Wren Delacroix Series Box Set

by V. J. Chambers

  And that was when the trees started to thin out and she could see a barn in the distance.

  Oh, hell, she knew where she was. This was the old Burney farm. She remembered, because they used to have parties out here when she was in high school, parties in that barn, because no one lived out here anymore, and it was far enough away from houses for the noise not to bother anyone. But she was close to the road. She was going to make it out of here.

  Unfortunately, she was not walking in the direction of the road.

  She reoriented herself and began to head through the fields. She knew where she was going now.

  * * *

  “What I don’t understand is why you brought him out there,” Lopez was saying.

  “You know,” said Reilly, “I don’t understand it either, but seriously, we’ve been doing the runaround here for hours. I need to go, and you need to let Hawk go too, because, as I’ve explained, Wren Delacroix is missing.”

  “We’re not holding you,” said Lopez, gesturing around his office where he and Reilly were talking. Through the windows, covered in open slatted blinds, Reilly could see Hawk sitting at a desk in the other part of the office, drinking Coca-Cola from a can. “How could we? There’s no crime. Unless you’re lying to me about what happened for some reason.”

  “I’m not. Why would you say that?” Reilly folded his arms over his chest.

  “I don’t know, Reilly, you’ve been acting kind of guilty ever since we showed up. Maybe that’s because you were technically out of our jurisdiction—”

  “I had to call our department,” said Reilly. “We’re the ones who arrested Baldwin in the first place.”

  “Yes, so nice of you to saddle us with the paperwork of dealing with his dead body.”

  Reilly’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

  “It only makes sense,” said Lopez, “if you have something to hide, and you figured that I would take you at your word.”

  “I don’t have anything to hide,” said Reilly quietly.

  “He killed himself?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Pretty much. He kind of monologued first. How many times are we going to go over this?”

  “What kind of guy escapes jail to shoot himself?”

  “He did it because he was caught. He would have rather died than gone back to jail.”

  “But he had disarmed you, you said. He could have shot you.”

  “But he knew that if he did that, he’d be hunted down and hauled back to jail, and that he’d never get away, not after killing a cop.” Reilly felt like an idiot, going over this again. Maybe if he weren’t stretching the truth a little bit, he would have refused to. The problem was that the situation didn’t make sense, not really. If Reilly hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have believed it himself.

  Which was why he didn’t see any reason to tell anyone that Hawk had talked a man into shooting himself, because who would even believe that?

  Besides, it got in the way of Wren. They needed to be finding Wren, not dallying with all of this. Hell, the sun was coming up outside the window.

  “You know, you say all that, and it sounds rational, but I feel like you’re leaving something out,” said Lopez. “Why’d you go after this guy on your own? Why didn’t you call in your information?”

  “Because Wren is missing,” said Reilly. “I didn’t have time for procedure. I thought he had her, and I thought he would hurt her. I had to move as quickly as I could.”

  “Right,” Lopez said quietly.

  “It’s not like that,” Reilly muttered.

  Lopez looked at him sharply. “It had better not be. We’ve already dodged a bullet with Maliah Wright. I don’t know if the two of you are aware, but those forms for interoffice relationships need to be filled out for extramarital affairs too.”

  Reilly flinched.

  Lopez sighed. “I don’t know what you want from me. I had someone call the Cardinal Falls department. They’re out looking for Delacroix right now.”

  “What? They hate her in Cardinal Falls. They’re probably having a party because she’s disappeared. Hell, they’re probably responsible.”

  Lopez raised his eyebrows at Reilly.

  “Look, we’re just going to have to do this later,” said Reilly. “I have to go now.”

  * * *

  Hawk tapped a foot against the pavement while Reilly unlocked his car. He didn’t have one of those fancy clickers for his car anymore, one that could unlock all the doors with a push of a button. He’d had one, but then he’d lost it, and they were crazy expensive to replace, so he’d just been going without for years now.

  Reilly reached over and opened the passenger side door.

  Hawk got in. “It took you long enough in there.”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” said Reilly.

  “Is it because you insisted we stick to a story?” said Hawk, buckling his seatbelt. “They knew you were lying, right?”

  Reilly started the car. “Look, it doesn’t matter what you said to the guy. He made the choice. You said that you couldn’t have convinced him of it if he didn’t really want it, anyway, right? So, whatever. There we are. It’s not even really a story, it’s just leaving out impertinent information.” He pulled the car out of the parking lot.

  “Well, whatever the case, we were in there forever,” said Hawk. “And what the hell are we going to do about Wren?”

  “You should be thanking me, anyway. I kept you off their radar, and you could easily be on it.”

  “For what? Talking?”

  “Are you forgetting that you were a suspect only weeks ago? And that you have ties to Major Hill? And that you’re, you know, creepy.”

  “Creepy?” Hawk laughed.

  Reilly gripped the steering wheel. “Whatever. Wren likes you, and you care about her. That’s obvious. So, I mean, that’s enough for me. Let’s just figure out where she might be. You were talking about making a list of all the people in Cardinal Falls who might have it out for her?”

