Wren Delacroix Series Box Set

by V. J. Chambers

“The truth?” said Garth. “The truth about what?”

  “How long has this been going on between the two of you?”

  “Uh… I don’t know. It’s been pretty recent. Maybe a few months.”

  Reilly shook his head. “That’s bullshit, and we both know it.”

  “What?” Garth took another step backward. “Look, I don’t know what it is that you want me to say, but I don’t know if I like the way this conversation is going.”

  Reilly stepped forward, bracing an arm against the door frame. “Janessa, there’s no way she decides to marry someone after a few months. No way. So, I’m pretty sure this was going on while she and I were still married. And you know what? It’s not that I care, because I got no call to care. I can’t throw stones, not with after what I did, but, hell, I want to know the truth.”

  “The truth is that we’ve only been together a few months,” said Garth.

  “And that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Garth sighed. He looked down at his shoes and then up at Reilly. “Listen, there’s maybe a little more to it than just what you heard, but I don’t know if I feel right sharing it with you, not if Janessa didn’t want to tell you. She must have had some reason to keep it to herself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think maybe you’ll need to talk to her,” said Garth. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “On the other hand, talking to you upsets her, and it’d probably be better not to upset her right now.”

  “Listen, if there’s something that you should be telling me, please speak up,” said Reilly.

  “Or what?” said Garth. “You threatening me?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Reilly, but he didn’t give up any ground either. “I would never do that.”

  Garth smirked. “Right.” He didn’t sound as though he believed Reilly.

  “Listen,” said Reilly, “I’m not leaving until you start talking.”

  “I can see why she divorced you,” said Garth.

  “You can insult me all you want. It’s not going to change anything. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Garth didn’t say anything.

  “Come on,” said Reilly. “Spit it out.”

  Garth spread his hands. “She’s pregnant.”

  Reilly suddenly felt as though the world had tilted sideways. He scrabbled at the door frame, clutching it like it was the only firm thing in a sudden storm. “What?”

  “I don’t know if she doesn’t want you to know for some reason, but I think it’s better if there aren’t a lot of secrets. Anything that’ll keep you from making her feel unbalanced. She needs to care of herself right now. I don’t know if she’ll agree with my decision to tell you, but I guess that’s something she and I will have to talk about.”

  “What?” Reilly said again.

  “It wasn’t planned,” said Garth. “It happened, and we would have done it differently if we had the opportunity, but we didn’t, so we’re making the best of it. I always wanted a family. I’m excited. I think she is too. It’s fast, but it’s going to be good.”

  Reilly shook his head.

  “All right, well, I told you,” said Garth. “Now, I’ll thank you to get off my porch.”

  Reilly stumbled backwards, scrambling down to the steps. He didn’t say goodbye. He fought his way across the road back to his car and got inside, slamming the door closed against everything out there. He was having trouble catching his breath.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Well, well, well,” said Hawk Marner, peering down at Reilly. “If it isn’t the detective.” Hawk was holding a beer and he was standing up next to the bar.

  Reilly was sitting down at a bar stool. He’d ordered a shot and a beer, and he’d been hunched over his drinks, committed to doing nothing except drinking them as quickly as possible. He thought he’d done a good job of conveying that he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but maybe Hawk was shit at reading body language.

  “This seat taken?” said Hawk, already settling down on the stool next to Reilly.

  Reilly glanced at him. “What if that seat is taken?”

  Hawk set his beer down on the bar. “You don’t want to talk to me, Detective?”

  “No,” said Reilly tersely.

  Hawk laughed.

  Reilly sighed. He had a shot in front of him. He downed it. Grimaced. Chased it with beer.

  “You don’t look like you’re doing too well, there,” said Hawk.

  Reilly glared at him over the beer bottle. “What do you want?”

  “Just making friendly conversation.” Hawk turned outward to face the rest of the room, resting one arm on the bar. “Not that it comes real easily to me, especially since I know you thought I was capable of murdering little girls.”

  “You were one of a number of suspects,” said Reilly. “And I happen to have it on good authority that you’re visiting the jackass who was responsible. You go see him once a week like clockwork.”

  “Major’s family,” said Hawk. “You don’t abandon family.”

  Reilly took a drink of beer. He was in a bad mood, and he didn’t even know why. The news he’d gotten from Garth Gardner, it had tinged everything in the universe with a dark brush. He couldn’t understand why.

  No, that wasn’t it. He could understand, if he wanted to admit it to himself, but he didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t want to examine his emotions and confront whatever it was inside him that was reacting to this news.

  Instead, he was drinking.

  Hell, maybe Hawk was a good distraction. He surveyed the other man. “You really want us to have a friendly beer together now and again?”

  “Sure.” Hawk shrugged.

  “Why? What do you care?”

  “Maybe I don’t,” said Hawk. “Maybe I’ll go and see if someone wants to play pool.” He dug in his pocket and came up with some quarters for the table.

  “You any good at pool?” said Reilly, standing up from the bar.

  Hawk raised his eyebrows. “I’m not bad.”

  “Fine. Sure. I’ll play.”

