Celeste laughed softly.
Dickerson dipped his chin and disappeared behind the door.
Will locked it.
“Right then, anyone want fudge?” I asked.
And Celeste laughed softly again.
I was sitting on the floor wrapping Christmas presents when Bohannan walked into the bedroom that night.
My gaze slid to the clock.
It was nearly midnight.
By the way, I’d woken up just after six.
He stopped dead and stared down at me.
“What the fuck’s going on?” he asked.
I glanced around, then up at him, stating the obvious, “I’m wrapping Christmas presents.”
“For the entire town of Misted Pines?”
I smiled at him.
“I’m sensing we should have talked budgets,” he said to the mess, as well as the stack of wrapped boxes scattered just beyond the mess.
Which, I had to admit, was large.
(Okay, it was possibly embarrassingly massive.)
“I’ve never had boys to buy for,” I explained.
His attention came to me.
“And it’s been a few years since I’ve had a teenage girl to spoil.”
He said nothing.
“How committed are you to the lumberjack biker look?” I queried, because I’d rolled with that on some of his presents, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t feeling a switch up.
“The lumberjack biker look?”
I flipped a hand, indicating his long body, which was full-on lumberjack biker with sturdy boots, faded jeans and a gray thermal under a thick black flannel shirt.
“I hate to shave, and I don’t have time for regular haircuts, but mostly, unless I’m fucking her, I don’t like anyone touching my hair. I picked two careers where I had to be on top of both. When I was done with those, that was done.”
“Are you certain about the ‘unless I’m fucking her’ part?”
“You pull my hair, baby, anytime you want.”
He was sure, I knew, because my nipples were tingling.
“Grace hated the beard,” he shared. Pause, “And the hair.”
“Further evidence she’s insane.”
His beard twitched.
“The medallion?” I asked after the irregular disk of something, I didn’t know, maybe iron, which had zero designs on it but did have a hole stamped into it and a piece of leather string threaded through that Bohannan nearly unfailingly took off every night and put on every morning.
“Flattened bullet taken out of my great granddad after a man who didn’t like him shot him.”
One could say, if I had a million guesses, I would not have come close to that.
“Why didn’t that man like him?”
“Because my great granddad was a US Marshal and there were folks still around who weren’t fond of his law-abiding ways.”
Righty ho.
Irrespective of how fascinating, I was done with that story for the time being.
“We had some excitement today, of the entertaining kind,” I told him.
“I heard.”
“Kimmy is life. I want to be her when I grow up.”
“I’ll take back the present I got for you and buy you fifty Christmas sweaters.”
My heart grew light. “You got me a present?”
He gave me a look.
He didn’t get me a present.
He got me a good present.
“I wasn’t referring to her wardrobe,” I clarified. “I was referring to her ability to get away with a justifiable assault in front of two officers of the law.”
His beard twitched again.
I hated to do it.
But I had to do it.
“You didn’t catch him,” I whispered.
He shook his head. Once.
“You okay?”
He nodded his head. Once.
“Want me to pull your hair?”
He lunged, plucked me out from the mess of paper scraps and ribbons.
And took me to bed.
Fifty-Two
He Agreed with Me
The boys came home early the next night.
If you call 8:45 early.
Jace and Jess bolted down Megan’s Mexican casserole glumly, and I watched closely, lest I need to save them from falling face first into cheesy-chili-chicken-tortilla deliciousness.
They were dead on their stools.
They dragged themselves to the basement where they were, for the time being, sleeping.
The Bohannan clan.
Circling the wagons.
Bohannan didn’t linger either. He went upstairs minutes after the boys went the other direction.
I gave him some time, and then Celeste wandered up with me.
At the top landing, we hugged, said goodnight, she hit her room, and I went to ours.
I was sitting cross-legged facing the bathroom in the closed-off-from-the-outside space when he got out of the shower.
He had wet hair and was in his pajama pants that he kept on the hook behind the door.
“I know you probably want to hit it,” I said softly, and I did know this because his eyes carried fatigue and his face was drawn. “But something occurred to me today, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”
Without a word, he came and stretched out across the bed before me, on his side, head in hand.
“I don’t know all the specifics of the case, but something you said the other night struck me,” I told him.
His chin moved slightly in what I was taking as a, Go on, and I was also taking this not as his usual “I’m feeling like silent badass communication,” but that he was too exhausted to speak.
So I hurried.
“It made me remember something I thought was weird. About Alice.”
His eyes flared with interest, but he said nothing.
“She was taken the day I moved in. A weekday. A Monday.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have an eight-year-old’s slumber party on a weekday.”
He pushed up to his forearm.
Yes.
Interested.
“If this guy knew her, if he lured her, if he planned this with her, he had to be able to get to her. And people like this, this guy maybe especially, they insinuate themselves into investigations and…” I didn’t want to do this, I was relatively certain I was wrong, because he was not the person I chased, or Robertson saw, but I had to do it, “…and Ray runs kids’ programs at the rec center.”