  “I thought we decided that was a waste of time.”

  “It was when we had the lead on Baldwin,” said Reilly. “But now, we have nothing else, so we’ve got to start somewhere.” He jerked a thumb toward the back seat. “There’s a notebook and pen back there.”

  Hawk reached around the front seat and came back with the notebook.

  “Okay,” said Reilly. “What are you thinking? All the surviving members of all of the victims?”

  “Well, that’s going to be a list, all right,” muttered Hawk, paging to a blank piece of paper. “Should we count all of them or just the ones who live in the area still?”

  “Just the ones in the area,” said Reilly. “For now.”

  * * *

  Wren wasn’t sure if she should run when she saw the Cardinal Falls police car. After all, maybe Oliver had the police on his side. Maybe he’d discovered that she’d escaped, and he had them all out on the road, looking for her. She wouldn’t put it past Oliver or the police in town. None of them liked her.

  The rift between the FCL and the community of Cardinal Falls was deep. It had been simmering long before the murders. You could say that the way that the community had fought the FCL had caused the murders in some way. Not that the community was responsible. No, Vivian and her army were responsible for that.

  Anyway, once the FCL started killing people, some of the people in Cardinal Falls seemed to think it might be okay to kill too. Or to hold people in old wells so that their bone marrow could be forcibly extracted.

  So, she probably should run.

  But she didn’t have running in her anymore.

  Besides, she’d come all the way out to the road so that she could get to a car, and so that she could get help. She was going to have to take her chances.

  The police car pulled up right next to her and the passenger door opened. Jim McNamara leaned across the car. “Wren Delacroix, we’ve been looking everywhere for y
ou. Get in.”

  She hesitated. “You been talking to Oliver?”

  “Who?” said McNamara.

  Then she made a decision and climbed into the car, pulling the door closed after her.

  McNamara grinned at her. “How are you?”

  “Uh… been better,” said Wren.

  “Right,” said McNamara. “Well, I’ll take you down to the station and we’ll call Detective Reilly. You’ll probably feel more comfortable talking to him.”

  The thought made her feel the first bit of relief. “Yes, get me Reilly.” Of course, McNamara could be lying.

  “Hey, you know, we haven’t talked much since… well, ever, but I knew you in high school.”

  “Yeah?” Was he going somewhere with this? “It’s a small town. We all knew each other.”

  “Well, yeah. I was probably kind of a shit back then. I’m sorry about that.”

  Was this guy serious?

  “You know, someday when you’re feeling better, I wonder if you’d ever be interested in, you know, maybe grabbing dinner together?”

  She gaped at him. “What?”

  “Like a date?” He grinned at her.

  Wren shook her head. Unbelievable.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Twenty minutes later, Wren was wrapped in a blanket in the Cardinal Falls Police Station and Reilly and Hawk were coming across the room for her.

  Reilly and Hawk. Together.

  What the hell was that?

  The sight of them nearly broke her. For the first time since all of this had started, she felt like crying. But she didn’t. She didn’t want the police officers here to see her weak like that.

  She got up, and her blanket fell off her shoulders. She took a step toward them both.

  And then Hawk was there, and she was in his arms. She buried her face against his flannel shirt and breathed in the smell of him.

  “Little bird,” he murmured in her ear.

  She held onto him for several long moments, but then she didn’t want anyone in the station to see that either, and so she let go of him, and turned to Reilly.

  For a minute, she thought Reilly was going to hug her too. But he didn’t. He grabbed one of her hands and squeezed it. His voice was tattered. “Wren.”

  “What happened?” said Hawk.

  Wren shook her head. “Not here. I don’t want to talk about it here.”

  “This is the police station,” said Hawk. “Who did this to you? You need to tell them so that they can go after him.”

  She shook her head. “No. No, I just want to go to the Daily Bean and get coffee. Can we do that? Please?”

  “We can do that,” said Reilly.

  * * *

  Wren tried to take another drink of her coffee, but it was drained. She’d drunk it all. “So, anyway, then I figured out where I was, and I got to the road, which is where McNamara picked me up.”

  Wren, Hawk, and Reilly were back at her place. They were all sitting in her living room.

  Hawk was sitting on the couch, elbows resting on his knees, shaking his head. “That bastard. You have to go to the police, Wren. You have to. He kidnapped you. He hurt you. He threw you in a well.”

  “The police in Cardinal Falls are not going to believe me,” said Wren.

  “Well, you don’t know that until you try,” said Hawk.

  “Besides, he… I don’t know, I don’t know if he meant it,” said Wren. “He’s been through a lot, what with his father being murdered and his sister having leukemia. Maybe he kind of broke down.”

  Hawk turned to Reilly. “You going to convince her she’s being an idiot here?”

  Reilly set down his ginger latte, which looked empty too. “I wouldn’t use those words.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” said Hawk. He turned to Wren. “I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

  “What Oliver did, Wren, it’s a crime,” said Reilly.

  “Yeah, so what? He goes to jail?” said Wren. “How does that help anything? It just makes things harder for his family, and they’ve already been through a lot.”

