Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
The first time Zoe had stepped foot in a cemetery was when Rachel was buried.
She still remembered that day. The pain had been so monumental and consuming that she had almost fainted. She’d had no appetite for days. But she couldn’t marinate in that grief for long.
Mist was trapped on top of the thick trees. Their branches so crooked and lush with leaves that the mist simply hung there, blocking the sunlight and cooling the ground.
Zoe buttoned up her leather jacket, a chilly breeze slapping her face as she trudged, avoiding the patches of puddle from the rain earlier.
The headstones appeared, like white dots popping out of a brown ground.
Most of them were worn and leaning with time.
Weathered and chipped. Others were sharp and shiny.
“There it is!” Aiden pointed to a faded headstone, tucked away in a corner under a wild weeping willow, its branches sweeping the ground.
The inscription on the headstone read:
in loving memory of michael fink 1980–1995. briefly here, eternally loved.
A thick silence crystallized between them; their eyes fixed on the words. Zoe’s heart squeezed. A single crow called out in the distance, the sound cutting through the hush like a broken bell.
“How did Lisa know where he was buried?” Zoe asked Aiden.
“The entire town knows where the kids from that fire are buried. She told me how in the first few years strangers would leave flowers…” His voice trailed off at the barren headstone. “I guess no one cares anymore.”
Zoe studied his angular face, pinched in tension.
She was used to Aiden behaving like a chess player—always strategizing and carefully plotting his words with a glimmer of something raw here and there.
But right now, he was almost shaking, his foot incessantly tapping, his hands fidgeting in the pockets.
Was it being in a cemetery or the grave of a child?
“The soil doesn’t look disturbed,” she noted, analyzing the ground, which looked even.
“Unless someone is really good at this. It’s the only cemetery in town.
Would the killer risk doing something like this?
Break open a coffin, cut a lock of hair, and bury the body again? It seems very convoluted,”
He frowned. “Well, he’s sending you riddles and hunting down women.” He looked around, his eye catching a middle-aged man hunched a few feet away between two headstones with a damp cloth and shears, wiping away moss.
“Excuse me,” Aiden said. “You work here?”
The man straightened slowly, squinting. “Every day.”
“We’re with the FBI.” Zoe flashed her badge, clipped to the waistband of her jeans. “Do you know if anyone’s visited the grave plot belonging to Michael Fink?”
His mouth pressed in a hard line. “Yeah. One woman used to. Came regular, flowers every time. Talked to her once. Said she was his sister.”
Jackie. She and Aiden exchanged a look.
Aiden narrowed his eyes. “No one else?”
“No. Just her.” A pause. “Haven’t seen her in a couple weeks, though.”
Zoe glanced at the headstone behind him, its edges slick with dew. “And no one has tampered with the grave?”
He raised his eyebrows, alarmed. “Of course, not! I’ve been coming here twice a day for the last ten years. Rain or shine. Nothing’s been touched.”
“And have you ever seen anyone acting suspiciously?” Aiden prodded. “Lurking around too often or anything odd?”
He shook his head. “It’s a safe place for the dead. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He pointed a finger at the sky, which was churning with clouds. With that he walked away, heading toward a shed.
“Well, no one has dug up a grave.” Zoe sighed. “Then how the hell did the killer get his hands on the hair? Did he know Michael from before?”
“Or he got it right after Michael died,” Aiden suggested. “Like someone who worked on the case and had access to the body.”
Just as the caretaker had warned, the sky cracked open with a low rumble, and thunder rolled in behind a sudden, sharp gust of wind.
Zoe ducked beneath the sweeping branches of the weeping willow as the rain came down in sheets. Aiden followed her. The long, slender but soaked branches formed a curtain that swayed and shimmered with the wind. Raindrops pattered on the canopy—a muffled drumming noise.
“I don’t like rain,” she complained, even though they were well hidden in the cocoon, where only a few drops hit them.
“I’ve noticed,” he said wryly. “I like storms.”
So did her mother.
“I don’t like morose things, Aiden.” She didn’t know why she said it and she didn’t know where she was going with it. “I don’t like feeling sad.”
“No one likes feeling sad, Zoe.” He called her Zoe. It oddly felt even more intimate than the fact that their shoulders were brushing against each other. “But why do you run away from it so compulsively?”
She didn’t really run away from it. There was a place where she indulged all the pain she had felt, a place where she could be free. “Ever heard of ‘fake it till you make it’?” She tried cracking a joke.
He threw his head back and laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “That’s one way to look at it.”
It was a pleasant sound to the ears. “You should laugh more. It sounds better than you psychoanalyzing me.”
He scoffed, looking down at her. Suddenly, she almost felt shy about the height difference. “Should we just hang out here until the rain stops?” He shifted uncomfortably.
“I guess.” She took a deep whiff, the scent of wet earth and bark hitting her nose. Maybe rain wasn’t entirely bad. After a few minutes, the noise inside her muted, swallowed by the hum of the rain. She was acutely aware of Aiden’s gaze on her. But she was pretending not to notice.
Why was he staring? And why was she letting him?
When she turned to look at him, he tore his gaze away and frowned, catching himself. “We should go. Just brave the rain.”
“Are you okay?” she asked. He looked pale and itchy. “Do you not like cemeteries?”
The lingering tenderness on his face evaporated, as did the moment. An aloof and hard expression captured his face. “It’s nothing. Let’s head out.”
Zoe watched in disbelief as he ducked out from the canopy and into the rain. Irritation fluttered through her. How hypocritical of him trying to find out everything about her but clamming up when it came to himself. Once again, Aiden had reminded her never to let her guard down.
Once again, she regretted liking him a little.