He expelled a breath and his hips listed back.
“When that guy came on the scene, and we knew he did what he did, that thought occurred to me. He’d already been interviewed by Harry after Alice was taken. So we took another look at him.”
I nodded.
“I don’t know why Audrey and Dale had the party on a weekday, outside it was Alice’s actual birthday. The girls were not supposed to be outside. Audrey took off work early, and with another mom, picked them all up from school. They had a thing at the Double D with sundaes, came home and watched a Disney movie, had pizza and cake and presents, watched another Disney movie and then they all went to bed. That other mom was helping her take them to school the next morning. Both Audrey and Dale gave the sense that Alice was a little spoiled. She got what she wanted, and she wanted to celebrate her birthday on her birthday.”
“Okay,” I replied.
“And then Ray came on the scene, and he works with a lot of kids, so like I said, I had the same idea as you, and we double checked.”
“Okay,” I repeated when he paused.
“All those girls were friends because they were in the same dance class, which is what they did a couple afternoons after school. A few of them, including Alice, also are watched by Betty, the mom who helped Audrey out. Betty is also one of the only friends Audrey has in town. Betty lives close to school, and she’s a stay-at-home mom. She picks them up, walks them to her house, or gets them to dance class. When cl
ass isn’t on, she watches them after school for a couple of hours before the other parents come pick them up. They pay her to do that. In the report, notes from her interview, she referred to it as ‘pin money.’ Alice was one of the kids she watched. None of them were in the rec center programs, which are mostly geared toward sports and physical fitness, for boys and for girls. Just not those girls.”
“The girls that don’t stay with Betty?”
“Two have moms at home. One has an older sister who watches after her. No rec center.”
I let out a breath, both mentally and physically.
“I’m kind of glad, because if I was wrong, I mean, Ray’s been put through the wringer with that video thing.”
“Yeah. He gave that to Jess. He also said he’s probably going to be leaving town soon. Though he has no clue where he and Shelly would go, considering he’s internet famous in a way he didn’t ask for and pretty much no one is gonna hire him to work with kids anymore.”
“Now that I know he’s not a prideful psychopath, I feel bad for him again.”
“‘To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it.’”
“Confucius knew his shit.”
A meager smile came from the depths of Bohannan’s beard.
And then he asked, “You tired?”
I wasn’t.
“Do you want me to be?” I asked back.
He nodded.
I bent to him, touched my mouth to his, got out of bed and went to the bathroom so I could get ready to get back in bed with Bohannan.
This, I did.
Bohannan held me in his arms in the dark and he was dead weight in seconds.
I held him back, and I had a pretty freewheeling relationship with God.
I wasn’t a fan of how a lot of His supporters regarded my daughter.
I wasn’t a fan of how a lot of His supporters hid behind Him to do a lot of things.
But since I figured He felt the same way, I sensed we were on the same page.
I also figured He listened to everyone’s prayers, even if some of them made Him shake His head.
Though, the one I sent His way that night, I knew in my heart, He agreed with me.
Fifty-Three
It’s Over
Bohannan’s phone ringing woke us both.
He turned, grabbed it, and just like Agent Palmer, when he spoke into it, he sounded like he’d been up for a couple hours, had a run, a shower and was enjoying a smoothie when the call came.
He offered all this up with just, “Bohannan.”
Then he was out of bed.
I sat up.
The light from the closet shone into the room.
I heard him say, “Pinned?”
Then I heard him say, “Yeah.”
Finally, I heard him say, “Twenty.”
I switched my light on.
Maybe five seconds later, he came to me dressed, bent, touched his mouth to mine and then gave me the briefest of briefs.
“They have him pinned in a cabin in Ash Peak. Shots have been exchanged, he caught Dickerson in his vest.”
“Oh God.”
“I gotta go.”
“Do you have a vest?”
And helmet? And full body armor?
“Office. Nothing they can do, and they’re gonna be pissed, but I’m leaving Jace and Jess with you.”
If there was nothing to do, why was he going?
“Okay,” I said.
Another touch on the lips.
And he was gone.
Jace and Jess didn’t stay left.
A couple hours later, as I sipped coffee in the kitchen and they climbed the walls of the great room (fortunately, Celeste remained sleeping through this), their phones chimed with texts at the same moment, and without a word to me (something which, later, I’d be having words with them about), they loaded up and then they blasted out in a Ram.
I did not go back to bed.
I stayed up with coffee and my laptop.
I tried writing.
That didn’t work.
I tried reading.
That didn’t work either.
In the end, I turned on the lights of the Christmas tree and fell into a trance that was not like what I would do when my mom wanted me to be invisible.
It was a trance that was being caught in the grip of worrying.
