CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The bus had not moved.
That was the problem.
At first Selena had taken comfort in the stillness. A quiet camp could mean routine. Routine meant patterns. Things to be understood and picked apart. But by the time her watch crept toward two in the morning, the lack of movement had started to feel like mockery.
Five to two.
The glow of the numbers looked pale against the dark. She lowered her wrist and flexed her fingers inside her coat pocket. Cold had worked its way in a while ago. Steady enough to settle in her joints and make every shift of her weight feel slightly older than it should.
From the cover of the trees, she kept her eyes on the fairgrounds.
Most of the crowd had gone home hours earlier.
The tent still stood in a pool of generator light, white canvas gone dull and gray now that the revival energy had burned off.
The bus sat beyond it, windows dark. Leon had smoked two cigarettes and traded places once with the other security man.
Marlene had stepped off the bus around midnight to empty something into a trash barrel, then gone back in. Since then, almost nothing.
No furtive meetings. No shadow slipping from the bus and into the dark. No late-night visitor moving with guilty purpose.
Only the low drone of the generator, the distant flapping of canvas in the breeze, and the low complaint of branches above her head.
Another gust moved through the copse. Wood rubbed wood with a slow, dry creak.
Selena tucked her chin deeper into her collar.
Three years earlier, she had spent sixteen hours at a dock in Boston waiting for a man who trafficked guns through seafood shipments.
Rain that day had been worse than this cold.
Wind off the water had cut through every layer she wore.
By hour twelve her knees had started barking every time she shifted position.
By hour sixteen she had still been standing when the target stepped onto the pier, smug and unsuspecting, and she had taken him down with saltwater in her shoes and a cramp in one calf.
That was the work. Endure. Wait. Persist longer than the other person expected any sane human being to wait.
Stubbornness would only get a person so far, though.
Forty did not feel old to her. Not really.
Forty felt capable. Focused. Better in many important ways than twenty-five.
Yet the edges had started to show in places she could no longer pretend not to notice.
Long flights hit harder. Cold settled quicker.
Bad motel mattresses announced themselves for a full day afterward.
None of it changed the job. None of it changed what she could do. It only changed the price.
Headlights appeared in the distance.
Selena stilled.
The beams slid along the road beyond the fairgrounds, pale and brief through the trees, keeping its distance.
She narrowed her eyes, trying to get the shape of the vehicle, but the angle was wrong and the darkness swallowed detail.
A sedan maybe. Maybe not. The lights slowed, then broke away onto a side road she had barely noticed earlier, one that curved off behind a line of brush and vanished.
No approach to the bus. No sign of anyone turning into the main lot.
She kept watching until the lights disappeared completely.
A few minutes passed.
The cold found her again.
Far off, something metallic clanged once, then settled. Selena looked from the bus to the tent and back again. No movement. One of the security men had gone inside the bus. The other remained posted outside, arms folded, a heavy shape under the floodlight.
Then came footsteps.
Not from the fairgrounds.
From behind her.
Every muscle in Selena’s body locked at once. Instinct moved faster than thought. She pivoted, drew her gun, and brought it up toward the sound in one clean motion.
A man stopped dead between the trees, both hands raised, two paper cups balanced between them.
Connor.
“Dammit, Connor,” she hissed, breath sharp in the cold. “I could have shot you.”
Moonlight caught the edge of his grin. “Don’t act like you haven’t always wanted to.”
Her pulse took a moment to slow. The barrel lowered, though not gracefully. She reholstered the gun with more force than necessary and stepped toward him to snatch one of the cups from his hand.
“You’re in danger of blowing my surveillance. Why didn’t you text me you were coming?”
Connor took a careful sip from his own coffee. “Good to see you, too. And I did text you. Several times.”
That’s when Selena remembered she’d put her phone on silent, wanting to keep as quiet as possible.
She didn’t say anything, merely watched the steam rising between them.
The cup was hot against her palms. For the first time in over an hour, warmth touched her skin.
She brought it to her mouth, drank, and let the coffee sit bitter and blessed on her tongue.
“You still shouldn’t creep up on people in the woods,” she said.
“You shouldn’t stand in the woods alone at two in the morning.”
“Ugh, now who is the impossible one?”
