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

  Wren wasn’t sure what to say to that. She turned questioning eyes on Reilly.

  But Travis was talking again. “We got into a fight about money.”

  “She stabbed you during an altercation?” said Reilly.

  “No.” Travis shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. No, we got into a fight, and she smoothed it over, because she was good at that, when she wanted to be. She didn’t always care, but when she did, she could make me feel like I was… I don’t know, I thought I was in love with her back then. Maybe I was. She wasn’t in love with me, though. She just twisted me around and wound me up. She was in control, and I did whatever she wanted.”

  A long pause. Wren just waited during this. She felt sympathy for him, because it was obvious that Indigo or Poppy or whatever she was calling herself had been abusive and manipulative towards this man. Maybe he wasn’t exactly a helpless victim, Wren wasn’t sure. The jury was out on that, but he’d been used and hurt—badly physically hurt. She couldn’t help but feel bad about that.

  “So, um, after the fight, we made up.” He looked away, flushing suddenly. “We were, um, together, like—”

  “Yeah, we got it,” said Wren, wanting to ease his embarrassment. “Did she stab you afterwards?”

  His jaw twitched, and he didn’t answer.

  “It’s a theory I’m working on,” said Wren, pushing on. “I think she uses sex in order to incapacitate her victims. I wasn’t sure if she waited until they were asleep afterward, or if she struck right in the middle of the climax or immediately afterwards or what.”

  He raised his gaze to hers. “Is that important?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It could speak to various elements of her motivations and…” Maybe it wasn’t. Now, she was blushing. “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

  He looked away again. “It was during. Maybe that’s why I’m not dead, because if she would have waited until I had, um, finished, I might not have been able to… to fight her off.” His voice cracked at the end of it.

  Wren straightened up, and now she felt even worse.

  “I pushed her off me.” He made a motion with his hand. “She was… on top of me. The knife was…” He pointed at the upper left region of his chest. “She was in the right spot, but she just didn’t get through my rib cage. And it fell out, the knife did. It was on the bed. So I…” He furrowed his brow. He still wasn’t really looking at them. “I was just confused, and I was really… I don’t know. The betrayal of it, it was like I couldn’t process it, and I had pushed her hard, and she hit her head, and I was like… concerned for her. I was asking if she was okay, and she was getting the knife again, and then…” His lower lip started to tremble.

  Travis leaned back in his chair, looking at both of them. He put a hand over his mouth, as if he was trying to cover his trembling lip, but when he spoke again, his voice wasn’t strong. “So, like, I’m naked, and she’s naked, and there’s blood. It’s smeared on me, and it’s on the knife and on her hand, and she looks at me, and she’s just—” He passed his fingers over his eyes. “Nothing there. Like her expression is blank. No, that’s not right. Her expression was determined. She was gritting her teeth, like she was really concentrating, really trying hard. But her eyes were blank. I don’t even know how to describe… it just… I was afraid of her. It was like I didn’t even know who she was, and this was a person that I… this was my wife.”

  Wren knew how that felt. Thoughts of Hawk swam in her brain, and she pushed them all away. She had left Hawk back in West Virginia. She didn’t have to think about him here. She didn’t have to feel helpless and terrified, like Travis was obviously feeling now, as he was reliving this traumatic experience.

  “She jumped on me,” Travis continued. “And we went back on the bed, and she stabbed me a bunch more times, but I was fighting her. I was blocking her. And I was bleeding, and I was in shock, and I was terrified, but I was stronger than she was, and I just stopped her. I pushed her into the bed and I wrenched the knife out of her hands and then I…” He let out a harsh laugh. “Then I tried to talk to her. I don’t know why. I mean, she was crazy sometimes. I thought… I don’t know what I thought… like I don’t know how you come back from that, but I… anyway, she wouldn’t say anything. She ran off at that point. And I called an ambulance, because I was bleeding a lot, and, um, the police made me file a report.”

  Wren let out a breath. “Thank you for telling us all of that. I’m sure that can’t have been easy to go through again.”

  “I still don’t know why she did it,” said Travis. “I mean, I wonder if I just would have given her the money, if that would have changed anything. But I didn’t have a lot of money. If she killed me, she could have cleaned out my bank account, but I had a grand total of two thousand dollars to my name, and I don’t know if it was really about that.”

  “It wasn’t,” said Wren. “If a person wants money, there are easier ways than murder. She’s the kind of person who was looking for an excuse to kill people, not the other way around.”

  “I still sleep with the doors locked,” he said. “I still have nightmares that she’s going to come back and finish the job.” His gaze flicked away.

  “I guess she’s never gotten in contact with you again?” said Wren.

  “No,” said Travis.

  “And, um, she married you to get away from PLL?” said Reilly. “That’s correct?”

  “Yes,” said Travis.

  “What about family?” said Reilly. “Did you ever meet anyone in her family? Siblings? Parents? Cousins?”

