The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel

by Ashley, Kristen

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  I made them food.

  They sat all in a row and started eating it.

  I positioned myself across the bar in front of Bohannan, and after he shoveled in his third forkful of scrambled eggs, and the gray of his eyes hit me, I urged, “Talk to me, Goose.”

  His beard quirked, his throat bobbed with his swallow, he put down his fork and picked up a piece of bacon.

  And then he said, “It was Betty,” and he gnawed off some bacon.

  Holy cow.

  “Pull some stools around this way, lovely,” I ordered Celeste.

  She did as asked, sat beside me, and we gave Bohannan all our attention.

  He didn’t make us wait.

  “I was right and wrong. He was military. An army sniper. Info’s still coming in, but what we know is, he’s pegged a lot of kill shots. He was decorated. He got out a while ago and was making a mint taking weekend warriors from whatever city they lived in on hunting and camping trips, teaching them to shoot, the whole survival-in-a-luxury-tent thing. Lots of four-star Yelp ratings. He expanded, took corporate types and millionaires out on excursions they paid a fortune for, including hunting big game in Africa. Big man expert lording it over a lot of important men who were not real men, but they played that on vacation.”

  And the puzzle pieces started falling.

  I nodded when he paused.

  “He had that setup in Wyoming but moved it here about two years ago.”

  What was left unsaid was because of me.

  “He hooked up with Betty, my guess is, because he somehow figured out that Betty’s husband Ed had also had an affair with Audrey. Or maybe he targeted her because he sensed that wound, he pulled it out of her, and the rest of it came from there. She was nursing this hurt, he tapped that vein, became her lover, groomed her, and even now, under Robertson and McGill’s interrogation, she was unfazed. At first, including about Alice, who according to her, was a spoiled brat.”

  I winced.

  “Though, after she said that, McGill told her what he did to Alice. She clearly had no idea, and that shook her. But it was the only thing that shook her.”

  Good God.

  That took “woman scorned” to a whole new level.

  “Who figured out the Betty angle?” I asked.

  “That’d be Robertson. Though it’s Robertson because we talked shit out, I mentioned Ray, and Betty, and he got a hunch. He had her pulled in first thing. When she found out what happened, she spilled. She’s beside herself, because he saw no way out, which was probably why he retreated to his own cabin. Though honest to Christ, don’t know why he stayed local and didn’t bolt, but I suspect something was in that cabin he didn’t want us to see.”

  He paused to throw back a hit of coffee.

  And then he went back to it.

  “Even though, in the brief shootout, he also tagged one of the agents who’d been brought in for the hunt. Everyone was all geared up, and we’d been willing to run him to ground, so we were ready to wait him out, even if it meant starving him out and that took a year. So he was going to get no joy. He went to his cabin because he’d rigged that cabin. It was an inferno before anyone could spit. He died inside. She loved him, or convinced herself she did, because she convinced herself he loved her, when he didn’t.”

  Bohannan’s look on me intensified.

  “He dominated her.”

  “Good Lord,” I murmured, not missing what he was saying.

  He gave her her kink, and that spilled into life.

  “It’s still hot, but they already found his body.”

  “Audrey was best friends with a woman whose husband she slept with?” I asked.

  Bohannan shrugged and forked up more eggs. “I guess you take ’em as you can get ’em. Though, he set that up. What we missed was, Alice wasn’t part of her afternoon kid club until this school year. Betty recruited her at the end of last year. What we also missed, but only because he wouldn’t let on and she made sure she didn’t, Ed’s one serious dick. And that ‘pin money’ was all she had to play with, because he holds the purse strings, and he’s not stingy with playing golf and taking scuba diving trips, but he is with her. She was tired of a lot of the other moms, especially ‘the ones who work,’ having Louis Vuitton when she was carrying Target. She charged twenty bucks a day per girl, five girls, she shared pretty proud that she’d earned herself a Louis Vuitton, a Valentino and a Fendi.”

