The Buried (The Apostles) (20 page)

Grace pictured the baby nestled in its mother’s arms, and for the first time since she’d seen the skull poking up from her construction site, the situation felt a little less gruesome. This mother and child belonged together.

Hatch studied the artifacts while she gave a formal statement to Deputy Fillingham. No, she had no knowledge of either set of remains, nothing about the artifacts looked familiar, and Lamar Giroux had never said or done anything that led her to believe he knew anything about this lone grave on his property.

When she finished with the deputy, she turned to Hatch, who was still standing at the table over the bones. His fingers traced, but didn’t touch, the curve of the woman’s skull. She settled her hand on the hard curve of his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Listening to the bones.”

Bees and bridges and talking bones. Her world was much less drab with Hatch back in her life. She slid her hand down his back. And right. “Bones don’t talk.”

“Not to people like us.” A fire glinted in his eyes. “When Berkley’s done with the Ronnie Alderman sketch, I want her to find out what these bones have to say.”

T
he cop shows got it all wrong. Detective work wasn’t about car chases or dodging bullets while tailing bad guys in souped-up sports cars. Detective work meant planting your ass in a chair, jamming a phone to your ear, and plastering your eyeballs to a computer screen.

Detective Tucker Holt squeezed eye drops into both eyes, the liquid burning, but after ten seconds his eyeballs no longer felt as if they’d met up with a few sheets of coarse grit sandpaper. He’d spent all day searching the Internet for high schools in the contiguous United States with mascots called Hornets. He found more than seventy and had spent the past three hours tracking down high school athletic directors to find out if they had any star pitchers called the Stinger. So far he’d racked up twenty-two
nos
.

His phone rang, and he grabbed it, hoping it was a call-back from one of the coaches he’d left messages with. Caller ID showed no such luck. For a moment he thought about sending Mara, his soon-to-be ex, straight to voice mail. It wouldn’t be the first time a case kept him from personal calls, but this late on a Sunday evening, it was probably something about the kids.

“Hey, Daddy!” came the bubbly voice of his four-year-old, Hannah. “I’m a bumblebee, Daddy, a bumblebee.”

A smile settled on his face even though he needed a damned hornet, not a bee. “That’s nice, Hannah-Banana. I’ll bring you a bouquet of flowers and you can make honey.”

Hannah giggled. “Not a real one, silly, a dancing one. You’ll come watch me dance, right?”

“Of course I’ll watch you dance.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Hannah made a slurping kiss sound, and the phone rattled, as if dropped.

After squeals and scuffles, Mara came on the line. “We’ll see you Thursday at seven o’clock. Make sure you’re on time because the bumblebees go first.”

Bumblebees? His head was still wrapped around hornets and stingers.

“Tuck, you didn’t forget Hannah’s year-end dance recital, did you?”

Like last year. Mara had always complained about him being disconnected from the kids, but two days ago, he’d taken the time to record all of Jackson’s and Hannah’s summer activities on his phone. He called up his calendar and scrolled through the week ahead. “’Course not. Seven o’clock at the Center for the Arts.”

“And this time you’ll bring the flowers?”

It was a long-standing tradition at the dance studio for fathers to bring flowers to the dancers, and only slacker dads forgot. Like him last year when Hannah had dressed up as an itty-bitty sugar plum fairy. Thankfully, one of the dance teachers had plucked a pair of roses from her bouquet and tucked them in Hannah’s hands before the tears started. “I’ll bring the flowers.” He wasn’t a monster, just distracted by monsters. He was getting his shit together for his kids, Hannah the bumble bee and Jackson the fisherman. “Is Jackson still awake?”

Muted voices sounded on the other end of the line. “He doesn’t want to talk,” Mara said. “He’s playing a computer game.”

“Tell him to get off.”

“Tuck, he’s busy.”

“And I’m busy, but I’m making time for him. You see that, don’t you?” She needed to because he didn’t want her convincing some judge he was a shit of a father.

Mara let loose a sigh, and Jackson finally got on the phone. “Hey.”

“Hey buddy, I thought maybe you and I could go fishin’ sometime this week.”

“Sure.”

“We’ll pick up some night crawlers, the big, fat juicy ones.”

“Sure.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yep.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nope. Now can I go? I wanna get back to my game.”

Mara got back on the line, and Tucker said, “He didn’t sound too enthusiastic.”

“What do you expect, Tuck? You talk about fishing all the time, but it’s all talk.”

“Because of work.”