I pulled out of it when I heard Celeste was up and moving around, getting ready for school.
I then made a parental decision that was not mine to make, but if she was my daughter, or if I was her, it would be what I wanted, so I went up and knocked on her door.
She was just out of the shower and sitting at her vanity-cum-desk in a room that proved the tentacles of Bohannan’s genius instincts went in many directions, because it was not too young or too girlie, and it was not I’m a dad and don’t know my girl needs her space like she needs her space.
It was a room where it was space like Celeste needed her space.
Her burgeoning, self-possessed young woman was stamped all over it.
“Okay, lovely, you’re staying home today because your dad got a call last night and the latest news I had, they found the guy and were in a standoff with him in Ash Peak. If you hear at school, you won’t be able to concentrate. And if I didn’t tell you, you’d be validly upset with me. So we’re going to stay home, camp out and wait. But if you want to go to school, okay.”
This brought back the pale and haunted in her that was gorgeous, but I hated it.
“I don’t wanna go to school.”
“Do you want breakfast?”
She shook her head. “Just coffee.”
I gave her a shaky smile. “I’ve already got that ready.”
I left her to it.
She came down dressed and got her coffee.
I left her to that and went upstairs and got dressed.
It was just over two hours later.
We’d spent that time talking.
Or, maybe because of nerves, Celeste did.
Therefore, I now knew why Bohannan was the force he was in that town.
Because the Bohannans had been the cornerstone of the community since practically its beginnings.
His father may have fallen down on the job, but we could just say that Bohannan wasn’t the first overachiever in that clan.
“The town looks at us as kind of this weird, unofficial first family,” Celeste shared. “It was bizarre when we first moved here because it was almost like we were celebrities. And some of them seemed like they felt some kind of…relief that Dad was back, and he brought all of us with him. Like, the town couldn’t survive if there wasn’t a Bohannan living here. I guess my great-great granddad was like a big deal. When he was a marshal, he brought down some scary outlaw gang. And Great Granddad was the sheriff, and he was a big deal too. There’s even a plaque about him and another one for Great-Great Granddad in the county courthouse. And I guess, even though Granddad was messed up, since Dad was good at what he did, they just, I dunno, expected Dad to be that thing too. And Dad’s, well…Dad. So really, he just was that thing.”
He certainly was “that thing.”
And I was looking forward to the time when I could have deeper getting-to-know-you sessions with my man that didn’t involve how we were reacting mostly to current events.
Celeste also told me about how the log cabin was older than this house, because that was where the second and third generation of Bohannans lived before her grandfather built this place.
The first generation lived where my house was.
But to Bohannan’s dad’s fury, Fred Nance had pulled that house down to build what was there now.
And by the way, Bohannan’s dad’s name was Battle—Battle Bohannan—which I didn’t want to think was fierce, but it kicked ass. Though I wasn’t sure that was my favorite, since Celeste shared them all with me and the first to head west, fur trader Prosper, begat US marshal Obadiah, begat sheriff Lazarus who begat Battle.
&nb
sp; And then there was Cade.
So yes, that family had a way with names because Jace, Jess and Celeste might be less unusual, but they didn’t suck either.
The big house at the end, beyond my place, her grandfather built as a rental property to piss off Fred Nance, who was a privacy nut with a healthy dose of survivalist because, “When he died, they found a bunch of guns and ammunition and supplies in your closet.”
So I was learning a lot of things that morning because that explained my big closet.
The Bohannan fortune had been made (and yes, it had been a fortune) in the trapping and fur trade, with some railroad investment and a local saloon and whorehouse thrown in for diversity of portfolio.
I would be curious to know how fur trading and whorehouse owning moved on to the next generation being law enforcement, but Celeste didn’t know that story.
The family used to own a lot more of the land around the lake, almost all of it, but it had been sold off in parcels over the years because it was expensive to keep, and in the end, her grandfather was an alcoholic and a wastrel.
Nevertheless, Bohannan’s inheritance had been significant, because Bohannan’s dad might have been fonder of drinking than working, but he didn’t much like banks.
Thus, he cashed in everything he could, “And when Dad opened the safe in Granddad’s office, there were like, real gold bars in there, a bag of diamonds and a whole lot of money.”
Onward from this, she shared the accepted local lore that her Granddad didn’t come about his distrust of financial institutions on his own. Generations of Bohannan men took pains to keep the Bohannan legacy safe.
And as such, somewhere around that lake, it was widely known that there was buried treasure.
It was just that no one knew where it was.
I was digesting this latest fanciful story when a Yukon and a Ram growled into the clearing.
We ran to the window and were standing, holding hands, when all three of our boys walked in.
“Is it over?” Celeste burst out.
Bohannan looked to her and then to me.
“It’s over,” he replied.
Fifty-Four
The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel Page 31