41. thirty-nine
thirty-nine
. . .
CREW
“What a fucking mess,” Lane grumbled as he steered us into his office at the station.
“It’s not possible.”
Trey was clearly in shock, moving like a zombie since we’d left Missy’s, but I was inclined to agree with him. There was no fucking way.
“Trey,” Lane said gently, using that tone I’d often heard him adopt with families of accident victims. “The writing is on the wall.”
“No!” I insisted, and Trey nodded. “That’s even more ludicrous than our killer being Ward.”
“Take your feelings about the family out of it and look at it logically,” Lane implored us both. “Aspen and I both thought Wyatt knew more than she was letting on the day we interviewed Ward. And while Aspen didn’t get any bad vibes from him, I wasn’t entirely convinced. I thought maybe Ward was a sneaky tech genius and had managed to dupe the system.”
“Not possible,” Trey muttered, some life returning to him. “For starters, the security logs are iron-clad. No offense to Ward, but he’s not smart enough to manipulate the system like that. No one in that family is. Hell, it’s my software, and even I’m not smart enough to do it.”
“Which means Ward and Wyatt were telling the truth. But there’s a third member of that family, and after the interview with Missy, it makes perfect sense.”
“I think you’re reaching,” I told Lane. “There’s no fucking way Mrs. Saunders is responsible for forty years’ worth of serial killings.”
Lane shrugged. “The evidence says otherwise.”
“What evidence?” Trey shouted, shooting from his seat. “You’ve got the town whore telling us Kelly went to prom with Roger and some bad vibes from the Ward interview. Quite frankly, you’re jumping to conclusions, and I won’t allow it.”
Trey’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he stared down at Lane, who blinked in shock at the outburst. Before Lane could respond, though, his phone rang.
“My FBI friend,” he explained before he answered. “Hey, Addison. Heads up, you’re on speaker and two of my brothers are here with me.”
“Hey, Lane. Hey, other Lawless brothers.”
Trey and I mumbled greetings, and Lane said, “What’ve you got?”
“So, the team and I took a look at all the files you sent over, both the police reports and incident reports from the fire department. And after consulting with a few colleagues at Quantico, we’ve built a profile. I’m emailing everything over, so take some time to review it, and give me a call if you’ve got any questions.”
On cue, Lane’s computer pinged with an incoming email. “Thanks a lot, Addison. I owe you one.”
“A beer next time I’m down that way.”
“Deal,” Lane grinned then hung up.
Trey and I were on the edges of our seats while Lane navigated to the email and scanned the contents.
“HA!” he shouted .
The chair next to me creaked, and I looked over to see Trey had gripped it tight enough to bleach his knuckles, the wood groaning with the force.
“No,” he said.
Lane gathered himself as he looked at our older brother. “I wanted to be wrong.”
“About what?” I asked. “Tell me what the fuck that profile says.”
“‘Based on the information provided to this office courtesy of the Dusk Valley Sheriff’s Department and Dusk Valley Fire Department, we have built the following profile of the so-called “Prom Night Arsonist.” We believe we’re dealing with a female, likely in her late fifties in accordance with the date of the first kill. This killer is…’”
I stopped listening after that, though Lane continued to read, mostly to himself.
Fuck . Mrs. Saunders? That was… insane . The FBI had to be wrong.
Trey, who was pacing the small stretch of office at the side of Lane’s desk, stilled, and Lane shut up, all three of our heads whipping to the door when a knock sounded against it.
“Yeah?” he hollered, and the desk sergeant pushed inside.
“Sorry to interrupt, boss, but there’s someone here to see you.”
“Did you get a name?” Lane asked, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation.
“She said her name is Wyatt, and that you’d know why she was here.”
Trey dropped back into his chair heavily, like his legs had completely given out on him, and I felt the blood drain from my face as surely as it had his.
“You can watch from the viewing room,” Lane told us as he moved from behind the desk, straightening his tie as he went to bring Wyatt back to interrogation, leaving us momentarily alone in his office.
“You don’t have to go,” I told Trey. “We’ll relay everything.”
“That’s my best friend,” he choked out. “Of course I’m going to be there. I just?—”
He cut himself off and exhaled sharply, hand raking down his face.
“Yeah,” I said in understanding, because I got what he hadn’t spoken.
This was a lot.
“But hey,” I continued. “It’s possible she’s here on something totally unrelated.”
Trey shot me a death glare, and I held my hands up in surrender as we finally left the office and made our way to the viewing room of the first interrogation room.
And not a moment too soon.
“What can I do for you today, Wy?” Lane asked. He sat with his back to the one-way glass, giving us a direct line of sight to Wyatt, and my heart sank.
Her face was splotchy, eyes red-rimmed and puffy, like she’d been crying a long time. She’d placed her hands on the cool metal table in front of her, wringing her fingers together nervously. The rigid set of her spine and how she refused to look Lane in the eye made it obvious she wanted to be anywhere but here.
“I lied to you that day you came to talk to Dad,” she rasped. “Well, no. I didn’t lie so much as I didn’t tell you everything.”
Lane remained quiet, giving Wyatt the space to continue.