“Exactly, Tuck, because of work. See you at the dance recital. And in case you forgot, Hannah’s favorite flower is—”

“—daisies,” Tucker finished for his ex. “I’m not a total fuckup.”

When the phone went dead, he stared at the photo of faceless Grandpa Doe. According to the waitress, he was a guy who spent a lot of time with his grandkids. Did he take them fishing? Go to their dance recitals? Buy them daises or pie with three scoops of vanilla ice cream?

He picked up the phone and continued to look for a Hornet called the Stinger. Up next, a high school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was late, past the decent hour for phone calls from strangers. Fuck decency.

“Coach Lancaster, please,” Tuck said.

“You got him.”

“This is Detective Tucker Holt with the Kentucky State Police. I’m investigating a situation here and am trying to track down an older couple who may live in your neck of the woods. You coach high school baseball, correct?”

“Yep.”

“Ever hear of a player called the Stinger?”

“The Stinger? Sure. He’s our boy. One of the best shortstops I’ve ever seen. Devan Lassen.”

The palms of Tuck’s hands prickled. “Do you by any chance know if he has a set of grandparents who came out and watched him play?”

“Sure does. Never missed a home game. Real nice couple.”

The prickle moved down his arms and across his chest, kicking up his heart rate. “Can you describe them for me?”

“She’s tiny, gray hair. Looks like a typical grandma. He’s a big guy, probably played football in his day but has a gut on him now. Likes the sweets. Is everything okay?”

Now it was Tucker’s turn for the word that had haunted him for days. “No.”

The Game had changed.

Someone had discovered her secret hiding place. No one was supposed to know about the floating cabin. It was her secret, and secrets, like bones, should stay buried forever. But now everyone knew about the hiding place, and she couldn’t use the third wooden box. Someone had taken it away. None of this was supposed to happen. It wasn’t a part of The Game.

Tiny worms skittered across her arms, and she brushed her hands along her skin, trying to push them away. They burrowed deeper, crawling toward her insides. She pushed harder, pushing away the flesh-eaters, and finally her skin smoothed. They were gone.

Good. She had work to do.

The pawn from Level Two dangled by a handful of tiny tubes and wires. Soon they would break, and soon she would be out of The Game. Then they could all move on to Level Three. Unfortunately, they couldn’t go to the next level without a box. She wasn’t about to go to the home improvement store in Tallahassee and purchase more lumber. That FBI agent, the one the color of the sun and sky, was smart, and so was Grace. But none were as smart as her.

She smiled. Definitely not as smart as her.

She parked her truck in the far corner of the Walmart parking lot where the light couldn’t reach and grabbed a cart from the cart corral. Inside, the bright light seared her eyes. She ducked her head, letting her hair fall across her face. Walmart had security cameras, although anyone with computer skills like hers could figure out how to break into a system and corrupt the video.

Under the glare of lights, she went on the hunt. The store had plenty of storage chests and boxes, but nothing large enough to fit an entire body and light enough that she could put it in play by herself. A sweet surge of satisfaction swelled in her chest. Grace had dozens, no hundreds, of people on her side, and she, all by her lonesome, was winning.

At last she stopped in front of a plastic tote and pushed her glasses to the bridge of her nose. About three feet by two feet. Not large enough for a jogger running along the beach or a girl walking to her late-night volunteer shift at the hospital. And certainly not big enough for the third pawn, the overweight waitress from the oyster bar who walked home alone every night after her shift ended at eleven.

Think. Think.

Simple. If The Game had changed, she needed to change pawns.

She squinted at the tote. A smaller person could fit inside, not stretched out but curled into a ball, but not too tight of a ball. The small person inside would have to be able to move around, find the phone, and dial Grace’s number. That was part of The Game. She studied the lid, the snap-on kind that fit tightly. No air flow. Not good. The small person would be out of The Game in just a few minutes. Not fair. Not fair at all. Grace needed a fighting chance or it wouldn’t be any fun for anyone.

She put the plastic tote in her shopping cart, making a note to punch a few holes in the top so air could reach the small person.

Hatch slipped his gun into the holster at his back and walked up the steps of Grace’s back porch. Instead of going inside, he settled his elbows on the rickety railing and stared out at the black. Like the young women buried in those wooden coffins, he and the others trying to crack this case were in the dark. The splintered wood dug into his elbows.

