Wren Delacroix Series Box Set

by V. J. Chambers

  By the time Reilly made it out of the prison, Wren was out in the parking lot. She was talking to someone who was standing next to his car, and then Reilly saw the man give Wren a cigarette. Wren lit the thing with shaking hands and then handed him back his lighter.

  Reilly took a deep breath and then started across the parking lot to her.

  When he got to her, she was coughing out smoke.

  “Nasty habit,” he said softly.

  She coughed and then took a drag. “I’m out of practice,” she managed before another coughing fit overtook her.

  Reilly snatched the cigarette out of her hand and tossed it to the ground. He started to step on it, but she pushed him out of the way.

  She bent over to pick up the cigarette, and her purse slipped off her shoulder. It overturned and things spilled all over the pavement. “Fuck,” said Wren in a defeated voice. Cigarette abandoned, she gazed down at all her belongings on the ground.

  Reilly got to his knees and started picking things up.

  In a moment, she joined him.

  She shoved her keys back into her purse. A tube of lipstick. Her wallet.

  Reilly picked up a tin of mints. A pen. Some kind of small box, which he didn’t look at until he was handing it over to her, and then he realized what it was.

  They locked gazes over it, her hands closing on the box of pregnancy tests just as the realization of it all washed over him. They both held onto it and stared at each other.

  A moment passed.

  Two.

  He let go of the box.

  She put it back in her purse.

  He looked around for anything else that had fallen out. He retrieved two more pens and a hair tie and gave them to her. Then, without meeting her gaze, he went over to the driver’s side of the car and got in.

  Seconds later, she got in the passenger’s side and slammed the door shut.

  He pulled out of the parking lot.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Uh…” Reilly stared over Angela’s shoulder at the chalkboard proclaiming the specials in the Daily Bean. “Do you have anything without, um, caffeine?”

  “I want caffeine, you asshole,” snarled Wren from behind him. She shoved him out of the way. “I can order my own drink.” She looked at Angela. “I want, um, I want—”

  “Should you have caffeine, though?” said Reilly. “I mean, it’s been awhile since I went through this with Janessa, but I remember that she didn’t do coffee—”

  “Shut. Up.” Wren glared at him.

  Reilly shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at his shoes.

  Wren turned back to Angela. “You made me this salt thing once?”

  “A sea salt coffee?”

  “Yeah,” said Wren. “I remember saying I could stand to do one of those again.”

  “Coming right up,” said Angela. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” said Wren. “I’m absolutely fucking fine.”

  Angela winced a little at the expletive.

  “Sorry,” Wren muttered.

  “I’ll get you your coffee,” said Angela. She smiled at Reilly. “Ginger latte? Triple shot?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Same as always.” He glanced at Wren. “Listen, Wren, I think we need—”

  “Not in here,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  And then they were quiet again, as quiet as they’d been on the drive over, during which he hadn’t asked if she wanted to get coffee. He’d just driven here. It wasn’t until he’d pulled in that he’d thought of the caffeine problem.

  Moments passed.

  Finally, the coffee was ready, and they went back to Reilly’s car.

  They got inside, and he didn’t start the car. He drank his coffee. “Wren, just because Hawk went to that Spencer guy, it doesn’t mean that he’s a killer.”

  “It does,” said Wren.

  “It only means that he…” Reilly drank more coffee. “Okay, so he drove all the way to Richmond and targeted some random guy to get his phone, and then what, made him call—”

  “Hawk used Spencer’s phone. He called me himself,” she said. “When I think about it now, I recognize his voice. I recognized it all along, I think, in the back of my head. But I didn’t—I couldn’t let myself—make the connection.”

  “Okay, but still, that doesn’t mean that he killed anyone.”

  “He wanted me back in Cardinal Falls,” she said. “I think he thought that if I came back, he could stop.”

  “But there’s no evidence—”

  “He always says these weird things to be about how I make him better, but then yesterday, he said that he was wrong. It wasn’t true. Because when he killed Oliver, he killed him for me. He can’t stop, not even with me around.”

  “There were two more bodies after you returned to town. What does it have to do with your being around?”

  “Vada was killed before I had seen Hawk,” she said. “And Jenny Smith was different, remember? The body with the face covered? I said that it was regret, that the killer was ashamed of what he did. And that night, it was the first night that Hawk and I were… together.”

  Reilly looked away. “That’s circumstantial.”

  “Why are you suddenly his fan club? I didn’t think you liked him. You said he was creepy.”

  “I’m not his fan club,” said Reilly. “I just don’t want this to be true… for you. Especially with…” He gestured at her coffee cup, as if that was somehow related.

  “I don’t want it to be true either,” she said.

  “So, maybe it isn’t,” he said.

  “He gave wine to a little girl at my father’s wedding.”

  “You think that means…?”

  “The murders are about being sexually attracted to girls that age. He’s admitted to me that he was attracted to me when I was too young for him to be attracted to me. He…” She swallowed. “It’s always been him, and I’ve known it since I ran into him after I found Vada’s body. He was out in the woods, watching the police bag it up, because killers do that. They like to see the effects of their handiwork.”