  “You need to go down there right now and press charges,” said Hawk.

  “Well, I don’t think the statute of limitations is going to run out anytime soon,” said Reilly. “You could nap first.”

  Wren smiled at him.

  Hawk sighed.

  “Take some time to think about it,” said Reilly. “You don’t have to make a decision today. But I don’t think you can just let it go. This guy has to understand there are consequences for what he did.”

  Wren’s head hurt. She was exhausted, but now that she’d had coffee, her heart had started to beat faster, and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to fall asleep. It was stupid to have drunk the coffee.

  “Plus, you threw yourself from a moving car,” said Reilly. “You should probably go to the hospital.”

  “Ugh, no,” said Wren. “I can’t handle the hospital right now. Besides, it’s not as if I have a benefits package from the task force since you’re just paying me out of discretionary funds.”

  “Hmm,” said Reilly. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”

  Wren slid down in her chair, getting comfortable. “Anyway, I want to know all about how it is that you two ended up together. That is about the least likely pairing I can think of.”

  “We were looking for you,” said Hawk. “We were both worried.”

  “So, you team up?” Wren looked back and forth at them. “What the hell happened?”

  “It’s kind of a long story,” said Reilly.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Wren, propping her legs up on her coffee table. “Spill.”

  Reilly laughed, shaking his head. “Well, this guy named Baldwin escaped from prison, and I thought he had you. So, Hawk and I went looking for him.”

  “Oh,” said Wren. “Did you find him?”

  “We did,” said Hawk.

  “So, you arrested him?” said Wren.

  “Actually, he shot himself,” said Reilly.

  “Whoa,” said Wren. “So, while I was off in a well, you guys were hunting down a bad guy. Together.”

  Reilly surveyed Hawk. “I’ll say this. If you want someone to have your back, you could do worse than Hawk.”

  Hawk spread his hands. “I didn’t do anything. Not really.”

  Reilly pointed at Hawk. “You ever think about going into sales? I feel like you could talk anyone into anything.”

  Hawk’s ears turned a little red.

  Wren was completely thrown by this. Were they… bantering? Whatever it was, it was strange, but she kind of liked it. Reilly had accepted Hawk. That was huge. She got up out of her chair, and then immediately decided that was a bad idea and sat back down.

  Both of the men were on their feet, worried.

  “You okay?” said Reilly.

  “What happened?” said Hawk.

  She started giggling. Oh, hell, was this her life? How was this her life? She was pretty sure that coffee was wearing off. “I just think I need to sleep,” she said. “Maybe a shower first. And then sleep. Lots of sleep.”

  * * *

  She slept until near dinner time, and when she woke up, Hawk was there, and he was ready to run errands to pick up whatever she thought she wanted to eat.

  “Unless,” he said, “you want me to leave, which is fine, because I know we were in the middle of an argument, and if you don’t want to see me right now, I get that. I’m gone. Just say the word.”

  Right, right. The thing with the girl and the wine and her being suspicious of Hawk… Thinking about it made her feel tired. She wished she could just forget about all of it.

  “There will be time to deal with that later,” she said. “If you’re volunteering to go pick up pizza, I am taking you up on it.”

  “One pizza coming up,” said Hawk.

  He ate and they talked about trivial things, TV shows they were both watching and whether or not to dip the pizza into the provide
d garlic butter or just the crust.

  And then she was tired again, and she wanted to go to bed, and Hawk crawled into her bed with her, and neither of them commented on that. They didn’t do anything except hold each other and sleep. She really was a walking bruise, and she wouldn’t have had the energy for anything else.

  She woke in the middle of the night to Hawk thrashing next to her, whimpering.

  Sitting up, she took hold of his shoulders and shook him. “You’re dreaming, Hawk,” she said. “Wake up. You’re dreaming.”

  His eyes snapped open. He was sweaty and out of breath and he sat up in bed and gasped until he got his breathing under control while she rubbed his back.

  Finally, he lay back down on the pillow and lay on his side.

  She lay down on her side, facing him. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Don’t even remember it exactly,” he said softly. “Just some images that are floating away. Vivian’s eyes. The Crimson Ram galloping away on a black horse.”

  She brushed his hair away from his face. “I have nightmares like that sometimes too.”

  “It’s nicer to wake up with you here than alone,” he said.

  She hummed her agreement and satisfaction, scooting closer, winding her arms around him.

  He traced one of his fingers down over her back, over the curve of her hip.

  She buried her face in his chest. “I’m sorry about the wedding.”

  “I shouldn’t have given that girl a drink of wine. I don’t even know her or her family. It was inappropriate.”

  “Well… in fairness, you don’t have a lot of templates to draw on for typical appropriateness. Growing up the way we did, nothing was normal.”

  He disentangled himself, rolling onto his back.

  “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not attracted to little girls.”

  “I know that,” she said softly.

  “But…”

  But? Her pulse flared once, in alarm.

  He looked at the ceiling. “I wasn’t attracted to you when you were ten, when we were forced to sleep in the same bed.”

  “Hawk, I know this.”

  “But when you were sixteen, when you kissed me—”