When You Were Mine (Stone Lake 2)

“You need some rest. We have a busy day tomorrow. You’re going to have to figure out Roy’s arrangements.”

“Yeah, I have no idea what he would want,” I admit with a sad sigh. He’s my father… maybe, hell, I guess I don’t even know that for sure. I have no idea what he would want for a service. All I know is if I have some kind of service for him, it will have to be closed casket. Roy was a bastard to me most of my life. He was a monster whom I lived in fear of for more years than I want to admit. Yet, he didn’t deserve to die like he did…

No one does.

“I think he had all that arranged with the funeral home, Sweetheart. We can find out tomorrow,” she adds, and I nod my agreement. My body jerks when my cellphone rings and I reach over on the nightstand and grab it.

“Lodge,” I say, not even bothering to read the caller ID.

“It’s Kingston. I know it’s late, but I thought you’d want to know about the report I got back concerning your father.”

My body goes tight, and I swallow down the nerves.

“And,” I prompt Kingston when he doesn’t say anything else.

“Toxicology confirmed there was alcohol in Roy’s system at the time of his death.”

“Fuck,” I hiss and in response, Luna kisses my temple and holds me tighter.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Lodge.”

“Yeah, me too,” I tell him. “Was there anything else?”

“Well, if we can even call it that, this is where the good news comes in for the day.”

“Good news?”

“Such as it is, I guess. As we expected your father’s blood was everywhere, and that’s what was used to write the message on the wall. We can’t find ashes, or your… well… the missing…”

“I got it, Kingston,” I tell him, understanding why he’s having trouble talking to me about this shit. Hell, I’m having a hard time hearing it.

“Yeah, so the killer definitely broke away from his normal MO this time.”

“Not seeing the good news here, Kingston.”

“CSI found a second donor, Lodge and that sample just happened to find a hit when we ran the DNA in our database.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Nope and you’ll never guess who the sample belongs to.”

“Who?”

“Darren Oakes.”

“Son of a bitch,” I grunt, barely able to believe we’re able to catch the asshole this easily. “Please tell me you have located this fucker and brought him in.”

“Afraid not. There’s no sign of him. His parents have no idea where he or his nephew is. They’re wanting to file a missing person’s report on them. Apparently, Oakes and his nephew never came home after we interviewed him about the broken window at your dad’s. They hadn’t filed one yet, hoping that they would turn up. They didn’t want to get the police involved because of Darren’s past.”

“Christ. We have to locate this asshole soon, Kingston.”

“Yeah. Keep an eye on Luna and Joshua. I’m going to send out patrol cars along the street too. If Oakes thinks he can get to you through them, he won’t hesitate.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

“Not doing it for you, I’m doing it because I care about them.”

“I get that.”

“You better keep her happy, Lodge. If you don’t there won’t be a rock big enough for you to crawl under and unlike Oakes, I don’t get sloppy.”

“Fair enough.”

“Fair enough,” Kingston repeats. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” I tell him, hanging up.

I spend the next ten minutes telling Luna what the forensics team found at my father’s and she’s kind of silent after I tell her everything.

“You know, I never truly thought that Darren killed Jules, but now…”

“Yeah, it kind of surprised me at the time too. Still, I don’t guess we knew him that well back then.”

“That’s true, but Meghan was completely shocked too, and she dated him for a while.”

“His blood was found at the crime scene, though. We can’t ignore that…”

“Yeah. I’m not arguing it. I’m just saying it surprises me.”

“It does me too, Moonbeam. There’s just one thing that bothers me. I can’t for the life of me figure out what I ever did to Oakes to make him come after me and the people in my life like he has.”

“He’s crazy. There might be no explanation, Gavin.”

“I guess.”

“Maybe he’s mad because he wanted you to be his scapegoat all those years ago when it came to Jules’ murder and when you were cleared, you messed up his plans.”

“I guess that’s possible.”

“If that’s it, then he could have blamed you because he went to jail for all of those years.”

“Christ, anyway you look at it, this guy is completely insane.”

“Definitely,” Luna agrees.

We sit there in the silence, not really saying anything else. Luna is lost in her thoughts and I’m not far behind. All I can keep thinking is as insane as this idiot is, I have to find a way to keep Joshua and Luna out of his crosshairs…