  “No,” said Travis. “If she was in touch with those people, I didn’t know about it. And I don’t think she was in touch.”

  “Did she ever talk about her family?”

  “No,” said Travis. “Not really. She didn’t talk about her past much at all, in fact.”

  “So, if she was contacting those people, you wouldn’t know.”

  “Definitely wouldn’t,” said Travis.

  “And this Clover person. You ever talk to her?”

  “Unh uh,” said Travis. “But like I said, she lives out on PLL land.”

  WREN liked the little motel where they were staying. It was a strip of rooms all stretched out near the road, and there were trees with long fronds of leaves hanging down in the background, and the air was muggy, and the insects were chirping, and it was… atmospheric.

  Reilly said it was creepy, but she liked it there.

  She and Reilly agreed that their next step was to try to get in touch with this Clover person, but they didn’t want to simply drive out to PLL land without trying to get in touch with her first, so they had come back to the motel.

  Thinking about this friend, Wren was struck with the sudden, urgent desire to call her friend Kimora.

  She hadn’t spoken to her in a long time. At one point, Kimora had been going to run an organization that funded people trying to leave cults, and she was going to oversee the money from the FCL, especially after the land had sold.

  But then Kimora had taken another job for a museum in Washington, D.C., and she’d moved her kids to Silver Springs, and it hadn’t ended up working out. It had taken so much longer for the land to sell than Wren had anticipated. The money from the sale had been given to charity, but Wren had simply done some research and doled it out amongst several organizations that already existed to help people who were trying to escape cults.

  So, the long and short of it was that Wren hadn’t talked to Kimora in a long time, and she felt the urge to call her, to call a friend from the FCL, to speak to someone who understood her and understood all of this.

  “I can’t believe he got out of jail,” Kimora was saying, on the other end of the phone. “I never liked that guy. One time, he came by my house and freaked me out, and I could just feel it, you know? That there was something wrong with him.”

  “Yeah,” said Wren.

  “Oh, my Lord, Wren, I didn’t mean it,” said Kimo
ra. “I didn’t know anything, because if I had, I would have said something. Obviously, if you didn’t know there was something wrong with him—”

  “I did,” said Wren. “I think I did, but I talked myself out of it, because I didn’t want to see it.”

  “Yeah,” said Kimora. “That is exactly what I did.”

  “Did you hear about the land?” said Wren.

  “No,” said Kimora. “What are you talking about?”

  “A bunch of people who used to be in the FCL banded together and created an LLC, and they bought back the FCL compound from me,” said Wren. “I didn’t even know I was selling it to them. Now, Hawk and all the others are back out in those cabins, living out there, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “That bastard,” said Kimora. “We were trying to do something good with that land!”

  “I know,” said Wren. “I don’t know what he’s doing out there, but it can’t be good.”

  “Oh, my Lord, this is my fault,” said Kimora. “If I hadn’t left the project to go work in D.C., I would have been more involved in the sale—”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Wren. “That job opportunity was really good for you and the kids. It’s good money, and I know you wanted to move on with your life. So, it’s nothing to do with you. Please don’t blame yourself. I didn’t even call to talk about this, actually. I just wanted… We used to talk about doing friend things, like meeting for lunch or having drinks or something, and we never really did.”

  “It’s hard,” she said. “We’re both so busy.”

  “Yeah, it is,” said Wren. “Oh, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “What? Congratulations. That’s amazing. It’s with Reilly, right?”

  “Yes,” said Wren, laughing.

  “Okay, well, it has been a while, and I just wanted to make sure.” Kimora laughed too. “That’s so amazing. When are you due?”

  “April,” said Wren.

  “So, you’re not that far along.”

  “I don’t know,” said Wren. “It feels like I’ve been pregnant forever.”

  “Oh, right, the first trimester is hell.”

  “It really is. I was unprepared for the hellscape that is the first trimester. But I’m in the second one now, and I feel like a human being again.”

  “Ooh, soon you’re going to be able to feel the baby move,” said Kimora. “That’s the best. I just remember, the first time I was pregnant, lying in bed and rubbing my belly, and feeling little Jordan in there, kicking up a storm.”

  Wren’s hand went to her own stomach. “When does that happen?”

  “Mmm… I can’t totally remember, but it’s soon,” said Kimora. “At first, it just feels like flutters. And you’ll always be trying to get the daddy to feel it, and the minute you get his hand there, the baby will inevitably stop moving.” She laughed.

  Wren laughed too. “That sounds frustrating.”

  “Well, maybe it was because Jared was never around. He was always off getting drunk and he was probably sleeping with other women, even back during the first pregnancy, because he was such a dick. You’re lucky. You got a real man.”

  “Yeah,” said Wren, glancing affectionately across the motel room. “He is a real man.”

  Reilly looked up. “Are you talking about me in front of my face?”

  “Aw, you’re so cute. Wren Delacroix in love. That’s the best.”

  “I’m a fan,” said Wren. “I like it. It’s good.”

