The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel

by Ashley, Kristen

  I looked him right in the eyes as I said, “You found her.”

  “Yes,” he hissed.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  He took such a strong sniff into his nostrils, they rested against his columella.

  And his tone was much changed when he muttered, “Thanks.”

  My attention slid to Bohannan.

  He was studying his son.

  He felt my gaze, and his came to mine.

  His shake of the head was barely a movement.

  I still caught it.

  Therefore, I announced, “Right! Dinner! Everyone sit. Cade, at the head, please. I’m at the foot. You boys and Celeste, you get your pick.”

  Bohannan and his sons took their beers, Celeste worked at my side to finish then dish up food and take it to the table, and we all settled.

  We passed around platters and bowls.

  I caught some looks being exchanged and declared, “I have a rule. You eat what you like in my house. If you don’t like it, and you’re still hungry when the meal is done, I’ll make something else.”

  I nearly burst out laughing when, upon those words, Jesse scraped the asparagus off his plate back to the platter it had been presented on.

  “Bro, you gotta consume green things,” Jason admonished.

  “I do, shamrock shakes when it’s St. Patrick’s Day,” Jesse retorted.

  I couldn’t bite back that laugh.

  “I like asparagus, Ms. Larue,” Celeste piped in.

  I glanced at Bohannan.

  Another sigh, this one louder.

  I looked back at Celeste. “Honey, please, I’m Delphine.”

  She glanced at her dad.

  He inclined his head.

  She smiled at me.

  “Delphine.”

  That wasn’t Celeste. Jason was calling me.

  I turned to him and lifted my brows.

  He was pointing at the polenta on his plate with his fork.

  “What’s this?”

  I was about to answer when Jesse, mouth full of polenta, answered for me.

  “It’s boss, man.”

  “Polenta,” I said quickly in order to get it in.

  “Cool,” Jason muttered, and bent to his food.

  I looked at Bohannan, who was watching me.

  My clitoris contracted.

  My mouth opened.

  “So, I’ve had a think on things, and I like it here. I’ll probably be staying. And when I do, I’m running for the school board. I have a feeling my campaign will be successful. Anyone have any ideas about how our education system in Misted Pines can be improved?”

  There was complete silence at the table.

  And then Celeste, Jason, and even Jesse exploded with laughter.

  Bohannan’s beard twitched before he looked down to his plate and started eating.

  Twelve

  The First

  I was in my reading nook when I saw his shadow cross the window.

  I wasn’t surprised.

  In fact, I was ready.

  I set my book aside, got up, and in my thick socks and warm, knitted loungewear, I padded to the back doors in the living room.

  I opened one.

  Bohannan slid in.

  There was a lamp on the kitchen counter lit, a small one. The glow was golden but didn’t extend very far.

  Without a word, Bohannan went to my armchair and sat on the arm.

  I closed the door and stood at it.

  His shoulders were slouched, his neck partly bent, but he turned his head to me.

  “We got things to talk about.”

  To communicate I agreed, I moved to the arm of the couch, which was caddy-corner to him, and sat.

  “Beer? Bourbon? Whisky? Vodka? Other?” I offered.

  “I only drink beer. My dad was an alcoholic.”

  Boy.

  That was forthcoming.

  “So do you want a beer?”

  “I don’t drink it when I need it. I drink it whenever.”

  “Right.”

  He straightened, both his hands coming up, and he swiped them over the sleekness of his pulled-back hair.

  He dropped them to his thighs.

  “She was a man’s woman,” he declared.

  We had a lot to talk about, I figured.

  Though what he was saying, I did not understand, I was simply glad he was finally conversing (we could just say that Jason and I carried the dinner conversation, with some interjections from Celeste—Jesse had again started to brood, and more pieces had fallen, declaring that Bohannan, naturally, was just not a talker).

  “I’m not following.”

  “Grace, my ex. Their mom.”

  Interesting place to start.

  “Okay,” I said encouragingly.

  “She was good when she had three boys to spoil her. She was not so good when we accidentally got pregnant eleven years down the line, and it was a girl.”

  I sat straighter.

  He didn’t miss it.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “I…does that…I don’t know, um…does that mean—?”

  He put me out of my current misery by adding to it.

  “That, when me and Jess and Jace fell in love with Celeste and acted like it, she lost her shit and eventually said it was either her or my daughter, and I picked my daughter, and that’s why she’s not around? Yeah. That’s what it means.”

  “She…gave you an ultimatum…about your daughter?”

  “It wasn’t laid out like that. It was laid out like we spoil her. Or something. When, okay, maybe there was some of that, but it wasn’t a lot. It wasn’t unhealthy. Though, we’d done it unhealthy, what we gave to Grace. She was spoiled rotten. In the end, putrid with it. I thought she’d have her tantrum and get her shit together. She didn’t. She left. Seein’ as I’m good at finding things, I found her. When I did, she communicated that, unless things changed to her specifications, this being we sent Celeste away to attend school, she would decline to return. I declined to pack my daughter off to school because her mother is a bitch. That was five years ago. Celeste was eleven. The boys were twenty-two. Grace hasn’t been back since. No calls. No cards. She could always hold a mean grudge, but this shit is something else.”

