Wren Delacroix Series Box Set Read online

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re not police, Hawk. You can’t—”

  “I don’t think you’re doing this in an official capacity either, Detective.”

  Reilly hesitated. It was true he’d tried to call it into Lopez, but he sure as hell hadn’t pushed when he ran into a roadblock. “Okay, fine. You can come along. I guess I could use someone to help me out. It’s better if I go on my own. I know Colt Baldwin. I know who might be sheltering him. If I try to get the police to mobilize on this, it’s going to take time. We don’t have time. So, let’s go. Where are you? I’ll pick you up.”

  “I’m at Wren’s place. I circled back to see if she came home, but she didn’t.”

  “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  * * *

  Reilly shoved his foot inside the door of the trailer. “No, damn it, you are going to listen to me.”

  “I don’t know where he is.” A woman with stringy blond hair was trying shove the door closed. “I told you already. I told the police who already came here. I have no idea where he is. We’re not even together anymore.”

  “I saw you sobbing at his sentencing,” said Reilly. “You blew him a kiss. You were together then, after he’d been convicted of killing three people. You were willing to forgive that. What changed?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said. “And you can’t force your way into my house. You don’t have a warrant, so you need to leave. Get the hell out.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where Colt is,” said Reilly. “Not going anywhere, warrant or no.”

  “You have to.” She looked panicked. “I’ll call the police.”

  “I am the police,” Reilly growled. “Now, I know you know where he is. You might even be letting him sleep here.”

  “No, no, I’m not!”

  A hand on Reilly’s shoulder.

  Reilly turned.

  Hawk was standing there. His voice was quiet. “Let me talk to her.”

  Reilly arched an eyebrow. “Between the two of us, which of us has had interrogation training?”

  “You’re getting nowhere with her. What’s it going to hurt?” said Hawk.

  “I’m not going to talk to either of you,” said the woman in a shaky voice. “So, why don’t you just get in your car and drive away?”

  “What’s your name, ma’am?” said Hawk.

  Reilly rolled his eyes. This was his big plan? Asking the woman her name?

  “Caitlin,” said the woman.

  “Caitlin, why don’t you come out of the house and we’ll all have a little chat? I know you don’t want to let us in, but if you come out and shut that door behind you, it won’t be a problem, will it?” said Hawk.

  Caitlin considered this. She looked down at Reilly’s foot, wedging the door open.

  Reilly sighed. He gave Hawk an annoyed look.

  Hawk spread his hands.

  “Fine,” muttered Reilly, and he stepped back, away from the door, fully expecting Caitlin to slam the door in their faces.

  But she came outside. She closed the door carefully, and then she stood in front of it, with the door at her back, as if it gave her some kind of strength. She looked back and forth between Reilly and Hawk.

  Reilly shrugged. He gestured for Hawk to go ahead. This was his show now. He’d gotten her out of the house, maybe he was going somewhere with this.

  Hawk took a deep breath and then let it out. “You want to tell us about Colt, Caitlin?”

  “Nothing to tell,” she said. “I haven’t seen him. He didn’t come here.” She was defensive.

  “We’re not here to get you in trouble,” said Hawk.

  “Look, he wouldn’t have come to see me. I told him I never wanted to see him again. I broke it off with his murderous ass.” Her voice was hard.

  “Yeah, I find that hard to believe,” said Reilly, “when you were lovey-dovey with him all during his trial.”

  “It was too soon,” she said. “He made me think he was going to get out and come back. I didn’t turn on him, because I thought he could come home at any minute. Trust me, when I found out he escaped, I was scared.”

  “You were,” said Hawk, nodding slowly. “I believe you.”

  She turned to him, eyes wide. “Well, you should, because it’s the truth.”

  “What kind of man is Colt Baldwin, Caitlin?” said Hawk. “What was your relationship like?”

  Reilly rolled his eyes again. What did this have to do with anything?

  “He seems like a nice guy, but he’s not,” said Caitlin.

  “No?” said Hawk.

  “No,” said Caitlin. “He never hit me or anything, but he would twist up everything I said. Every time I had an idea, he would tell me that it was stupid, but he would do it in this way, like he was pretending to be nice. He’d say, ‘Oh, that’s sweet of you, Caitlin, but why don’t you leave the thinking to the big boys.’ Stuff like that. He was in my head.” She tapped her forehead.

  “Mmm,” said Hawk. “I know the type of person you’re talking about.”

  “What do you mean?” said Caitlin.

  “I grew up in the FCL down the road,” said Hawk. “You heard of it?”

  “Yeah, that woman, she brainwashed people to kill for her.”

  Hawk nodded. “Exactly. Vivian Delacroix. You should have heard the way she would break people down. Just like you’re saying.”

  Caitlin sniffed. “So, you understand.”

  “I do,” said Hawk. “And if Vivian Delacroix escaped from prison, then I would do anything in my power to help the police apprehend her.”

  “But he didn’t come here,” said Caitlin. “He didn’t talk to me, I swear. He probably I knew I would have turned his ass in. That’s why he never came here. I can’t help.”

  “You know him,” said Hawk. “You kissed him. Held his hand. Shared his bed. Listened to him.”