  “Sounds like Betty had a lot to get off her chest,” I noted.

  “Betty lost her psychopath boyfriend and sang like a canary,” Jace muttered.

  I shot him a smile and looked back to Bohannan.

  “And Malorie?” I asked after he swallowed his eggs. “Like you thought, just a pawn?”

  “Malorie was because Betty was ticked that Lana didn’t invite her into her crew. Malorie also was because Malorie drove Betty crazy. Lana was caught powerless to get out of a situation that harmed her. This meant she taught her daughter to be sure to be able to make her own way. Malorie was an overachiever, and a bossy one. She was apparently always organizing things or setting up things or making suggestions about how people could do things better, which Betty wasn’t big on. Because this included Betty, who Malorie apparently told should open up her own daycare and shared she thought she was making a big mistake when Betty declined that option.”

  I glanced at Celeste.

  She bit her lower lip even as she stretched it out.

  So that was Malorie to a tee.

  Poor Malorie. Probably trying to be helpful and forge her own path and someone cut that path off permanently.

  “That’s a part I don’t get,” Bohannan continued. “Because Malorie might have been a pain in her ass, but she was gone, acing all her classes, pre-law and on a trajectory she’d probably never come back to MP. And Betty never told anyone she knew Ed screwed around on her. So I don’t know how she expected Lana to know to send an invitation.”

  I didn’t know that either.

  I let them all eat.

  Bohannan got through most his eggs, a triangle of toast, and two rashers of bacon, before he picked it up again.

  “He had a boat.”

  And it kept coming.

  “No stripe, but it was night, and mist can play tricks.”

  I bet.

  “And you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “They didn’t mention it to her under interrogation. She didn’t either. And I would say she had no clue this was all about him dicking with me. Pillow talk about how Ed done her wrong, how Audrey had to pay, which naturally, for her, formed into a plan where they worked together, without her having that first clue she was being played or it had anything to do with me. She knew about Alice. She knew about Malorie. She’d heard about David, but she swears it wasn’t him. When it was because Robertson ID’d him as the guy we were chasing. She thought they were done, letting the dust settle and then she was gonna leave Ed, and they were going to ride into the sunset.”

  “Did he look like the sketch?”

  “Not exactly. Same build. Also dark hair. But he’s got Italian ancestry and looks it. I’d say attractive, but not pretty, like the guy down in Cali. Either the composites weren’t quite right or whoever that guy was, was probably paid and picked for build and because they share some similarities. Betty didn’t know about him, but she said our guy didn’t go down to Cali except to get Malorie, so there are parts of his gig he didn’t share. Though why he would choose someone who looked remotely like him, I don’t get, because you couldn’t miss the similarities, and if it was me, that wouldn’t be what I’d be going for.”

  I didn’t get it either.

  And I guessed now we’d never know.

  I was careful when I queried, “How did a decorated, ex-army sniper with a weekend warrior camp in the next town fly under radar?”

  “He didn’t. I mentioned him to you weeks ago. We checked him out. He had alibis. He was hunting lynx in Canada during Alice’s di
sappearance and murder. Had passport stamps and his name on flight manifests to prove it. But this guy has the skills to cross back over the border without anyone seeing, which Betty told us he did. He also had a side piece, a woman that Betty didn’t know about, who alibied him for Malorie. They’re trying to find her, but my guess is, she’s gone. And as we know, he did David.”

  “Ace athlete?”

  “All-state cornerback.”

  “Functional family?”

  “That we don’t know. Though, the dad was floored and then he started sobbing when he got the call his boy went up in a ball of flame he lit himself after he was the target of a three-day manhunt because he allegedly committed two murders and attempted one. So I’d say, maybe.”

  “So you profiled him almost exactly,” I remarked.

  Bohannan held my gaze in a way I found strange.

  And replied, “Yeah. Almost exactly.”

  I’d let them finish eating.

