The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel

by Ashley, Kristen

  “The angels sang, and the doves cried when I was born,” Fenn went on.

  “Barf,” Camille groaned.

  “Obviously, as you can see,” Fenn drawled, “the trolls grunted, and the goblins danced when Camille made her way into the world.”

  “Which is perfect, as a sorceress, that I’d find you,” Joan purred, nuzzling Camille’s neck with her chin.

  “You’re actually mine, I don’t know where those two came from,” I said to Joan.

  “I wish,” she replied.

  Yes, Joan’s parents were rather a pill.

  I blew her a kiss.

  She smiled at me.

  “Can you show me how to curl my hair like yours?” Celeste asked Camille.

  “Totally. Beauty school at Mom’s tomorrow night!” Camille cried.

  Celeste turned shining, happy eyes to me, and it occurred to me, in longing for a mother she never really had, she wouldn’t dare to dream what it would mean to have a sister she simply couldn’t have. And for obvious reasons, she’d never considered the impossibility of having several older ones.

  But there it was, this cornucopia of female goodness laid out before her.

  And it was something I’d had the privilege of giving to her.

  As lovely as those thoughts were, they weren’t the only reasons my smile was softer for her.

  “Baby,” Bohannan’s voice rumbled low. “You need me to do anything?”

  “No, Cade, I have it covered.”

  He gave me a look that was his neutral blended with warmth, contentedness and affection.

  I tried to give that back, without the neutral.

  His beard twitched up.

  There you go.

  I succeeded.

  I turned back to the crew and noted that Jess, Jace and Celeste were paying no mind to this.

  But Joan had her forehead on Camille’s shoulder, hiding her face, Camille was avoiding my eyes, but hers seemed to be shining with tears, and Fenn appeared to be deep breathing.

  “You guys okay?” I asked.

  Fenn’s gaze found mine.

  And she replied, “We’re great, Mom. We’re freaking perfect.”

  I held her look.

  I read her look.

  I loved her look.

  And then I got busy finishing dinner.

  Forty-Four

  Confucius

  The next night, I walked out of the bathroom, flipping off the light switch, while still rubbing serum in my face.

  “I could have missed listening to all the Misted Pines ghost stories while sitting on my pier,” I told Bohannan, who was in bed, so obviously his bare chest was also there, as was his beard, and a recent delicious discovery, his thin, gold-framed reading glasses were on his nose.

  He took them off and looked at me.

  I was done complaining due to the fact I was having a sexy male librarian fantasy.

  He set what he’d been reading on his nightstand and ordered, “Get in bed.”

  I didn’t get in bed, per se.

  I got on him.

  Straddling his hips, he put his hands to mine, and I said softly, “I think maybe one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen was watching you, Jace, Jess and James hanging all those strings of lights up and down my back clearing.”

  And they had. Maybe thirty sets of them. So not only my pier was hooked up with soft, romantic, safe, boogey-man-stay-away lights, the path down to it was. The deck outside the house was. They had section remotes, so I could go all in or pick parts. But house-to-pier, there was no place to hide.

  They’d even started stringing some into the woods, along the path to Bohannan’s house. But they stopped when they ran out.

  Note to self: buy more lights so what was mine could be connected to what was Bohannan’s in yet another way.

  “Doesn’t take much with you,” he remarked.

  “You did it because you wanted to make us feel safe in the light. You did it because I wanted them, and you knew they’d make me happy. You did it because it was your way to feel out James. You did it to give me some time to be with my girls without alienating the boys. That doesn’t seem to me like not much.”

  He didn’t reply to all that.

  He said, “If that’s the kind of guy who’s defending our freedom, I’m resting easier tonight. I probably would have punched Jace or Jess in the mouth the fiftieth time they said to me, ‘Talk to me, Goose.’ He’s good-humored and has the patience of a saint.”

