The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

It was the first time I met Dan. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Ronald Reagan in his younger years. He was also funny and failed spectacularly at not showing he was worried about me, which could only come from Megan being worried about me, and he wanted us both to feel better.

Those puzzle pieces falling into place, this meant he, too, was a good person who cared.

Bohannan had left our guests to go up the hill for a brief visit with the FBI, but other than that, he stayed close to me.

The boys, however, whose normal pattern was to be in and out of what I’d come to think of as The Big House (they were in for the most part if there was food) were not around.

Bohannan was his normal self, calm and collected, but I knew what that visit up the hill was about.

I knew that if this was the same guy who’d been in Berkeley, he could be the guy, because him being here and not being the guy was a substantially more elaborate charade.

And it could have just been chance that he was in Aromacobana when I showed.

Or it could be that I was his new plaything.

So, obviously, this was not conducive to sleeping peacefully.

I rolled to my back.

Bohannan rolled all the way around, hooked me with an arm and yanked me mostly under him.

“You can’t be ready for another round,” I joked.

“Don’t let him get in your head,” he replied.

I expelled a frustrated breath.

He stroked my side with his thumb.

“Larue, he wants that. Don’t play the game.”

“Are you not playing the game?”

“I got no choice but to play the game.”

“You can show me if things are upsetting you. Frustrating you. Pissing you off,” I informed him.

“I’m not proud I had to spend seventy-five bucks replacing that cabinet door in the kitchen, but I wasn’t pissed at this guy. I was pissed at Dern.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t let them under your skin.”

“That might be doable for the veteran FBI agent, but I’m struggling with that.”

“You know about trash talk. During games?”

“What?”

“Football. Basketball. Whatever. Opponents say shit to each other. They do it to get into your head. They do it to break your concentration. If what happened today had to do with our guy, it was trash talking. He’s trying to get into your head, which in turn will get into my head.”

“So I need to stay cool for you?”

“No, you need to stay cool because we’re gonna get this guy. I told you, he’s leaving clues. They don’t think they leave clues. They always do.”

“You said you know how to commit the perfect murder.”

“The perfect murder is suicide. It takes a life. It leaves no witnesses. It bears no clues. It leads to no suspects.”

“Suicide isn’t murder.”

“That isn’t a judgment. But killing is killing. And outside a killing that has the same victim and perpetrator, there is no perfect murder.”

“Right.”

“I also said that because you’re sexy as all fuck, and I wanted to get in your pants, so I was trying to sound cool.”

That almost made me laugh.

“Talk to me,” he ordered.

“Are you really this calm and collected about this? About him targeting you? About him maybe targeting me?”

And about him maybe turning to Celeste, I did not say.

“No. I talked to the boys up the hill. Tomorrow, you and Celeste are going up there and you’re having an in-service with them. Celeste has had this kind of training all her life, so it’s a refresher for her. For you, it might be new. They’re gonna teach you vigilance and self-defense. It’ll help with your confidence. He sees you shaken, Larue, he’s gonna get off on that.”

“And we’re starving him from what he needs…” I let that trail, so he’d fill in the blank.

“To get him to make a mistake.”

“Could that mistake be another murder?”

“I don’t think so. He plans those. He knows who his victims are going to be and he’s laying them out according to that plan. It would chafe, being forced to make a kill he isn’t ready to unleash yet. But he’s feeding on attention. And if he’s starved for it, he might do something compulsively to get it.”

Holy cow.

“Like, when the media descends on Misted Pines, and his two murders take backseat to a sex scandal,” I guessed.

“Like that. Like he waits for you to get back from LA and follows you to freak you, which will trigger me.” He hesitated, and with care, he finished, “Bonus for him if you chase him down the street and remind the town a murderer is on the loose.”

So, okay, yes.

I’d really screwed up doing that.

But my breath started coming faster, and not because of that.

“Do you think it was the guy?” I asked.

“I’m wondering now, because it’s one thing to offer someone fifty bucks here and there to lurk outside a dormitory. Someone who has no idea what you’re doing and could think you’re just fucking with some chick who did you wrong, or playing a prank. It’s something else, and it’s risky, not to mention probably expensive, to keep that player on the board. Especially considering you make him come to a town where girls are getting murdered, and one of those girls stayed in the dorm where you got paid to be lurking. There are people who would do anything for cash. There are people who need it that bad, just to eat or to get a fix. But desperate people don’t make good pawns.”