I had not put this two and two together, but Bohannan went on to share that law enforcement types did not herald where they lived. From something as minor as keeping their names off their mailboxes, to taking pains to minimize their digital footprint, to Bohannan’s fortress-type setup.
So, although this bombshell wasn’t great, he was not surprised by it.
And he assured, “Baby, just because you might not be able to build an accurate profile because your subject is actively working to make sure you don’t, doesn’t mean you can’t investigate murders. Criminals leave clues. He’s leaving clues. We just have to find them and follow them.”
He seemed so collected about this, so unaffected by and aloof from that particular mindfuck, I felt a modicum of comfort.
But only a modicum.
I’d wanted to ask if I could read the letters.
But Jason and Jesse came back at that moment, and our brief reprieve to take a second to have lunch, a breath and think things through was obliterated.
The following hours were a jumble of happenings.
These included Bohannan not even blinking before he asked his sons to brief him in front of me.
They shared all about what they’d been doing. And in the intervening hours from them heading out and then, they’d tracked down someone who saw, on the other side of the lake, someone boating into the mist last night.
This was not unusual. Apparently, it was a thing in Misted Pines and its surrounding areas. It proved your mettle, like flying over the Bermuda Triangle just to say you did.
Though last night might be a different story.
Too far away, the person who saw this couldn’t see much of anything, except there was only one person in the boat, and it looked like a white fishing boat with a thick, dark stripe.
Not much to go on, but a clue.
It was around this time that all three of their phones started blowing up, and in a less dramatic fashion, mine did too.
It was actually a surprise it took that long.
First, there was Malorie’s death on the heels of Alice’s.
Second, there was Sheriff Dern’s shenanigans, and Bohannan’s threat had not been empty. He’d called members of the Board of Commissioners, and with increasing pressure from other citizens of Misted Pines, they were convening an emergency session.
Third, parents were freaking out, and they wanted the annual MPHS woods party shut down.
The problem was, the people who would do this were the sheriff’s department, and they were in disarray, with more than half of their deputies on walkout, and the ones left were under the command of an authoritarian who didn’t have his right-hand woman to even out his nonsense.
In other words, they were useless.
There were murmurs of setting up a crew of concerned citizens to go into the woods and break up the party.
Teenage rebellion was thick on its heels with pinging texts and underground high school social media posts moving the location around to undermine these efforts to put a stop to their fun.
In the meantime, Harry Moran had shown at the house with some of his brethren, and they were going rogue.
They might have been stripped of their badges, but they intended to find the killer.
This meant a closed-door session in Bohannan’s office that I wasn’t invited to.
It also meant, about half an hour later, he and the boys took off with Harry and his guys. But not before he took my phone, downloaded an app on it and gave me a quick tutorial.
This tutorial included how to activate the view on a camera that had been motion triggered (which would result in a specific ping and an accompanying notification on my phone). Or what to do if a sensor had been tripped (which also would result in a notification on my phone).
I was to keep the window coverings closed, the doors locked, my Taser and phone at hand, and I already had the app to open the gate…but I was not to open it, to anybody.
“The only people who should be going through can get through on their own,” he’d said. “And remember, me, Jace and Jess get those notifications too, so if we see something or suspect something, we’ll be on our way home.”
He’d said something else too.
“Move your shit to my room.”
This caused a probably inappropriate, but definitely strong clitoris tingle.
Then he and the boys were gone.
To the lament of my curiosity, they took the brown folder with them.
Before dealing with phone calls from Megan and Kimmy, the latter who I had, along the way, maybe rashly, given my number, or moving my shit to Bohannan’s room, I decided to go see how Celeste was.
Although she was not in full-on brat mode with me like she’d been with her father, when she ascertained I was not going to be on her side, she moaned, “I’m sure you think you understand. But none of your boyfriends’ sisters were murdered.”
Really, she had me there.
I decided to let her nurse her hurt. Maybe while doing that she’d realize how much pressure her father was under, how much he loved her and wanted her safe, how it would affect him in deep and ugly ways to fish a girl only a few years older than his daughter out of the lake at the end of his pier and cut him some slack (but I was not hanging a lot of hope on that).
I then had a long gab with Megan (she totally thought all this was about Audrey) and a short, one-sided gab with Kimmy, who clearly watched more true crime documentaries and was closer to what might be happening when she proclaimed, “Malorie isn’t a kid, this puts a whole different spin on it.”
I made dinner, knocked on Celeste’s door, was told, “I’m not hungry!” and ate my solitary meal with the lake closed off from me, not turning on music or the TV because, if something went bump in the night, I wanted to hear it.
I then moved my shit into Bohannan’s room.
Which semi-kinda brought me to now.
Because the boys had come home a half an hour ago.
They’d scarfed down the meals I’d kept warm for them, Jess and Jace rinsed their dishes and put them in the washer and headed to their place.
Bohannan and I went upstairs.
I spit, rinsed and lathered my face, wondering if tonight was orgasm night.
When I emerged from under the soap, Bohannan could be seen in the mirror, walking to the sink beside mine.
He was in pajama pants and nothing else.
The tail was gone in his hair, and it was flopping in his eyes.
I’d never seen his hair like that.
It was delicious.
His pectorals were life affirming.
He had chest hair that covered a good area, but it wasn’t too much.
He didn’t have a full six-pack, but under that fur, I counted four.
The veins running along his bulging biceps instantly became my new religion.
And since moving in with him, I’d used my vibrator, which was quiet, and I’d used it quite a bit…for obvious reasons.
But in that second, I vowed, tonight, I was using it again, even if he was lying beside me. He’d have to listen if he didn’t do something about it.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m gonna fuck you in the bathroom.”
My eyes moved from his chest in the mirror to his face.
I said nothing.
He went still.
I remained silent.
He didn’t move.
I didn’t either.
We stared at each other in the mirror for three years.