  Kimora giggled. “Well, listen, do you want to get together?”

  “I do. I’m kind of in Louisiana right now, but I do.”

  Kimora’s giggle became a snort. “So, you call me from another state because you want us to hang out?”

  “Yeah… I don’t know. I’m very emotional right now,” said Wren. “Just so much emotion. It’s very annoying.”

  “It’s hormones.”

  “Well, hormones can go fuck themselves,” said Wren. “I just… I don’t know… I wanted to reach out. Maybe it’s stupid.”

  “It’s never stupid to hear from you,” said Kimora. “Never. You call me anytime you want.”

  “You too,” said Wren. “I mean it.”

  “Let me know when you’re back from Louisiana, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Wren.

  THE next morning, Trevon was leaning against the wall next to the door to Maliah’s office when she arrived. He looked up at her approach, a big grin splitting his face.

  She grinned, too. “What are you doing over here?”

  “Saying good morning,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Good morning.”

  Her grin widened. “Good morning to you.”

  They just grinned at each other for a few more minutes.

  “Okay,” he said. “Good.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.” He reached out and took one of her hands in both of his. “How do you feel about PDA at work?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, still grinning, but feeling as if she could be talked into it.

  “Yeah, it’s totally beneath us,” he said, and then he kissed her anyway.

  She pushed him away, giggling.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You should be,” she said, and then she pulled him back and kissed him.

  “We should do something tonight,” he said. “After work? You and me?”

  “Definitely,” she said.

  “Cool,” he said. “I also wanted to see you because I can’t do lunch today, because I have this thing, this digital meeting on Zoom with some people from D.C., and I promised I’d be there, so I wanted you to know. I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t want to eat with you, like we usually do.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.” She was grateful for that, because if he hadn’t greeted her this way, it might have given her pause.

  “So, I’m going to be crazy busy, and I won’t see you until later, but I will be right back here at quitting time, if it’s cool.”

  “It’s cool,” she said.

  He sucked in a breath. “I want to kiss you again.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “But we probably shouldn’t,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  “Maybe it’ll be like… a thing to look forward to?” He raised his eyebrows. “All day, we can think about it, how we get to kiss?”

  She yanked him over and kissed him.

  “Or that,” he said against her mouth. “That also works.”

  Later that day, he appeared at her office door ten minutes before quitting time, and he shut the door and they might have made out in her office before leaving, which wasn’t strictly professional.

  They held hands on the way out to the parking lot.

  When they got to their respective cars, he turned to her. “So, do you want to go out?” he said. “Like to a bar or something or…?”

  “Let’s just go to my place again,” she said. “We can order food. If we go out anywhere, we’re just going to want to… be touching each other, anyway.”

  “Good point,” he said.

  So, he came over, and there was a lot more kissing. So much kissing.

  Kissing that left her breathless, that made her entire body tingle, and that ended up with them lying horizontal on her couch with him over top of her and her thighs wrapped around him, and their bodies pressed into each other, and everything feeling heated and electric and heady.

  He peeled himself off of her, out of breath himself, and leaned back into the couch. “I should, like, explain—or maybe I shouldn’t. Because maybe you’ll think it’s awful.”

  She sat up, rearranging her clothes. “What are you talking about? Now you have to tell me, because what’s awful?”

  He cringed. “Okay, I’ve kind of maybe never really done this before.”

  She
raised her eyebrows. “What? You definitely have experience. I can tell that you’ve—” She broke off. “Are you saying you’re a virgin?”

  “No,” he said. “Not exactly, no.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “Uh… so… I told you about being aromantic?”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “I’ve, like, set things up with people online, through message boards. We agree to meet somewhere and to, you know, do things. But not… I mean… just sex. So, this is, like, different for me.”

  She settled back into the couch, surveying him.

  He let out a strangled chuckle. “You’re not saying anything. You think it’s awful.”

  “I think it’s exactly the sort of thing you would do,” said Maliah. “Cut to the chase, right? Why make it complicated? You don’t have filters, and you wouldn’t see the point in anything resembling courtship. You’d think it was only people being fake, angling to try to get somewhere without actually saying what they want. So, making it transactional, it sounds like you.”

  He bowed his head, studying his knuckles. “You make it sound like I was hiring people. It wasn’t like that.”

  “No,” she said. “No one got hurt. You didn’t take advantage of someone and attempt to compensate them for it. I didn’t say it was awful.”

  “I’m embarrassed about it, though,” he said. “It seemed really reasonable at the time, because I didn’t want to waste time on… on things, like trying to understand how to have a relationship, but now I feel like an idiot, like I don’t know what I’m doing, and I want…”

  She waited for him to finish.

  He didn’t.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “You.” He looked at her.

  Despite everything, this made her heart skip a beat.

  “I don’t just mean that I want… I mean, obviously, I want this physical thing. I’m sure you can tell that.”

  “Well, I do, too,” she said. “And I think we were well on our way to getting there, before you pulled us back to have this conversation.”