  Hawk laughed. “I thought you wanted rid of me, Detective.”

  Reilly picked up his beer and headed across the room to the pool table. He looked it over, the green felt worn off in a few places. He picked up the triangle rack, moved it to the proper side of the table.

  Hawk was there, putting quarters in the table. “Loser pays?”

  “Sure,” said Reilly, fishing out some quarters of his own and setting them down on the table.

  The balls came down with a rumble. Hawk went to get a cue stick.

  Reilly started lining up pool balls, alternating solids and stripes, in the rack. “You can break,” he told Hawk. “It’s your money.”

  “Fine,” said Hawk.

  Reilly finished racking the balls and then got a cue stick. He rubbed blue chalk on the end.

  Hawk, at the other end of the table, bent over with his stick, squinting at the balls. He hit the cue ball, propelling it into the other balls, sending them flying. Nothing went in. Hawk made a face at the table, as if it had failed him.

  “You and Wren,” said Reilly.

  Hawk glanced at him. “So, you bring up Wren? Well, surprise, surprise.”

  “She and I work together,” said Reilly. “I need her sharp to do her job, and I can’t be sure you’re conducive to her doing her best work.”

  “Ah,” said Hawk. “So, it’s all about job performance, then?”

  Reilly didn’t respond. He stalked down to the end of the table and lined up the white ball with a striped ball. He tapped it into the pocket and then straightened.

  “What?” said Hawk. “You looking for congratulations? Nice shot, Detective.” But there was an ironic tinge to his tone.

  Reilly lined up another shot. He knocked another ball in.

  Hawk sighed, leaning on his cue stick.

  Reilly lined up another shot. “You and Wren. What happened?” He took the shot, but the ball bounced off the pocket
and rolled across the table. He straightened.

  “What happened?” Hawk repeated. “I’m not sure I understand. You want a blow by blow, because I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable—”

  “Back then,” said Reilly, and even as he said it, he couldn’t believe he was saying it out loud. As if any of this was his business, as if it wasn’t encroaching on Wren’s personal life, as if it wasn’t unprofessional as hell. What the fuck, though? He was having a shit day.

  “Back when?” Hawk leaned over the table and knocked in a solid ball. He strode around the table, surveying the balls. His tone sounded distracted, as if he was more interested in the pool table.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” Reilly furiously rubbed blue chalk on his cue stick. “You’re the one who told me about it. About David Song and the initiates.”

  Hawk lined up another shot and took it. “I might have filled in the broad strokes for you, Detective. I didn’t realize your imagination was running wild with it all. Were you thinking about little Wren Delacroix when she was ten years old? Is that what you’ve been picturing to yourself? When do you think about her?” The ball went into a pocket.

  “You know that’s not—”

  “Yeah, sorry,” said Hawk. “I shouldn’t accuse you of something like that, should I? It’s not like I have any reason to think that about you.”

  Reilly’s nostrils flared.

  “Sure,” said Hawk, walking around to line up another shot. “I find Wren attractive now. It obviously follows that I found her attractive when she was a kid. And you find her attractive, too, right?” He looked up at Reilly with a hard smile, and then took the shot, still holding Reilly’s gaze.

  The ball went in the pocket.

  Reilly grimaced.

  “So, it follows you would have found her attractive back then, too, I guess.”

  “We’re not talking about attraction, we’re talking about actions,” said Reilly. “We’re talking about abuse. We’re talking about a crime.”

  Hawk chuckled softly. “You don’t know shit about any of it.” He approached Reilly, stopped five inches away from him, looked him in the eye, and spoke in a low voice. “I was sixteen at that initiation ceremony and then my name was called, and they told me she was supposed to come home with me, and I was supposed to look out for her. I was sixteen, and they’d already driven me out to watch people get their heads blown off while they slept in their beds. I still remember the way it smelled in the Johnson house. That coppery scent, and the way that the blood was splattered all over the wall, and the way that Lexi Hill was laughing like a hyena the whole time, and that was just a regular day on the compound. And it’s not as though I had anywhere else to go, because I didn’t. My mother left me there with the FCL when I was five years old, and no one’s heard from her since. After she left, Vivian Delacroix took me aside and she said that they would let me stay, and they would feed me and clothe me, but that I had to devote myself to the Crimson Ram and do his bidding whenever asked. And she was the mouthpiece of the Crimson Ram. She was the woman that first dosed me with drugs, and she was the woman who said that spilling blood was the way to salvation, because weren’t we all washed in the blood? Spill the blood, she’d say. Spill it for his glory, she’d say.” Hawk pulled back, and he was smiling. “Is it my shot?”

  Reilly swallowed.

  Hawk turned back to the table. He lined up another shot. “I guess what I’m saying, is that back then, I was a kid and I had a lot of pressure on me.”

  “If you hurt her back then, it’s sick to be with her now. It’s sick for the two of you to be going to her father’s wedding together and pretending like you’re some kind of normal couple. She can never properly consent to anything.”

  Hawk hit the cue ball, but it didn’t connect with anything else. He gestured to the table. “Your shot, Detective.” His voice was subdued now.

