inside you and taken root, that you’re growing his spawn. I love you still, little bird. I always will. And he will never know you the way I know you. He’ll never accept everything about you. I see you. I see the dark parts of you—”

  “Stop talking,” she said.

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “You’re not capable of love.”

  “I am.”

  She jammed the gun into his skin.

  He winced. “Don’t.”

  “Going to beg for your life?”

  “I know the Lord wants it,” said Hawk, his voice cracking. “I see it now. I am a sacrifice in the service of his getting you. The Crimson Ram wants in, Wren. Shoot me, here, in cold blood when I am doing nothing threatening to you and open up the door of your heart to him to claim you forever.”

  “I don’t believe in the Crimson fucking Ram.”

  “He believes in you. He maneuvered us here to this moment. I want to live, but I recognize that I am a sacrifice in his higher purpose. You… the darkness within you, little bird, it is unparalleled power.”

  “Is there no way to shut you up?”

  “Pull the trigger.” He shut his eyes. “I’m ready.”

  She glared at him.

  He breathed. Slow, noisy, anticipatory breaths.

  But when nothing happened, his eyes opened in slits.

  “Fuck you,” she said, yanking back the gun. She put her hand on her belly. “You think we’re some epic love story, Hawk, but all we ever were was pain. What I have with Reilly is love, and you don’t
understand that because you’re not capable of love. Now get the fuck out of my house or I’m calling the police.”

  He squared his shoulders, sniffing. “I’m not breaking any laws.”

  “I did not invite you in,” she said. “So, you’re trespassing. And besides, if I’m really the woman who sent you away to jail out of spite because of a lover’s quarrel, how does it look to your case if you’re coming and forcing your way into my house, huh?”

  He pressed his lips together.

  “Did you break Caius’s father’s window to ensure he wouldn’t be here?”

  “No, no, little bird. It’s just luck to find you alone.” He lifted his chin. “Not today, then. Today is not the day I die.” He turned around and seized the doorknob. He opened the door and sauntered out.

  Wren clutched the gun and watched him go.

  * * *

  Thanks so much for reading!

  Find information about book ten here.

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