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’ for 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.