“Mom—” Wyatt choked on the word, and fresh tears splashed down her cheeks. Trey’s hand found my shoulder, fingers digging in. Either he was trying to stop himself from going to her, or he was merely holding himself up.
Likely both.
“What about your mom?” Lane asked softly .
“She’s been…scarce as of late. She’s usually around so much in the summer to make up for working so hard during the school year, but since classes let out, and even before then actually, I feel like I’ve hardly seen her. She’s been…cagey anytime we ask what she’s been up to. But she seems weirdly happy?” Wyatt dropped her face into her hands. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”
“Your mom has access to your dad’s work trucks, doesn’t she?”
Wyatt nodded.
“I’m going to have you review some footage from the security cameras at the depot. It’s not the best, but no one knows your parents as well as you, and I’m hoping you’ll be able to clear some things up for us.”
Wyatt lifted her head and nodded.
Lane left the room briefly, shooting us a look to stay put as he walked past, then returned a minute later with an iPad. Re-entering interrogation, he slid his chair around next to Wyatt, set it up in front of them, and pressed play on the footage.
There was no sound, but I could see the images reflected on the mirror—a legitimate mirror this time—behind them, watching as he sped through the frames until a truck with Ward’s company logo pulled up to the pump, the driver facing away from the camera mounted to the depot lobby. I couldn’t read the timestamp, but the artificial lighting overhead indicated late in the evening or very early in the morning.
Almost as though the person driving that pickup chose a time when very few people, if anyone at all, would be around.
Head down and hood up, someone got out of the vehicle, moved to the back, and pulled a gas can out of the bed. They brought it to the pump, inserted a credit card to get it running, and filled the can before returning it to the bed and driving away.
Wyatt was openly weeping, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe it, but Lane made no move to comfort her .
“You know who that is.”
Lane wasn’t asking, but Wyatt nodded, breathing deeply in an attempt to marshal her sobs.
“It’s not one of the guys who works for your dad by any chance?”
Wyatt shook her head, then reached for the iPad. “May I?” she choked out.
“Be my guest,” Lane said.
Wyatt rewound the video to the moment when the person stuck their credit card into the pump and paused it. Then she zoomed in on the screen until a sliver of the person’s wrist between the sleeve of their sweatshirt and the edge of the glove was visible.
Wordlessly, Wyatt twisted her own wrist to reveal the word written there.
Always .
“I’d know that tattoo anywhere.”
“Fuck!” Trey screamed, and Wyatt’s head whipped up.
“Trey?” she asked.
Lane glared at us through the glass as I attempted to hold Trey back.
To Wyatt, Lane said, “Do you have any idea where she is right now?”
“No.” The word was so quiet, I could barely hear her. “I haven’t seen her since the day you, Crew, and Aspen came to the house. She came home that evening, ate dinner with us like everything was normal. When we told her you guys had been by, she didn’t really react, which I suppose was a reaction for her.” Another sob wracked her body. “Aspen. Oh my god, Aspen. That poor woman. All those poor women.” She was crying hard enough now that there was no way she could speak.
Trey jerked free from my grasp, and I let him go. A beat later, the door to the interrogation room burst open, and he crossed the room to gather Wyatt in his arms. Both of them shook with the force of her sobs.
I joined Lane in the hallway.
“I’m going to head home,” I told him. “I need eyes on Aspen. Keep me posted.”
Lane nodded. “Be safe.”
“Always am.” I saluted him and raced for the door.
This time of year, the sun stayed up for hours, so the sky was still brightly lit by the time I stepped outside, but the shadows were lengthening. The second I was behind the wheel of my truck, I dialed Aspen.
“Hey, hotshot.”
My shoulders relaxed, some of the tension of the last few hours bleeding away. “Hi, baby.”
“You okay?”
“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” I answered noncommittally. “You still okay with pizza for dinner?”
“Yep. Your mom told the ranch hands they had to fend for themselves tonight, but Finn and West are here. Will Lane and Trey be joining us?”
“Ahh…no.”
“Ominous.”
I chuckled. “You have no fucking idea. I’ll swing by Mozzy’s and grab some take-and-bakes. Have Mama fire up the oven, and I’ll be home in twenty minutes or so.”
“Be careful, baby,” she warned.
“I love you too,” I quipped and hung up.
Every single parking space on Cassia was taken, so I drove around to the alley and steered into the grass on the side, leaving my truck running as I entered through the back door. The wait was longer than I would’ve liked but after fifteen minutes, I headed out with three pies balanced in my hands.
I never saw the hit coming.
I was stunned enough that I stumbled, dropping the boxes of pizza. Before I could react, a cold, blunt object pressed into the back of my head, and a distorted voice said, “Keep your mouth shut and I won’t blow your brains out right here.”
Still dazed from the blow, I wisely didn’t move. The barrel dug in harder as the person shoved me forward, toward a white panel van parked nose-to-nose with my truck. We went around back, where the doors were open.
“Get in,” the voice said.
I crawled in. The moment I was fully inside, but before I could turn to get a look at whoever the fuck this was, they reached out and pressed something to my neck.
First, there was a sting, then a jolt that reverberated through my entire body.
And then, there was nothing but blackness.