  “Well, yeah, but, so what?”

  “So, where is he? If he didn’t come see you, where did he go?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t have anyone. His mama would have helped him, but she passed on, and all he has is his brother, Tom, and Tom hates him.”

  Hawk’s hand darted out to take Caitlin’s. “Come on, Caitlin. Think. You want him to go back to jail, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “I do.” Her lower lip started to tremble.

  “So?” Hawk’s voice was soft, soothing.

  She shook her head. And then her eyes widened. “Oh, I might know, actually. He, um, his family had this rundown cabin out in the woods. It was on his grandad’s old property. His grandad’s long gone, but that land stayed in the family. It was, like, a hunting cabin or something. Real primitive. He took me out there once, but I refused to sleep there. It’s only a couple rooms and an outhouse. No running water or anything like that. Nobody else ever goes out there. It’s in bad shape. Probably all full of raccoons and snakes, you know? But if he was desperate, he might have gone there.”

  Hawk’s mouth widened into a smile. “Thank you, Caitlin.” He squeezed her fingers.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “I hope you find him.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Back in the car with the directions to this hunting cabin written out from what Caitlin had told them, Reilly couldn’t help but feel a grudging respect for Hawk. He’d had the better approach there, a classic good cop to his bad cop.

  Reilly himself couldn’t have done that. He was too worried, too emotional over the fact that Baldwin was back, and that Wren could be in danger, that Maliah and Janessa and Timmy could be in danger. The fear made his blood pound, and it made him desperate. He had tried to force the information out of Caitlin, but Hawk had simply coaxed it.

  “That was well done,” he muttered, as he backed his car out of Caitlin’s driveway.

  “Well,” said Hawk, “you don’t grow up in a cult without figuring out how to persuade people.”

  “How’d you know s
he really wasn’t involved with him anymore?”

  “Didn’t,” said Hawk. “If she wouldn’t have started hinting in that direction, then I would have tried a different tack.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” Hawk mused over this. “Maybe that he was safer in jail, that he was going to be hunted down out here, that the police would be gunning for him, that he might get killed. Try to convince her that she’d rather have him alive than dead, even if it meant betraying him.”

  Reilly raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, that could have worked.”

  “Maybe,” said Hawk, chuckling to himself, sounding self-conscious. “I probably should have left it to you. You’re the professional.”

  “Whatever it takes to find Wren and get this asshole locked back up,” said Reilly. He considered that he should probably let someone know where the hell he was going. That way, if things went south, it would be easier to get backup.

  On the other hand, if he did that, then he’d have to explain bringing Hawk along, and he didn’t think he could come up with a good explanation for that. But already, the guy had proved useful, so he wanted him along.

  “It won’t take us long to get to that hunting cabin, will it?” said Hawk.

  “No,” said Reilly. “Shouldn’t take long at all.”

  * * *

  The first thing Wren felt was pain. Her face hurt. Her body hurt. All the injuries that she’d sustained throbbed, and she wished she could lose consciousness again, just for the relief of it.

  She opened her eyes.

  Above her, she could see stars.

  She was outside.

  But she wasn’t lying on the ground, she was down in a deep hole, maybe an old well. There were stones lining the walls and they were covered in moss and lichens, as if it was often damp down here. Above her head, a small, skinny tree was growing up out of the well, its roots clinging to the moss-covered stones on the side of the wall.

  She was alone.

  As near as she could tell, she was, anyway. The circle of night above her was all that she could see of the rest of the world. Oliver could be up there, she supposed.

  Maybe she should yell for him.

  How had he gotten her down here? She felt strongly that she hadn’t just been tossed down, because she thought there was a good chance that she wouldn’t have survived the fall. Hitting her head against the stone could crack it right open and kill her. And Oliver wanted her alive for her bone marrow.

  So, he must have climbed down here with her somehow…

  Aha.

  She could see the edge of a rope ladder up at the top of the hole. That was how he’d gotten down, and that was the way to get out. There was no point in trying to get to it if Oliver was just sitting up there waiting for her.

  “Oliver!” she yelled. Her voice was ragged. She realized her mouth was dry, probably from the way he’d suffocated her.

  There was no response.

  “If you’re up there, answer me!”

  Nothing.

  He might have simply left her here, sure that she couldn’t get away. He might have gone home to his family. She was pretty sure that Oliver was married and that he had a kid. He was probably sitting down at a table with them now, eating dinner, pretending like nothing had happened, as though he hadn’t kidnapped his half sister and left her in the bottom of a dry well.

  Okay, assuming he wasn’t here, how was she going to get out of here?

  She banged her already bruised body into the side of the well, hoping to shake down the rope ladder.

  But that didn’t work. The ground absorbed any vibrations she made.

  She cried out, curling up in a ball against the pain.

  She gasped for a few minutes.

  That skinny tree above her head, it reached up through the top of the well. If she could get to that, she might be able to use it to get to the rope ladder.

  She got to her feet and reached up, and she managed to brush the bottom of the trunk.

  But as she touched it, she new she was never going to have the strength to rip it out of the wall where it was growing. It was rooted tight.