  It truly was.

  Something else.

  “And Celeste was young, but not so young she didn’t sense why her mother was gone,” I remarked, carefully concealing (I hoped) the revulsion I felt for his ex in my tone.

  “No love there. Not Celeste. She’s all about love. I mean Grace. She was never that kind of mom where she got into mom things. I didn’t think that was weird. Not every mom is gonna be supermom from start to finish. She got in her groove though. She adored the boys.”

  At least there was that.

  “She didn’t want to be pregnant, not the first time, and the fact we made twins didn’t help. Absolutely she didn’t want it the second. But she was sure it would be a boy, so she thought, after we got through the bottles and diapers and potty training, and we got him to school, she’d have her life back. Like she did with the boys. Not that she did bottles or diapers or any of that shit. It made me sad for her. She missed out.”

  She missed out.

  My heart squeezed.

  “She’d also have someone else to kiss her ass, like we all did. Even with the ultrasound telling us it was a girl, Grace refused to believe it. Said it was an error. Said we’d see when he was here. I thought she was scared of havin’ a kid she didn’t know how to raise, since we were through a lot of it with the boys. Celeste came out, shit went south immediately.”

  I kind of wanted him to stop talking again.

  Though, the pistachio velvet couch was explained.

  “Although I appreciate you sharing this, Bohannan, I’m not certain why you are.”

  He didn’t hesitate in giving it to me.

  “She needs you and she needs that bad. So, I’m sharing this with you because my girl has been hurtin’ f
or some kind of good woman to be in her life and show her the way. And she’s been hurtin’ for that since birth. And what happened today means she’s decided it’s you. She was gone for maybe five minutes before she was back. Five minutes more, you’re at our door. We don’t know you from boo. But you’re at our goddamned door because my daughter needed you. Now, if you mean to stay and be that woman, I’m down with that. If you don’t. If your situation resolves itself and you’re out of here. You leave my daughter out of it.”

  And him being unimpressed with my diatribe the day we met, disallowing Celeste to stay with me and help unpack, was explained.

  “I have two girls.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I would never harm Celeste.”

  “I don’t think you get it.”

  “I think I do.”

  “You’ve been around her what? Three times?”

  “I knew the instant I saw her because she’s me. My mom wasn’t into mom things either. She wanted an abortion, and I know that because she told me, I lost track of how many times. My dad did the right thing and married her, then he did the usual thing and left. He came back, around the time I hit the cover of People magazine. They both love me and are oh-so-proud of me, when neither of them has any clue if I like asparagus or have even tried it in all my fifty-three years.”

  Bohannan retreated to silence.

  “I did not lie. I like it here. I liked it here before I met Celeste. My life is my own. I can’t say I don’t have commitments. I have two daughters. I have things I do. But when I say I won’t harm Celeste, even if that means I won’t be here every second of every day until I die, that means I will move mountains not to harm Celeste.”

  Bohannan made no reply.

  “So I got this,” I asserted, and I had to admit, those words were firm and they held some affronted heat.

  “Okay, babe,” he whispered.

  Angelo called me “babe.”

  I hated it, from the first time, and deep down, the thousands of times in between.

  There was something connective about it with Bohannan.

  Maybe it was because he used it while sharing that he trusted me with his daughter.

  Yes.

  That would be it.

  Time to change subjects.

  “Can you talk about it?” I asked.

  “You don’t want me to talk about it,” he answered.

  Oh God.

  “Bohannan,” I warned.

  “I shouldn’t have taken him,” he muttered.

  “Tell me.”

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  Oh God.

  “Your boys work with you,” I surmised.

  “Yes. Jace is…his heart is more open. Shit digs in. Jesse’s the rock. It isn’t that he doesn’t care or have empathy. It’s just that, if Jason saw what Jesse saw, he’d be burning the woods down in the slim chance the fire would find this fuckin’ guy. Jess can keep a lock on shit.”

  “Until now,” I noted.

  “Until now,” he confirmed.

  “You found her, not the guy?”

  “We found her body. Not the guy.”

  Poisoned darts pierced my skin.

  Everywhere.

  “How are her parents?”

  “Medicated.”

  “That’s probably a good call,” I mumbled.

  “Chemistry boy?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Will Pulaski.”

  Ah hell.

  Celeste’s crush.

  She was haunted by her mother leaving, and that was constant.

  She was also haunted by her crush’s sister having disappeared.

  Though, one thing that shared, Celeste confided girl things in her father or one of her brothers, and they all stayed informed about Celeste’s world.

  Beautiful.

  Button downs and dresses.

  Bohannan.

  Unable to contain it, I stood and demanded to know, “Why didn’t they bring you in earlier?”