  Reilly was still talking. Why, he didn’t know. “I’m not saying that it was a cakewalk for you growing up there. I’m not saying that at all. But if you care about Wren, you shouldn’t make things harder on her.”

  Hawk’s jaw twitched. “You know, when you and I had this conversation before, and I explained to you about the pairings, I distinctly remember saying to you that I never touched Wren. I wouldn’t have. She was a scared little bird, and I knew it was my job to keep her safe.” His voice wasn’t strong now. He squared his shoulders.

  “You swear to me that’s the truth?” said Reilly.

  Hawk tossed his cue stick on the table. “I think I’ve lost interest in this pool game.”

  “Look, I know that I’ve got no call to talk to you about this shit,” said Reilly. “It’s only that I can’t bring it up with Wren. I can’t ask her about it. But I need to know.” For some perverse reason.

  “Have a good night, Detective.” Hawk walked away.

  Reilly watched him go, watched Hawk walk out the door and into the night. Reilly took another drink of his beer. He collected the quarters he’d put on the table and stuck them in his pocket.

  Hell.

  * * *

  “Hawk?” Wren was at the door to her house. “Are you on something?”

  “No,” said Hawk, who was standing at the foot of the steps to her porch, looking up at her. “Well, I had a few beers. Does that count?”

  “I’m working on this profile thing,” she said. “For the case.” The truth was, she was so annoyed with her inability to put together a profile that she’d been drawing pictures of butterflies in an app on her phone for the better part of an hour. But he didn’t need to know that. She was supposed to be working on the profile. That was the important thing. Maybe if Hawk left, she’d actually get some brilliant bit of insight.

  On the other hand, she knew that something was wrong. Usually, when she looked at a scene, it just happened. She could understand the killer by looking at his handiwork, and she used the information she’d gotten at the FBI Academy, and she put it all together, just like that. She had the profile, right then. It was something that came naturally to her. This wasn’t coming naturally, and she probably wasn’t going to be able to force it.

  She wondered if she was broken in some way now. Maybe Hawk would be a good distraction. “You want to come in?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to intrude. Maybe, if you have a few minutes to take a break, you could walk with me?”

  “It’s kind of cold out there,” she said.

  He nodded. “All right. Well, see you later, then.” He turned, hunching down into his jacket, and started away from the house.

  She was confused. This wasn’t like Hawk. “Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

  He stopped and turned. “I thought… I thought it was like a sign or something when you showed back up. I didn’t think of anything except how much I missed you, and how good it was for you to be back. All the time you were gone, something was missing, and I didn’t realize it was you until you were here again.”

  She looked at him. “Why don’t you come in?”

  “Nah, I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t need to bother you.”

  She reached over and got her leather jacket off a hook where it was hanging near the door. She slipped into her boots. She crossed the porch and went down the steps and stood next to him. “What’s up, Hawk?”

  “I just… hell, I need to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For…” His gray eyes shone in the light from her porch. “Hell, you said it when you picked me up from the hospital. You said that you were saying it over and over again, and that I wouldn’t let you reject me. I pushed is what I did.”

  “Um… okay.” She blinked. This was out of left field. He was always so sure of himself. Maybe he pushed, but she was used to that pushing from him. She’d come to rely on it. It was the current that she drifted on. He pushed, and she went along with it, and it was comfortable.

  “I’m not gonna come by again,” he said. “I’ll leave
you be.”

  “Really?” She folded her arms over her chest. “I thought you didn’t care about what people thought or about doing the right thing. I thought you didn’t care about being bad for me.”

  He hung his head. “I said that shit ‘cause I wanted you to argue with me, tell me I wasn’t bad for you, tell me… I don’t know… Doesn’t matter.”

  “Did something happen?” She furrowed her brow. “What’s going on?”

  “Uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I found out from Detective Reilly that your father’s getting married.”

  She stilled. “You talk to Reilly?”

  “You never told me about the wedding,” said Hawk. “Reilly said something like we’d be going to it together.” He let out a short laugh. “I didn’t know a damned thing about it. I felt…” He looked up at her. “Well, that’s when I realized that this thing I’m doing with you, it’s not fair to you. If you wanted me in your life, you would have told me about your dad’s wedding.”

  “Hawk…” She twisted her hands together.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “I get it. I think you’ve been trying to tell me all along, but I’ve been too busy bulldozing my way into your bed, and it’s not cool. It’s just fucked up. I’m fucked up. To think you would want me, that I could be anything you needed… I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, come on.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. She didn’t like seeing him like this.

  He looked into her eyes. “I got so caught up in what you were doing for me. When you’re around, I’m better. But I didn’t think about what I was doing to you. I’m supposed to take care of you, little bird, not hurt you.”

  “I’m not hurt,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  He looked her up and down, as if he could confirm or deny this with a visual examination.

  “Why would you think I wasn’t fine?”

  “You keep telling me you don’t want me,” he said.

  “I keep saying I don’t want a commitment. I’m confused, but I’m not damaged.” She considered. “Well, we’re neither of us in particularly healthy places in our lives, but you’re not making things worse for me.”

  He ran a hand through his chin-length hair.