She got out too and followed him up to the door.
“What are you doing?” he growled at her.
She seized his lapel and pulled him close. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t be your girlfriend.”
“No one asked you to be my girlfriend.” He was whispering too.
“Good,” she said. “Let’s not make things so… formal. Let’s just… be. Sometimes. If we need it. If either of us needs it.”
He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Can that be okay?”
He kissed her.
She shut her eyes. She clung to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
For the next few days, Wren had a few things she had to do at headquarters, but the case on their end was winding down. They were still working to gather evidence, but they had found a place in the woods near the bone piles where the girls’ clothes had all been stashed.
They weren’t sure exactly how Major had gotten them out there, but they theorized he would have picked them up, luring them into his car somehow. From the contents of the girls’ stomachs, they knew that he had hidden the drugs in ice cream, knocked them out before he took them to the woods. There he’d stripped off their clothes, dressed them in the black clothing of an initiate and laid them out on the stone circle in the woods to suffocate them. They’d even found plastic bags which he’d used, bundled up with the clothes. There were traces of several of the victims’ DNA on the bags too.
So, the case was coming together. There was no real doubt that Major was guilty, especially since they had a confession from him.
Major was fuzzy on the details of all of it. He couldn’t remember getting the girls into his car or drugging them. He didn’t like to talk about suffocating them. When he did, he would typically break down into tears and start in on how he didn’t understand why he’d done it. It was hard to watch that happen, but it was also frustrating, because all the answers were in Major’s head, but he couldn’t get them out to help them.
Currently, Major only had access to a public defender, who probably wasn’t doing everything that could be done for him. With a proper psychological evaluation, maybe more of the details of the crimes could be discovered.
In the end, Wren felt sorry for him, but she felt sorrier for the families of those five little girls. Whatever you could say about Major, it all had to come down to the fact that he’d deprived five girls of their lives because he believed that some mythical horned god wanted him to. It was tragic.
Wren wasn’t sure what was next for her.
She had wanted to solve this case, and she had. Now, whatever had drawn her back to the compound was concluded. She was free of it all.
And yet, she didn’t feel as if there was anything else out there in the world calling to her. She wasn’t likely to get a second chance at the FBI Academy. Even if she wanted to pick up her life where she left off, she couldn’t.
With the new murders, the tour business was booming. Kimora had hinted that if Wren wanted to take people on tours, she’d be more than welcome back at her old job. Wren had declined thus far, but eventually, she was going to have to make a decision.
That morning, she got up and went out on the porch in the chill of the morning air to look out at the trees. A few of them had leaves that were just starting to change color. Summer was over, autumn was coming. The sun was struggling into the sky, spilling reds and purples out onto the streaky clouds.
And a car pulled into her driveway.
She squinted at the headlights before she recognized it.
Detective Reilly parked the car and got out.
“Detective,” she said, “you should really start calling before you come over.”
“Maybe I like seeing you in your pajamas,” he said, grinning at her. “Get dressed. There’s coffee in the car. I had Angela make you something she says you’ve never ordered before.”
“Oooh, really?” She grinned. “I thought I’d run out of new combinations. Exciting. But where are we going?”
“Oh, we caught a case across the border in Maryland,” he said.
“What? Another case?”
“There’s a YouTube video,” he said. “You can watch it in the car. It’s disturbing.”
She drew her eyebrows together. She’d wanted to solve this case. This was the case that had haunted her, with the echoes of her youth and the Horned Lord and David Song. And now that it was over, she was free. So, she should tell Reilly no, and she should get on with her life. She should call her dad and tell him that she was coming home.
“Go on, get dressed,” said Reilly. “Your coffee’s going to get cold.”
“Okay,” she said. “Give me a minute.” She ducked back into the house and pulled on a clean t-shirt and the jeans she’d worn yesterday. She put her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck and splashed water on her face. And then she climbed into Reilly’s car.
Another case.
She could stick around for another case.
* * *
Thank you for reading!
There are five books in the Wren Delacroix series. Each will resolve one mystery involving a serial killer but all will deal with bigger threads about the past, the present, the Fellowship of the Children of the Lord Cult, the Crimson Ram, and the characters’ personal lives.
Click here for information about book two.
By the way, I love to get reviews. I read each and every one.
The Bone Forest Page 20