His shoulders shifted in a small shrug. “I got your car fixed and drove it here.”
Selena looked at him over the rim of the cup. “You did what?”
“Mechanic owed me a favor. It’s parked along a side road.”
The coffee moved through her in a slow line of heat. She hated how good that felt. Hated a little more that he knew it would.
Connor glanced toward the fairgrounds through the trees. “Come on. At least admit you’re a tiny bit happy to see me rather than doing this alone in the cold.”
The answer came out before she could decide not to give it. “A tiny bit.”
He smiled into his cup. “I’ll take that.”
Branches shifted overhead. Somewhere beyond them a night bird made a single sharp sound and went quiet again.
Connor tipped his head toward the road. “There’s a split in the trees where you get a good view of the bus and fairgrounds from the car. Would be a hell of a lot more comfortable if we’re here for the night.”
Selena held still, weighing irritation against practicality. Warmth from the coffee was already fading from her fingers.
“Okay,” she said. “Lead the way.”
He turned without comment and started through the trees.
She followed, careful with her footing over roots and old leaves.
The side road lay only a short distance off, narrower than the main approach and half hidden by overgrowth.
Her rental sat tucked in the shadow of the brush, engine off, dark enough not to draw attention.
Connor opened the passenger’s door, then paused and stepped back.
A small thing. She had to admit to herself that he always had the pretense of a gentleman to him.
Selena slid into the passenger seat with her coffee. The interior held a faint trace of motor oil and the stale scent of the motel air freshener clipped to the vent. Connor got in beside her, shut the door softly, and for a while neither of them spoke.
From here, through a ragged gap in the trees, the view was better. The bus sat clear beyond the branches. The tent rose off to one side. Enough cover to stay hidden. Enough visibility to catch movement.
Connor had been right.
That annoyed her, too.
They sat with the engine off and the windows beginning to fog lightly at the edges. The fairgrounds looked remote now, like a model village set down in darkness for someone else’s inspection.
With a second pair of eyes, Selena took the opportunity to check her messages on her phone.
She quickly found two emails. One from Brent.
No dice on murders at churches or graveyards in the surrounding counties.
The second was from Meg and affirmed that while the linguist corrected some of Selena’s translations of the Latin words at St. Bartholomew’s, the gist of the messages remained the same.
Oh and I’ve got a two-man forensics team available in three days to come down and reevaluate the Harlan County team’s work, the email said. A few more procedural points, ending with remember not to step on too many toes down there.
Selena put her phone away and sighed.
“What is it?” Connor asked.
“Nothing much,” she said. “Just there’s no sign of another murder similar to Brenda and Lauren’s. The field office expanded the search, but nothing came up.”
“You still sure there was a murder before these two?” Connor asked.
“There has to be,” she said. “I mean, what else could the Roman numerals mean?”
“By the way,” Connor added, “I spoke with Doctor Blethan.”
“Did he have any more insults to hurl my way?” Selena asked.
“You gotta give it a break, Selena.”
“Give what a break?”
“This big-shot attitude, you know we’re not all morons out here.”
“I’m from here, remember,” she said. “I don’t think that at all.”
“Well,” Connor said with a sigh. “Whatever happened between you and the doc, I smoothed it over as best I could.”
Selena said nothing about the pending forensics overview. That would ignite a third world war with the good doctor.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“He says that Lauren’s jugular wasn’t cut the whole way through.”
Selena tapped the dashboard with the side of her fist in frustration. “The bastard let her bleed out for longer than needed.”
“Seems that way,” Connor said. “I don’t know how someone could do that.”
“I do,” Selena answered. “Because he’s punishing them…”
A moment passed and Connor clearly tried to change the atmosphere in the car. “So, what’s Washington like? You have a boyfriend out there?”
“I’m not comfortable discussing my private life, Connor.”
Nothing else was said for a while. An emptiness never filled. Silence stretched.
Then Connor said, “This reminds me of the time you refused to talk to me for a week.”
Selena kept her eyes on the bus. “That was because of the argument with my dad.”
“I remember.” A short laugh escaped him, low and private. “I really was getting ready to slug him. All because he thought I was a freeloader.”
That pulled her attention away from the fairgrounds.