  My lips tipped up, because James was definitely that, but I reminded him, “The kind of gal who’s also doing it egged Jace and Jess on to tell more ghost stories after she’d collected some pebbles she surreptitiously started throwing into the water to freak us out.”

  “Got no problem with that, because she’s got no fear.”

  “For a mom, that’s terrifying.”

  “I’ll rephrase. She’s sharp as fuck, so she knows when to feel fear and use it, and she knows when it’s useless, except to have a little fun.”

  “You’ve got an answer for everything.”

  His fingers on my hips gave me a squeeze. “I don’t got an answer for how you feel about your ex wanting you back.”

  Quick update: I’d pulled a fast one.

  We’d been busy, lots of people, lots of laughter and conversation, cooking and exploring environs, getting to know each other with everyone understanding this was happening. The families we knew for years were adjusting, expanding, and this was the family we were going to become.

  But I worried Angelo might talk to one of the girls, they’d let it slip, and I didn’t want that to happen when I hadn’t mentioned it to Bohannan.

  So, I’d told him in passing at a time when we couldn’t discuss it.

  I guessed now we were going to discuss it.

  “I was taken aback that was where he was at,” I told him, leaning forward to rest on my forearms on his chest, my face closer to his. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I mourned her like she was dead,” he shared, and I knew he was talking about Grace. “I wasn’t unaware we had problems. We had a lot of words. We fought. I didn’t ignore our issues, and it got under my skin she wanted me to. She was angry I couldn’t get where she was coming from. But since the bottom line of it was she didn’t love our daughter, I was angry she couldn’t get where I was at with that. Still, when she left, even with all of that, years of it, it was a blow. I grieved. And then I realized what I was grieving. What I felt for her was dead. And I stopped grieving.”

  That made sense.

  “What I felt for Angelo is dead too. I’ve considered this, and part of me actually would like to be one of those women who’s forgiving. Who understands faults, and that everyone is human and they make mistakes. But my home life growing up felt precarious. My mother never truly neglected me. I was fed and clothed and went to school. She’d even ask if I finished my homework. But there was no warmth and love. I’d ride the bus home from school and think, when I got off, I could just walk in another direction and keep walking, never going home and she might not even realize I’m gone.”

  “Jesus, Larue,” he whispered.

  I nodded. “It sucked, and it still sucks and it’s not okay. It never gets better. I didn’t have a mom to show me the way to raise my girls. Not just know it from experiencing it growing up, but someone to talk with to get advice. To make sure I was doing things right. And I won’t have someone to go to when they get married or have babies. Someone who understands, who was there before me, who’d be there for me when I deal with the things I’ll deal with when that happens.”

  I ran the backs of my fingers along the fullness of his whiskers at his jaw and kept going.

  “I was too young with Warren to understand what I needed and communicate it to him. That doesn’t make him betraying me okay, but I was older and wiser with Angelo. I’d reflected on why I refused to work on it with Warren, and I told Angelo up front. He’s lead singer and guitarist of a rock and roll ban
d. I knew his reputation. I was even famous for ‘taming’ him. So, I knew I had to make it clear. That was a deal breaker. That was something I couldn’t get beyond. I needed to feel absolutely safe and wholly part of our family, our marriage. And he still did it to me. But when it’s gone, it’s just gone, Bohannan.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured his agreement.

  “I know that’s a tall order, to put that on anyone. When he was trying to talk me into working it out, he told me it put him under a lot of pressure.”

  “It’s not a lot of pressure.”

  “Life happens, Bohannan.”

  “It’s not a lot of pressure, Larue.”

  “I—”

  He put a finger to my lips.

  I shut up because that was cute and hot and annoying, all rolled into one.

  “You don’t forget what people say to you,” he told me and removed his finger. “Not when it’s important. He was not fucking a woman who was not you and then, later, brushing his teeth and thinking, ‘Oh shit, I forgot. I told Delphine I wasn’t gonna cheat on her.’ That isn’t how it works.”

  I felt my lips twitching because that was kind of funny.