  Reilly didn’t say anything.

  She sipped at her coffee.

  “That, um, that good? The sea salt thing?”

  “You run out of things to say to try to convince me that I’m wrong?”

  “I just… I had a thought,” said Reilly.

  “What?” she said.

  “Did you, uh, did you talk to Hawk about the case with Noah Adams?”

  “A little bit, at the end. I told him that we needed evidence to prove that he did it. I might have even said that finding the gun he used would have helped. I know that probably wasn’t the responsible thing to do, but sometimes it’s hard to shut it all off.”

  “No, I get it. I’m not chastising you.”

  “So, why bring it up?”

  “You, uh, you said that he killed Oliver for you.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, I’m just thinking about Noah Adams.”

  “Noah killed himself.”

  “Yeah, he did,” said Reilly. “But I watched Hawk talk Colt Baldwin into turning the shotgun on himself.”

  “Wait, what?” She slammed her coffee cup into the cup holder. “What the hell? How do you talk someone into killing themselves?”

  “He just… did it,” said Reilly. “I told you, he’s creepy.”

  “And you think he did the same thing to Noah Adams?”

  Reilly spread his hands. “I don’t know. It probably doesn’t matter. I doubt you could prosecute him for it. It’s pretty obvious that Noah pulled the trigger himself. Hawk told me that you couldn’t talk someone into it unless they already wanted to.”

  “Oh, so you guys talked technique? What the hell, Reilly, why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I…” He started the car. “I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to face how I felt about him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t k
now.” He was defensive about it, and he didn’t know why that was either.

  “Because with me, it makes sense, but I don’t see why you’d have some vested interest in keeping him pure as the driven snow.”

  “I don’t. Actually, he’s rubbed me the wrong way since the very beginning. I’ve never liked him.”

  “So, then, why?”

  “Well, it doesn’t make sense, me not liking him.” Reilly tore out of the parking lot, throwing Wren back against her seat.

  “Geez, watch the coffee,” she said, reaching out to protect it.

  “I thought maybe I didn’t like him just because you had some thing with him.”

  “Why should that matter?”

  “It shouldn’t,” he snapped.

  She glanced at him and then quickly away.

  “It doesn’t.” This time, his voice was quieter. “It doesn’t at all.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Look, let me do it,” Reilly said. He was standing inside Wren’s office.

  “No,” she said, toying with her phone. “It has to be me.”

  “It doesn’t have to be you. It shouldn’t be you. You’re too connected to him. We have to turn the entire case over to other people. We’re both compromised at this point. You’re involved with him. I know him socially. We should get someone else in here right away, have them do it.”

  “No one else knows the case like we do,” she said.

  “What you’re saying is that Hawk completely changed his victim type—”

  “For me,” she said. “The other victims, I think they were substitutes for me in some way. But now, he has me. The real me. He thought that would be enough to stem his urge to kill, but when it wasn’t, he just twisted his killing so that it would be about me in some way. It’s always been about me. It still is.”

  “This the kind of thing that you study in the FBI? There a profile for this?”

  “No,” she said. “No, he doesn’t fit at all.”

  “But you’re convinced.”

  “I don’t want to be convinced. I want something to prove to me that it isn’t him at all, and that he’s innocent. That’s what I want.”

  “Yeah, and then you and Hawk can start decorating a nursery together.”

  “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head at him.

  “Sorry,” he said. He dragged a hand over the top of his head. “This is all extremely fucked up, you recognize that, right?”

  “I need it to be me, because he’ll suspect anyone else.” She pointed. “Go out into the hall. I can’t look at you while I’m doing it. It’ll mess me up.”

  “Wren…” He sighed.

  “Maybe he’ll have an alibi.”

  “You know he doesn’t.”

  “Maybe he’ll say something that will prove it’s not him.”

  He sucked in a breath and then he did as she said. He went out into the hallway.

  Wren dialed him on her phone.

  Hawk picked up on the second ring. “Little bird? Haven’t heard from you in a few days.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve been busy with work.” Did she sound normal? Would he hear anything suspicious in her voice? “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I need you to do me a big favor and come down to headquarters so that we can talk to you again about some of Major’s murders and also about Oliver. Major’s recanting his confession, and he’s pointing the finger at you. I just need to make sure we go over it again so that there’s no question of your guilt if anyone else would look into it. Do you think you could do that for me?”

  “Sure, no problem,” said Hawk. “You think we could do something tonight? Maybe dinner? Maybe not burgers at the bait and tackle shop?”

  She forced a laugh out of her lips. “You mean, an actual date, Hawk? I don’t know.”

  “Come on, say yes. One date won’t kill you.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Sure. We can do dinner.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll be down to headquarters in the next ten minutes.”

  * * *

  But he never showed up.

  They waited twenty minutes, Wren pacing almost the entire time, her heart in her throat.