  She groaned.

  She collapsed to the ground.

  She rested.

  Moments passed, and she tried to breathe slow and even and think calming thoughts, even though she was panicking inside. He had left her out here, and he had gone off somewhere. He wanted her alive, but this was not the greatest way to keep her alive. This was a very bad place to be.

  She had to try again.

  She had to get out of here.

  She got to her feet again and took hold of the branch. She tugged on it with all her strength, until she couldn’t tug anymore.

  Maybe it moved a little bit.

  She panted.

  Okay, quick break, and then we try again, she told herself.

  * * *

  Reilly parked the car when they got to the end of the road that Caitlin had told them about. The way to the cabin was down an old road, now too overgrown to be traveled by cars. The road was chained off with a big hand-lettered No Trespassing sign hanging in front of it.

  Reilly and Hawk got out of the car and stepped over the chain and onto the abandoned road.

  “You bringing your gun?” Hawk said mildly.

  “Of course,” said Reilly.

  “Do you have another gun?”

  “I’m not arming you,” said Reilly. “It’s bad enough that I’m bringing you out here with me and not telling the department that you’re with me. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “What if something happens to you? You want me to be able to save Wren, don’t you?”

  “No gun,” said Reilly, his voice sharp and firm.

  Hawk chuckled. “You don’t have to get bent out of shape, Detective.”

  Reilly started walking down the road, wading through the knee-high weeds that were growing in clumps every few feet. “Look, let’s get this straight. I’m letting you come along, but I don’t have to.”

  “Well, now that I know where this cabin is, how exactly would you stop me?” Hawk was behind him. He sounded amused.

  Reilly gritted his teeth.

  Hawk fell into step with him. “I’m sorry you’re feeling so threatened by my presence.”

  “I’m not feeling threatened,” said Reilly. “You don’t threaten me. How would I feel threatened by you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hawk. “But it’s just a vibe I’m getting from you.”

  “A vibe?”

  “Mmm.”

  “You get a lot of vibes? Maybe you see auras? Maybe you have regular spiritual connections with that weird god you guys worship. What’s it called? The Crimson Lord?”

  “Don’t,” Hawk said, and now he was the one who was sharp.

  And, truthfully, Reilly didn’t like the way the words had echoed against the nearby tree trunks. He could have sworn he wasn’t speaking loudly, but that name seemed to cut through the darkness and reverberate against the sky and the stars and the branches crisscrossing the sky above, and now Reilly felt cold. He hunched into his jacket and reached in to touch his gun, comforted by the cold metal against his fingers.

  “Listen.” Hawk was whispering. “You’re a man of the law, and you have to follow rules, but I want you to understand that if Wren’s life is in danger, there is no line that I’m not going to cross, and I can’t say the same about you. I have to be here, because I can’t trust you to put her first, before everything else.”

  Reilly breathed. His breath seemed louder now than it had. “And that’s what you do? You put her first?”

  “Yes,” said Hawk.

  “What’d you guys fight about?”

  “I fail to see how that has any bearing on the situation.”

  “If you’re so devoted to her, why’d you piss her off?”

  Hawk didn’t answer.

  Huh. Well, that had landed. Reilly scanned the road ahead of them. They should be coming up on this cabin soon,
and they didn’t want to announce their presence to Baldwin.

  Hawk’s voice coiled out of the darkness, low and lilting. “I got angry because she keeps trying to see me in a way that I don’t want her to see me.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Reilly’s voice was barely audible.

  “She always sees the darkness,” said Hawk. “It’s like her mother, except her mother wanted to use the darkness and Wren just wants to…”

  “What?” Reilly didn’t even understand what the hell Hawk was talking about, but now everything had taken on a sort of half-reality in the darkness. He felt as if somewhere in the woods, they’d crossed an invisible barrier into some otherwhere, and here, things like darkness had weight and mass. They were tangible.

  “Lie down with it, I guess. Wrap it around her like a blanket.”

  “She’s not like that.”

  “You don’t know her very well, Detective.”

  “And you do?”

  “I’ve known her her whole life.”

  Reilly stopped walking. He turned on Hawk. “It was a mistake bringing you out here.”

  “I would have come anyway,” said Hawk. “I would have found a way.”

  Reilly took a breath. He meant it to steady him, but instead, it seemed to only chill him, icy air invading his lungs and freezing him inside and out. He shivered. He started to move through the darkness again, images of Wren splayed out on the ground by that damned fire pit where they’d found the little Smith girl playing in his head. Wren’s head thrown back, covered in something dark and inky and smothering. Wren’s eyes rolled back in her head.

  Reilly didn’t like it out here.

  And then the hunting cabin came into view.

  It seemed to materialize out of the night, even though Reilly knew that what had happened was that they’d gotten close enough to see it. The effect of it simply coming into existence was unnerving. It was small and dilapidated, with a half-collapsed porch held up by rickety wooden posts, and patches of plywood nailed over various places on the walls and roof, probably to patch holes. It looked like a kids’ fort, barely held together, but also squat and old and vaguely insane somehow, as if it had been too long away from civilization and lost its mind out here in the woods.