Though I understood this play. A curfew hadn’t been called, but come sundown, Misted Pines moved behind locked doors and kept vigilant.
My need for sisterhood and love-of-romance-books solidarity grew as Angelo’s famously gravelly voice came at me again.
“Hello? I asked, what the fuck?”
“Camille called you.”
“So you go from one psycho to another?”
“I’m not sure it’s politically correct to call them psychos.”
“Do I give a shit? They’re psychos. I’ll be culturally sensitive to people who don’t rape and kill other people.”
He had a point.
“And you’re seeing someone?” he demanded.
Ah.
“Angie—” I started.
“You think maybe you’d give me a heads up about that so Cam doesn’t blindside me with it?”
Blindside him?
“Angie, we’ve been divorced for fifteen years.”
“You dated that record exec, who was an asshole. I knew you were doing that just to get laid and maybe piss me off.”
For goodness sakes.
“Then you shacked up for a while with that sculptor, but that was more about the fact he lived on that farm in the middle of nowhere and you needed a break than about wanting to be with that guy. In other words, you weren’t serious about either of them. But you were married to me for eleven years and then you didn’t replace me.”
It had been so long since I dealt with a man in any day-to-day meaningful way (and I didn’t mean a man like Bohannan, because I think we all can agree he’s a unicorn), I forgot how much hubris they could have.
So much it was stunning.
Thus, I was stunned.
“Are you saying you think I’ve been pining for you for fifteen years?”
“Del,” he chuffed, like, duh.
“I haven’t been pining for you for fifteen years.”
“Babe, you and me, we need some time. We’ll go to my place. Down on the island.”
We needed some time?
A decade and a half later?
“That place you had orgies?” I asked.
“That right there,” he crowed. “You wouldn’t care if you didn’t care.”
“I’m simply pointing out how insensitive you’re being, which is only one of the reasons why we ended, and that was the end.”
“It’s a spiritual place now, babe. I’ve had it cleansed. I meditate there. I swim. I read. You’d love it.”
I didn’t have time for this.
Strike that.
I just didn’t want to do this.
“Okay, Angie, the truth of the matter is, I loved you once. I did it in a way that parts of that love will never die. And those parts aren’t solely wrapped up in the fact we created Camille and you were an incredibly wonderful stepdad to Fenn. But the other parts, the important parts, the parts around trust and safety and security and unconditional love, the parts I needed because I grew up starved of them, are gone. Never to return. We had this conversation before you even put a ring on my finger, and still, you did what you did. Now, I cannot say that it doesn’t make me feel good to know that you still care about me in that way. But you have to get, I don’t return those feelings.”
There was a beat before, “Right, then go down to the island to get away from a fuckin’ serial killer.”
“Bohannan is part of the team that’s trying to find that serial killer, and I’m falling in love with him, and he likes me around, so that’s not going to happen.”
Several beats of silence before, “Are you safe?”
“Am I ever really safe?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t like this, and the girls don’t either.”
“Well, they’re not girls and neither am I. It’s sweet, this concern, but I’m not only where I want to be, I’m where I need to be.”
Many, many beats of silence, so many, the gate to home was coming into view before, “Love you, Del. Always. Yeah?”
That was very sweet.
And it was very sad.
And it was very unlike me not to notice that not only had I not replaced him.
He had never replaced me.
But…
Thank God this was done.
“Love you too, Angie. Thanks for caring.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
I heard him accidentally start saying a tortured, “Fu—, before he’d successfully hung up, and my heart hurt hearing that.
But not enough.
And not for long.
Because I cleared the gate and the trees surrounding the front of the house.
But I didn’t even make the clearing behind it before I saw Celeste standing outside her Mustang, beautiful face pale and haunted, watching a violently gesticulating Will Pulaski shouting at her.
Forty-Two
Shine out of the Dark
The Volvo rolled five feet with my door open and me half out of it before I realized I hadn’t put the bitch in park and turned it off.
I did that in record time, shot out of the car and sprinted to Celeste.
I pulled her back and got between her and Will, who could take us both and looked like he was going to, but I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
“You need to calm down,” I informed him.
“Delly—” Celeste said softly.
“You don’t get it!” Will shouted.
“Take a breath, stand back and calm down,” I ordered.
He got in my face, nose to nose, and I flinched when he roared, “You don’t get it!”
We were surrounded by tires-skidding-over-wet-pine-needles noises as a Ram and a Yukon raced to a halt, and it was indisputable Jace and Bohannan were way more badass than I was in angling out of their vehicles.
Will was already retreating as, unhurriedly but with a mission, Bohannan advanced on him.
Jace stopped at us, which was good, since the look on his face said he wanted to tear Will’s head off.
“Mr. Bohannan—” Will began.
“You don’t talk,” Bohannan warned. “I talk.”
He stopped several feet away.
Will tried not to cower while cowering.
I wanted to watch, but the sleeve of my sweater was being tugged.
I looked down at it, then to Celeste who was doing it.
Wordlessly, she showed me her phone.
A video was playing on it. I wasn’t interested, but at the glance I caught, I did a double take and took it from her.
What I was watching, I didn’t want to watch.
But I couldn’t turn away.
At its end, when the visual stopped on a still that was no less shocking than the rest of it, my eyes drifted up to her.
“His parents. It’s everywhere,” she whispered. “Like, the whole school has seen it.”
Dear Lord.
I knew one of the two people in it was Dale Pulaski. I’d seen him in another video, the one where he was standing by his wife while she was entreating their daughter’s kidnapper to bring her home.
This one, though, had a different woman in it.
And apparently, that woman was Sarah.
I kept hold of her phone and called, “Bohannan.”