  “Jace told me what happened when you went to the station, Delphine. So you get that Leland’s got his head in his ass half the time, it’s buried in other people’s asses the rest of it. He’s stupid. He’s crooked. He’s from an era that’s like a goddamn cockroach. Men like him just never seem to die.”

  That was the sad truth.

  “Me and the boys volunteered for the search party,” he continued. “Dern sent us home.”

  Christ.

  He continued, “I am not that man. I don’t know. I don’t get it. Competition? He doesn’t wanna look bad? His last two elections, there were folks pressing me to run. Got no interest in that, didn’t do it. Could be that. But if I had to give my take, I’d say it was just incompetence. Doesn’t matter. I was already nosing around. Dale reached out almost immediately. It was just that shit wasn’t official. Until it was.”

  I jerked around and stormed to the liquor cabinet.

  He could abstain.

  I needed a goddamn amaretto.

  I got out the bottle and a snifter.

  I poured.

  A lot.

  And sipped.

  Then sipped again.

  “After we find this one, Jesse wants to go after your guy,” Bohannan announced.

  I turned to him and finally asked what had been pressing on my mind since I met his sunglasses.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Former Green Beret. Former FBI field agent. Former profiler. Current contractor.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “I think like you.”

  That caught me short.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “But you don’t take it further.”

  “What?” I said it as a demand that time.

  “You saw the sunglasses, Delphine. You didn’t take it further to wonder why I didn’t take them off.”

  Holy cow.

  He knew I could read him.

  So he limited what I could read.

  And now.

  The lights were not on.

  I could see him.

  But barely.

  Wow.

  Taking this further, it was not a coincidence I was in this lake house.

  The FBI took me on, I took on Joe Callahan and Hawk Delgado, and this house was suggested to me.

  Not because it was remote and out of the way, and I was a nature girl, the former I needed, the latter I was.

  Because it was close to Bohannan.

  “I take it further. I always wonder why,” he finished.

  “Alice wasn’t the only one.” My voice was a horrified breath.

  He shook his head and stood. “It’s all not in. Responses to my queries. Fucked up how they don’t talk to each other, keep a central database for this shit and requirements to feed things in. But at least the FBI has no reports and nothing local. Tri-Lakes. Adjacent counties. I got asks out farther afield. The state and entire northwest. But from what we know, she’s the only one.”

  I let out my horrified breath.

  But he wasn’t done.

  “And if she is, she’s also the first.”

  Fuck.

  I turned my head.

  Then lifted my snifter and took another sip.

  Thirteen

  Viking

  I’d paid for expedited shipping, so the rug, Adirondack chairs and tables I bought for the pier arrived quickly.

  The deck furniture was from a more exclusive store. They said six to ten weeks.

  I made a call to someone who made a call, and it would be there in two weeks.

  One of the ways I was lucky to be me.

  It was cold. Fall wasn’t putting up much of a battle with winter.

  But I also had a scrunchy new outdoor throw that was wrapped around me.

  And I was out on the pier, you see, because I couldn’t see the Bohannan compound, but it was reflected in the lake.

  Therefore,
when the Yukon showed, I was out of my chair and trotting up the wooden path that was part path and part stairs to the house.

  I went in the back door.

  My team in all their incarnations was right, David Ashbrook was solid.

  And I was right, that big, wicker-domed light was phenomenal over the dining room table.

  It transformed the space.

  David took my closet design and said, “You don’t need to order this. I can do it custom.”

  He was starting on the closet Monday.

  I was beside myself with glee (about that).

  But now?

  Now, I put on some oven mitts and got the casserole out of the oven.

  I walked it to the car.

  The rest of the stuff was already in it.

  So I got in myself, pulled out, drove down and parked beside the Yukon.

  I grabbed the hot casserole first.

  Celeste was sliding open the door before I got there.

  She was still wearing a nice black sweater over a slim-fitting, black wool skirt and high boots.

  “Set the oven to two hundred, lovely,” I murmured as I squeezed by her. “We’ll keep this warm.”

  She dashed to the Viking stove.

  I followed her and saw her father enter the room from somewhere else (I had yet to get a tour of the house, though that was not my second time there).

  Dark gray turtleneck, black trousers, hair not pulled back in a tail, but he had some product in it that kept it away from his face.

  His son came in behind him.

  Black sweater, blue button down under it, midnight blue trousers.

  Jace.

  “You gonna feed us ’til all’s well in the world?” he teased.

  “Maybe,” I replied.

  “Good, ’cause you cook the bomb.”

  Needless to say, I’d discovered my in.

  For the past five days, I’d been feeding the Bohannans.

  “More in the car?” Bohannan grunted.

  I placed the casserole in the oven and straightened, turning to him and nodding.

  Celeste made a move.

  “Not you. You,” he ordered Jace.

  He didn’t need to say that. Jason was already on his way to empty my car.

  “On a scale of one to one thousand, how awful was it?” I asked Bohannan.

  He leaned his ass against his marble countertop and crossed his arms on his chest.

  “Ten thousand.”