  It was later, in our room, after he showered, I sat on the counter between the basins as he shaved the skin of his neck.

  “You don’t like him for this?” I asked.

  “I love him for it,” Bohannan answered. “And I’m excellent at what I do. But it’s like he came to life in my profile.”

  “Something missing?”

  “I can’t see it if there is. Betty copped to all of it, but David.”

  “But there’s an issue.”

  “Yeah. But profilers can get twitchy. Sometimes someone just ticks all the boxes, and it gets tied up in a bow. It’s just hard, when you’re that close to it, when you’re living and breathing it, to recognize it’s done and let it go.”

  He put the razor down and turned fully to me.

  “Sometimes, you can even miss it. You love the hunt so much, you don’t want to let it go.”

  “Are you feeling that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s not too certain,” I noted.

  “You were in this. Celeste was in this. The twins were in this. I don’t like the idea that I was back in the game again, and now I’m feeling hinky because I got off on it.”

  I tipped my head. “Did you get off on it?”

  “I’m good at what I do,” he repeated. “I’d started casting a net, looking for a place to retire. I’ll admit to feeling a little burnout. So I was thinking maybe getting out of the game and doing it early. Grace pushed that. In the end, I got out because Grace was done with me being gone all the time. She had a job. Advertising. She was a big shot. Made great money. She took three months maternity leave with the boys, only one with Celeste. We had a nanny both times. She was so serious about having me around more, she gave up her job, set up a small shop of local clients here in MP. Car dealership commercials and local store ads. Nothing like what she used to be doing, running huge campaigns for multi-national corporations. But Dad died, she saw the opportunity for a quieter life, I’d talked to her about having that in our future, she thought I’d like it. Thought it’d feel good, being home, where Mom had been. I saw that for Celeste. For me. And I thought she’d settle, and it’d make her happy. Us a family. So I did it. But that doesn’t mean a part of me didn’t want to.”

  “I see that.”

  “I look at a case, work up a profile, but then I send that off. I’m hardly ever in the field. I’m very rarely involved in an active investigation. And if I’m gone, it’s to consult in a police station conference room or give a lecture.”

  “Right.”

  “So like I said, maybe.”

  “Perhaps you should be sheriff,” I said quietly.

  “Harry’s a good man, and he’s waited a long time. It’s his turn.”

  I nodded.

  He came to stand between my legs and put his hands to my thighs.

  “It’s not the first time I’ve had it, and the feeling fades, babe.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re clear for Christmas.”

  “Okay, Cade.”

  “I love you.”

  I blinked.

  My heart rejoiced.

  My mind reconjured images of family in houses all around us on the lake.

  Then I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

  “Okay to that most of all, scarecrow.”

  Those beautiful lips in that thick, dark beard formed a smile.

  And he kissed me.

  Fifty-Five

  Balls

  The day Tony Romano burned himself to death in a cabin outside Ash Peak, David was taken out of the ICU.

  When I visited him the next day, he looked at me.

  And then he apologized that there was going to be a delay in finishing the powder room.

  And yes, if the name Tony sounded familiar, that’s because it was.

  And not because it’s a common name.

  No, it was because, when Megan took the lectern in the chambers during the big town meeting, she’d thanked the man at the front who’d stepped aside for her.

  His name was Tony.

  It was that Tony.

  He’d been first up to say something to the council and commissioners about Sheriff Dern.

  Yes.

  He had balls that big.

  And now…

  He was dead.

  Fifty-Six

  The Picture

  I had a lot on my mind.

  Christmas had come and gone, New Year’s had come and gone, with Camille and Joan doing duty to Joan’s family for the first holiday but flying up to ring in the new year with us.

  Jess had been disappointed at the plethora of presents I’d laid on him, sitting among the new jeans and flannels and top-of-the-line, solar powered, tactical GPS watch, complaining, “You’re loaded, you couldn’t buy me a Humvee?”