  “He knew he was doing wrong. He knew what it would mean. He did it anyway. I have no clue why he did. But he knew. That pressure bullshit was to deflect responsibility to you. The vast majority of people do not know the intricacies of the law. But they know right and wrong.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “So you’re over him,” he deduced.

  I smiled. “No. Right now, I’m over you.”

  His hands slid up my back.

  My eyes slid to the folder on the nightstand.

  “Stop worrying,” he murmured. “I’m not the lead investigator on the case.”

  My attention returned to him. “I’m not worried about the case. I’m worried that you’ll be worried about the case in taking time to string up lights and play host and be awesome and make my daughters feel safe in leaving me in your hands. You make it look effortless, but it’s not.”

  His brows lifted. “Be awesome?”

  I treated him to an eye roll. “Shut up.”

  This time, his beard lifted.

  I stared at him.

  He sighed, pushed to sitting more upright against the headboard and took me with him.

  I continued to stare at him.

  He laid it out.

  “The boat is pretty much a dead end. We’re still working it, though, even if our witness saw someone from a distance past midnight, so they didn’t see much, and it’s highly doubtful this guy would make that stupid of a mistake and leave that trail. My guess, definitely he wouldn’t use his own boat, even if he thought he’d picked a late enough time he’d go unseen. We gotta roll on the thought that anything could be important, and if we find the boat, it might give us something. But it’s a lot of legwork. Maybe every fifth house in this county, the owners got a boat.”

  There were three large lakes in this county, so big they crossed into two surrounding ones, so I had little doubt that was true.

  “Boats are titled, and this one had an outboard, so it’d need to be registered. That said, there are folks who live up here away from the crowds, and how that could mean folks could get in their business who aren’t real big on following government regulations or having them infiltrate their life. So we figure anywhere upwards to a quarter of the boats in this county, especially a small craft like the one described, the owner didn’t bother to register it.”

  I figured that was true too.

  “You can also rent fishing boats from a couple of places at the marina, but there aren’t many of them. Even fewer of what there are, they’re light with a dark stripe. We’ve isolated them, covered them, and forensics are going through them one by one to see if they can put Malorie in a boat. This is probably wasted effort. I’d put money down she was tarped before she was put in there because we know she was killed before she hit her home state. And you can’t rent a boat for the night or overnight. Day rentals only and contracts all state return is by nightfall. No boats were out, unreturned. So if it was one of those, the guy helped himself so we couldn’t track him. But we’re eliminating that line anyway.”

  “Cameras at the marina?” I asked.

  “Some, not comprehensive views. But the angles they had, you’d have to swim to a boat to take it without being seen, and I wouldn’t put that past this guy.”

  I wouldn’t either. He’d be determined not to be caught and go that extra mile to make that so, and being in this competition with Bohannan, doing that even more so in order to best him.

  Bohannan continued sharing.

  “They sent agents to Berkeley. More than one person in Malorie’s dorm saw a guy hanging around that they didn’t get a good feel for. A couple even reported him. They saw him before she disappeared, but they haven’t seen him after. The witnesses were talked to separately, sat with artists separately, and the facial composites bear a resemblance, one that’s pretty striking. So it’s the same guy. No one has him in any classes or saw him around anywhere but loitering outside her dorm.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “He looks a little like a guy who lives in the next town. A guy who’d have the skills to pull some of this shit off. But that guy has solid alibis for both murders. That said, I figure our guy will want to be closer to me. Never seen anyone like the man in the sketches around MP. Jace, Jess, Harry, any of the boys haven’t either. We aren’t releasing the composite because we can’t know our guy didn’t hire someone to lurk for that purpose, to throw us off on a line of inquiry that will lead nowhere, and we don’t want people to find his face on someone who isn’t going around killing girls. And our guy, he’s not gonna make it that easy. Still, we wanna find that man in Berkeley. If he was put up to it, it’s likely the bad guy did it without a face-to-face meet. But we need to rule that out. And we need to talk to him.”

