Keys are blue, the big house. Red, the twins’ house. White, the barn. (I had no idea why I’d need a key to the boys’ house or the barn, but points to the man for being so thorough so shortly after officially declaring his interest in me.)
Lock up when you leave.
At the end, there was what might be an x to indicate the first kiss he’d ever given me (not including the temple one, which I’d decided officially not to count), or it might be part of the rather elaborate, but even so, mostly illegible B in Bohannan.
And that was it.
I texted him before I got out of bed.
He texted me right back, in the middle of me making said bed.
You doing okay?
My reply, I’m free. And I added an effect, that being fireworks exploding when the text opened.
I’d made the bed and was dressing when he sent, Yeah, baby.
I sent three dozen hearts-surrounding-face emojis, two dozen flamenco dancers and a hang ten.
He didn’t send emojis, but he thumbs-upped my text.
I finished dressing, texted him I was leaving, left his house, locked up, practically skipped to my house, got another thumbs-up on my text and texted him again when I got inside my place.
His reply, Good. See you tonight.
I made coffee. Took a cup upstairs. Took the longest shower in my personal history, symbolically washing Bob Welsh away. Dressed in a lounge outfit, and called my daughters, leaving messages for both to call me back when they had a minute, but telling them I had very good news.
I then called Agent Palmer who gave me some specifics about what had gone down and what was going down.
It included the fact that once they’d pinpointed him, and were pretty sure it was him, they started investigating other things, and they did this double time while strategizing a takedown to get the women free from where they were relatively sure he was holding them, as soon as safe and possible.
They had not so far, at his house, or at the other house where he was keeping the women, found much (outside the women, oh…and a great deal of evidence of the extent of his obsession with me).
However, they had visited a variety of stores and internet cafés in his area. The stores were where they had witness accounts and store receipts of purchases of bomb-making paraphernalia. The cafés were where they found cached (even though deleted, they were restored) internet search histories of unhinged web searches he’d done on computers he had logged into.
They might have a line on how he got his hands on the poison that fortunately did not take out Bookworm.
But regardless, he’d already confessed, as he would, to a number of charges around kidnapping, assault, sexual assault and other.
He had a lawyer, but right now, what they were haggling about was not how long he’d be in prison, but which prison he’d be in and how comfortable he’d be behind bars until he died.
I did not care.
I cared about the women.
“We’re giving them assistance. It’ll be a long row, but we’ll keep our eye on them,” Agent Palmer assured.
I told her if they needed anything financially, I should be her first call. Or if they needed anything at all, please contact me.
She made note of that.
And we were done.
But I wasn’t done.
I called Hawk Delgado and got Elvira, who told me they’d wrap up, send me a report, handle the devolvement of what they were doing to keep an eye on Camille and Joan, and their final invoice would come with the report.
I called Alicia, who already knew, and was beside herself with glee, for her, for Russ and Michael, and for me.
I called Russ, who also already knew and was relieved and happy, but a little worried about me.
I called Michael, who further already knew, and said, “Maybe now we can stop living under your shit.”
Fun facts: Russ had gone on to star in two long-ish running sitcoms and a two-season, one-hour dramatic comedy that didn’t have a long life but was rife with critical acclaim and still had fans demanding its return.
Alicia had moved to film and had done a slew of successful romantic comedies and was still doing them, perhaps not to the same box office, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
Michael had two failed sitcoms, did so many pilots that weren’t picked up we’d lost count, and a short guest-starring stint on a political drama that earned him a Golden Globe and led him to believe he could be a dramatic actor, to unimpressive results.
I put Michael out of my mind, nothing was going to mess with my good mood that day.
I then talked to my two jubilant girls, ignored the calls and texts of my relieved exes, briefed a couple of friends who I knew would be worried, and texted Celeste with You up for an adventure after school?
To which I received, YES!!!!!
Which brought us to now.
Standing wearing cute sweaters and corduroy pants, scarves wrapped around our necks, both of us with fabulous knit caps over our hair, looking autumnal fabulous as we perused what was on offer in the huge crates outside the grocery store.
In other words, we were selecting pumpkins.
She held up a fugly, messed up one. “This is so Jace.”
She was so right.
“Toss it in.”
She put it in our cart.
I located a massive one. “Your dad?”
“Totes.”
I put it in the cart.
She found an even fuglier, messed up one for Jess, and we picked out ones for each other (she found one that was sheer pumpkin perfection for me, I found one that was even more perfect for her, and we both giggled about this).
Celeste had commandeered the cart and we were going to roll through the store to get what we needed for dinner, when I heard, “Ms. Larue?”
I turned.
And looked right into the face of Audrey Pulaski.
Twenty-One
Aromacobana
“I…sorry, I thought it was you,” Audrey said.
Celeste came up so close to my side, her arm was pressed to mine.
“Hello,” I said gently to Audrey.
She took a step toward us, glanced at Celeste and said, “Hi, honey.”
“Hi, Mrs. Pulaski.”
At her reply, I almost looked down at Celeste because her tone wasn’t her usual shy or warm and quiet, it was kind of cold and definitely remote.
Interesting.
“You and Will have fun last night?” she asked, her tone fake cheery and painful to hear.
“A little,” Celeste allowed.
“Good,” Audrey muttered. “I wanted to…” She looked in our cart and paled.
My heart stuttered as there were probably no jack-o’-lanterns at the Pulaski residence this year.
She pulled herself together and returned her attention to me.
“I wanted to thank you. For what you did. Offering those rewards. That was very kind.”
“Don’t.” I was still going gently. “Really.” I couldn’t say it was my pleasure. So I said, “Anyone with my resources would do the same.”
“I’m not sure they would,” she replied.
I had no answer to that, so I gave her a careful smile.
Another small step toward us, and her head tipped a little, but the movement was strange, like a bird’s.
“Do you…well, do you have any idea why Leland didn’t announce your offer?”