  (He, of course, had been kidding and that was his alpha-man way of expressing gratitude. Or, at least, that was how I decided to read it.)

  Celeste, on the other hand, had not hidden in the slightest that she’d been delighted.

  She now had her own Chloe.

  And Givenchy padlock ankle boots.

  And…other.

  Lots of other.

  Bohannan had grumbled, “We definitely should have talked budget.”

  But he didn’t mean it.

  I knew this because he bought me a heavy gold charm bracelet that had six identical charms on it. They were all stars. Each had a little diamond. And each had a letter.

  F. C. B. J. J. C.

  So I guessed I did have my own tribe, my own family, a true home where I belonged, and if I ever doubted, I just had to look at my wrist.

  I loved that he made himself the B.

  I also started bawling.

  “Estrogen always mucks up the works,” Jace complained as his father held me and stroked my back. “She carries on like this for long, we’re never gonna get through the thousand presents she bought each of us.”

  “Like you’re not taking notes for when you get your own babe,” Celeste retorted.

  “I am,” Jace concurred. “Find myself a woman who makes good cupcakes.”

  At that, I pulled loose of Bohannan’s embrace (not entirely, obviously), and informed him, “You’re cooking for the next three months.”

  “Works for me,” he replied. “I rock in the kitchen.”

  Since I had Christmas dinner all planned, it would take until the next night to find out that he didn’t lie.

  And since Bohannan clasped it on me Christmas morning, I hadn’t taken that bracelet off.

  No, that wasn’t the “a lot” I had on my mind.

  Part of that lot was what happened late that very morning when Bohannan showed in the door to my office at my house.

  I didn’t move back there.

  In fact, I was fully moved into The Big House, clothes, books, Emmys and everything. I’d listed my home in the Hollywood Hills. And Bohannan and I were planning to take a springtime vacation to Paris.

  Not to mention, just the week before, Bohannan had approached me
with the news that Jess and Jace were feeling it was time to take the next step through adulthood.

  That being making their own space.

  Jace wanted to move up to the log cabin. And Jess wanted to know if he could rent my house from me.

  When we’d had a family meeting about this, Celeste was all in because, “The boys’ house is rad. Or it will be, after an industrial cleaning. And I can move in there when I graduate!”

  Even though I didn’t go test out this theory, from her words I knew I was correct about the whole, that-house-smelling-like-a-used-sock thing.

  Considering the fact that, during New Year’s, Joan had waxed whimsical about how it would be great to get out of the LA traffic and move up to Washington (and away from her mother), and how nice that big house looked up on the hill, visions of my fantasy coming true danced in my head.

  Jace was already slowly moving up to the log cabin.

  Jess was giving me time to finish my book, on which I’d informed my publisher I was definitely going to miss my deadline (and again, considering the cause, my publisher was okay with that for me), while Bohannan renovated the upstairs guest room that had a view to the lake into an office for me.

  I could make do with my laptop in a pinch, say, when someone was running around murdering people.

  But I preferred to write in quiet solitude at my PC.

  Bohannan had broken that solitude with his visit.

  He was carrying a manila envelope.

  He dropped it on my desk.

  He launched in with minimal preamble.

  “After that shit hit, I called my attorney. I also called Grace. She hadn’t missed what was going down in Misted Pines and the news you and me were a thing. We had a couple of seriously fucking annoying conversations. Then she told me to tell my attorney to send her new papers. There was some back and forth as she tried to get me to intervene for her with the boys, since she’s tried to be in contact with them, but they’ve blocked her. I told her you and me were shacked up, I didn’t give a fuck if her and me were legally divorced or not, and you didn’t either. Don’t know if that’s true, didn’t matter, she didn’t know it. I just wasn’t gonna let her use my love for you to get her what she wants from my boys, and not only because she didn’t ask to talk to Celeste. She realized she wasn’t going to get what she wanted, she signed the papers.”