But his team was at his back. Jon was in the middle of the hunt. Hayden, a world-renowned criminal profiler, was walking in a killer’s shoes and getting into the twisted place that was this unsub’s head, and Berkley was giving the killer a face. He smiled. And maybe he’d call Evie, the SCIU’s bombs and weapons specialist. His fiery little teammate had a way of lighting things up. Grace had called the group he worked with his family. He’d always called them his team. They were the men and women he’d fight for and put his life on the line for. Wasn’t that what one did for family? Wasn’t that what he was doing for Alex? For Grace?

His head lolled forward and hung between his forearms. The steamy swamp was clouding his brain again, blurring and tumbling his truths. The first time here the fog had been so thick he couldn’t see anything beyond Grace.

A wedge of light cut across the porch, and Grace’s bare feet padded across the rough boards. She joined him at the railing but said nothing.

He aimed his interlaced hands at the pitch black night. “No bogeymen.”

More silence. She was probably thinking again. About Janis’s fight for her life, about the killer’s next move, about old bones. Grace didn’t know how to unwind and shut down, something that usually came as natural as breathing to him. He sucked in a long breath of warm, soupy night air clogging his throat.

Grace raised an arm, her fingertips sliding down his back, the touch so light it may have been more about him wanting her touch than her actual touch. Shifting so she stood behind him, she ran her other hand down his back. He pulled in a breath, the air sliding through his lungs now lighter and sweeter and cooler. Her fingers brushed along his waist and slipped under his shirt, skin settling on skin.

Every muscle in his torso tightened, trapping the sweet breath in his lungs. And still her fingers traveled, gliding along his ribs, across his chest. His lower body stirred. She pressed against his back, her thighs and midsection molding to his. This time his lower body quaked, sending a tremor to his brain.

He settled his hands over hers. “Whoa there, Princess.” He spun so they were shadowy face to shadowy face. “What’s this all about?”

Grace’s tongue darted over her lips, more nervous than naughty. “Bacon.”

He blinked. “Bacon?”

She knotted her fingers in the bottom of his shirt. “Bacon, Theodore. I am bacon. You are bacon.” With each line, she drew him closer. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip. “You do like bacon, don’t you?”

“It’s…uh…nice. I’m partial to hickory smoked. With grits. And eggs. Over easy.” Easy. Yeah, it would be so damned easy to pull Grace into his arms. He jammed his hands in his pockets because letting them slip across Grace’s skin would take them to a place neither one of them needed to go.

Grace’s lips curved in a soft smile. She rose on her toes, her breath fanning his neck, his jaw. Her hands, her mouth, her words, everything about Grace was so soft and easy. The fog. Must be the fog. A gauzy steam blurred everything but the woman before him. Too close. She was way too close.

He unclenched his hands and settled them on her arms. “I’m not sure what this is all about, but last time we talked about this, about us, forever wasn’t on the table, at least not for me, and that’s still the case.”

“I know.” Her sweet breath danced across his skin.

“Dammit.” He pushed her away, out of arm’s reach. He needed space between them. An ocean would be nice. “Then why are you doing this?”

She closed the space between them in half a heartbeat but didn’t touch him. “Because old dogs die and newborn babies never get a chance to live.” Her lips trembled. “And because someday soon you’ll sail off into the sunset.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it, any of it. So until then, Hatch, I’m going to make the most of every moment I have with you, and according to Allegheny Blue’s vet, that means having an extra slice or two of bacon.”

Hatch breathed in her soft, summery scent and her words. No demands. No promises. “Just here? Just now?” His heart threatened to leap out of his chest and close the distance between them.

“Here. Now. The future doesn’t exist.”

The groan ripped over his lips as he pulled her to his chest and pressed his lips against hers.

Sweet. So sweet. Like summer peaches and honeyed iced tea. His tongue dug deeper. And warm and soft. A sun-soaked sail. Baked silky sand. His hands slid down her back and around the curve of her butt.

“Uh, Hatch.” Her hands slipped between them.

He pulled her closer. “Here and now.” He pressed the words against her lips.

She flattened her hands on his chest and pushed. “Not here.” She yanked her mouth from his. “I can’t do this in front of him.”

Hatch fumbled for his bearings, for words. “Him?”

She pointed to her right foot, where Allegheny Blue had rested his head.

Hatch grabbed her hand and pulled her into the shack, Blue plodding behind them. “You stay here,” he told the dog, “and there’s an entire pig in your future.”

Blue yawned and settled onto the rag rug in the middle of the kitchen.

Grace laughed. “Look who’s talking to the dog now.”