  I nodded, then asked tentatively, “She was killed before she got to Washington?”

  “Malorie was serious and studious and kept to a schedule. So her roommate knew something was up right away. When her roommate couldn’t get hold of her, she reported her concerns the day before Malorie was dumped, but by that time, she hadn’t been missing for even a day. She was dead at least twelve hours by the time we found her. We estimate he had her less than twenty-four hours. On this particular mission, our guy didn’t have any interest in dealing with a scared, maybe fighting, likely erratic co-ed. Alice, he wanted fear and panic. Malorie, the element of surprise. This is him thinking this, baby, not me, but on that trip, he made her luggage.”

  Dear Lord.

  I swallowed and then, “Did he…was it as bad as Alice?”

  He shook his head. “Totally different MO. One hundred percent to make it so we can’t get a bead on him. Or we’ll get the wrong bead. He strangled Malorie with gloved hands. There was some defensive bruising, but other than that, not a mark on her.”

  “He didn’t…?”

  Bohannan didn’t make me say the words.

  “She was not raped or sexually assaulted in any way.”

  I hated the fact that I was glad about anything that befell Malorie Graham, but I was glad that she didn’t bear any additional trauma before she was taken from this earth.

  However.

  “Alice?” I whispered.

  “No, baby,” he whispered back.

  I let out a relieved breath.

  “My job right now is not to be out there bumping into shit McGill and Robertson are doing. My job,” he glanced to the file, “is to go through old cases to see if anything jogs in my mind. Brothers of victims. Boyfriends. Cousins. Acquaintances. Anyone who was keen on the crime I was investigating. Anyone who was overly helpful. Interested in what I was doing. Watchful or giving me a weird feeling.”

  “Wouldn’t you have remembered that kind of thing without needing a jog?”

  “I would hope so, but I’m still going over
them.”

  I nodded again.

  “Also, gotta read my fan mail.”

  This was a disgruntled mutter.

  And this was a surprise.

  “Fan mail?”

  “The mail I get here is addressed to a PO box. We take pains to keep off the grid, including no social media. For any of us.”

  I was surprised. “Even Celeste?”

  “Especially Celeste. She gets on, but she does it because her friend Phoebe lets her share her accounts. She doesn’t post though, and she’s only allowed that if I’m Phoebe’s ‘friend’ so I can monitor it. The boys have ghost accounts, so they can use them if they need to look into something.”

  That was a minor miracle, keeping a teenager from having her own social media.

  Though, it did go to show, regardless of what they might claim in our current society, they could survive without it.

  “Wouldn’t be hard to find this property, since it’s been owned by a Bohannan for a hundred and fifty years and I pay taxes on it,” he shared. “But records show it’s overseen by a corporation that’s owned by a buddy of mine. We have a contract, with me as the director of another corporation, that he administrates this property on my behalf, and I pay him. That isn’t a deep trail. Still, it’s a shield that might keep some out, we got it and my official address is a PO number. Same for the kids. Postman brings our mail because he knows us. Not much comes there, though. It goes to the FBI.”

  That didn’t answer my preliminary question.

  So I asked it a different way, uttering it as a surprised statement.

  “You get fan mail.”

  “Fan mail. Hate mail. Mail telling me I got shit wrong. You write thrillers, so you can get that Percy Gibson and Al Catlin have supporters.”

  “Hang on,” I said, and I took a moment with that.

  Al Catlin was another famous case. Serial rapist. He didn’t kill. But over seven years he raped nearly thirty women in nine states.

  He’d been fascinating because, with method-actor-like intensity, he’d changed his appearance so completely between assaults, it took a tick in his behavior to link all of them. He gained weight, lost it, dyed his hair, changed his facial hair, wore colored contacts as well as a ski mask, Zorro-style eye mask, full-face clear plastic mask, changed the tone of his voice, assumed accents—anything to throw his victims off identifying him at all, but also in a way that would link his crimes.