  Then they waited ten more minutes. This time, Wren sat in a chair in her office, feeling a sense of dread surround her.

  She called Hawk again, then, because he was late.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I fucked up,” she muttered. “I tipped him off somehow. He knew, and he ran.”

  “That’s crazy, Wren,” said Reilly. “I heard you. You sounded completely normal.”

  “It’s because I agreed to the date,” said Wren. “I would never do that. I don’t go out on dates with him. I’m always pushing him away. And the other night, when he came by, I made him leave, because the suspicions were boiling over inside me, and he must have sensed that something was wrong. He asked me out as a test. If everything had been okay, I would have turned him down flat. Damn it, I fucked up.”

  Reilly shook his head at her. “You have a really weird relationship with this guy.”

  “It’s not a relationship,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  “And you know what else?” she said. “He’s been trying to pin Oliver’s death on me. He kept making these hints, little jibes here and there, and damned if it wasn’t working. I was starting to believe it.”

  “Yeah,” said Reilly. “He did that to me too.”

  “He was playing us,” said Wren. She shook her head, laughing helplessly. “He’s exactly like my mother.”

  “You know, we still haven’t talked about that,” said Reilly. “This has been a really traumatic day for you, and—”

  “Stop,” said Wren.

  “I’m only saying that maybe we don’t need to go full speed ahead. Or maybe you should go home and relax a little bit and leave things to me and the team.”

  “The uniforms? Are you kidding? You need me.” She got up from her chair, picking up her purse. “No, I was only saying stop, because I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

  “Oh,” said Reilly. “Okay. Hurry back.”

  She swept out of the office.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Wren splashed water on her face and stared at her reflection in the mirror.

  She got the pregnancy test out of her purse and opened the box. She pulled out one of the individually-wrapped tests. There were more than one in there. They seemed to only come in packs of two or three. She pulled out the directions and read them.

  She started to open one of the tests.

  Then she shoved it back in the box and stuck the box back in her purse.

  She left the bathroom.

  Reilly was still in her office.

  She stopped in the doorway.

  “You all right?” he said.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Go?’

  “We need to find Hawk,” she said. “I’m telling you, he ran.”

  “Try calling him again,” said Reilly, but he came out of her office into the hallway.

  She tried to find her phone in her purse, but she couldn’t. There were too many stupid things in there, and she started yanking things out, including the stupid pregnancy test. What did she care? It wasn’t like Reilly hadn’t seen it already.

  Now, everything was weird with them, and she didn’t like it.

  But then again, there was basically nothing about this situation she liked.

  No phone.

  She shoved everything back into her phone. “I can’t find my phone.”

  “I’ll call it,” said Reilly, getting his own phone out of his pocket.

  Her phone rang. It was on her desk. She scooped it up, silencing the ringing. She called Hawk again. No answer. She shook her head at Reilly.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s go. Maybe he didn’t run. Maybe he had car trouble.”

  “And didn’t call?”

  “Maybe his phone
ran out of battery or he’s in a spot where there’s no service.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded.

  “But we should still look for him. Try to clear this up,” said Reilly. “You know, if we do find him, and he is trying to run, we can’t arrest him or anything.”

  “I bet if we get him talking, he’ll confess,” said Wren. “He feels guilty about what he’s done.”

  “Or he did,” said Reilly. “Maybe there was some kind of turning point before Oliver and Noah. He changed his MO radically, and now he’s doing it altruistically, for you. That’s not the kind of thing that people feel guilty about. If your theory is right, and I’m not saying I entirely understand it, then he might be proud of himself now.”

  “Either way, he’ll talk,” said Wren. “At the very least, if anyone’s got a chance of getting him to talk, it’s going to be me.”

  “Well, you’re probably right about that,” said Reilly.

  They got back in Reilly’s car and they drove to the compound. The first place they went was Hawk’s cabin. He wasn’t there. Neither was his car. The door was unlocked, and they went inside. The place was messy, and that bothered her. She’d always thought that Major’s neatness matched the psychology of the killer better. Maybe she was wrong about everything.

  “Why were the trophies at Major’s place if Hawk did all of it?” said Reilly.

  “Well, I found the first trophy at Hawk’s,” she said. “And then he left, ostensibly to go warn Major.”

  “And it took us a while to get there to Major’s place,” said Reilly. “They were both gone.”

  “Giving Hawk ample time to plant them.”

  “You think he took trophies from Oliver and Noah?” said Reilly.

  She strode over to Hawk’s couch, where she’d found the ID card for Jenny Smith. She upturned the cushions, and there, tucked in a crevice in the couch, was a small wooden box. Much smaller than the one at Major’s, but similar in design.

  “Damn,” said Reilly. “It really is him.”

  “Gloves,” said Wren. “We shouldn’t touch it.”

  “In the car,” said Reilly. “I’ll get them.”

  “No, let me,” said Wren, and she fled out of the house. She had jumped Hawk on that couch. They’d kissed there. They’d had sex. She gulped at the fresh air out here, feeling sick to her stomach.