The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

I turned my glare in the direction of Jesse’s house.

And Bohannan’s voice came at me.

“Jess isn’t there. He’s camping this weekend with Cynthia.”

Important to note: I had recently met Cynthia.

More important to note: I did not like Cynthia.

First, she made you call her Cynthia.

Second, she oh-so-totally was a Cynthia.

And no, until I met Cynthia, I had never had a single problem with any Cynthias.

It was just Cynthia.

“And Jace is in town with the guys,” Bohannan went on.

“Huh,” I said.

“Huh?” he asked.

I turned to him. “Huh.”

He took one look at me, turned his eyes downward and his beard twitched in the direction of the Crockpot.

“I don’t like Cynthia,” I shared.

He lifted his head to look at me again but said nothing.

“She’s not right for him,” I decreed.

“No, what she is, is a very nice girl who’s into him. He likes her. He digs spending time with her. What she isn’t is you, shoveling shit at him while watching over him like a hawk because you’re freaked he’s not dealing with the fact he didn’t make Ray Andrews.”

And again, but nonverbally this time, Huh.

Bohannan didn’t need it to be verbal.

He set aside the red pepper flakes and gave me his whole attention.

“I didn’t make Ray Andrews. You didn’t make Ray Andrews. And we even suspected him. Jason didn’t. Harry didn’t. Everett didn’t. Ben didn’t. No one made Ray Andrews. His entire existence for the five years he lived in Misted Pines was about us not making him. That whole game was so he could prove that he wouldn’t get made.”

“I understand that. However, Jess isn’t wise and experienced like you. Maybe he—”

“This is how you learn,” Bohannan told me. “I had two murders with two entirely different MOs. One was fucked-up carnage, the other was quick and neat and not the slightest bit messy. And I didn’t call there were two killers. I thought it was one trying to throw me off. That was why I was feeling hinky after we got Romano. I’d missed important things. There are times when you nail it. Every facet of it. But they’re rare. It seemed I’d nailed it. My gut told me I didn’t. Because I didn’t. And that was because my profile was off in very important ways.”

He took a breath, and although I had things I wanted to say to make him feel better about that, he kept going before I had to the chance to say them.

“Am I thrilled in the end you were running for your life through the woods? Fuck no. But no one else died. And he didn’t get away with it. He confessed everything to you, so he’s going down. This is one of those all’s well that ends well scenarios. You gotta cling to the end being well, or just it being the end, or you shouldn’t be in this business.”

I loved the guy, but it had to be said he could be annoying when he demonstrated how smart, adjusted, cool, calm and collected he was.

“So, you’re good with how it all turned out?” I asked, watching him closely.

“The bad guys are out of commission, so yes. But mostly, I can’t go back and change anything. No one can. It played out the way it played out, and this is the end.”

Yes, I totally loved the guy, but he was so adjusted, even he didn’t need me.

“Okay then, I just miss the boys being around for dinner,” I snapped.

There was a tremor of humor in his voice when he replied, “I’m getting that.”

“Alice gutted him. Do you think Jess is going to be able to handle it? I asked.

“I think Jesse and Jason were born sponges. They were way above the curve in everything. And I mean that. From lifting their head on their own to crawling to walking to toilet training to reading. They were doing high school coursework in middle school and college coursework in high school. Both of them. Is Jess kicking himself in the ass he missed it? Fuck yeah. Is he gonna stew on it for a while? Definitely. Is he gonna do anything else in the end but learn from it? No.”

“You sure?”

“You don’t think I know my boys?”

I did.

Because it was just obvious he knew his boys.

But I had more time with this family, and this man, and since I’d had it, we’d gone beyond the getting-to-know you through current events, and we could just say, even Bohannan thought there was buried treasure somewhere out there on that land.

Among all that learning, I’d also discovered that investigative, interrogative and profiling techniques weren’t the only training he’d given them.

Bohannan had been a Green Beret.

So there was also that.

In other words, they’d spent a lot of time together.

He wasn’t just their father and their teacher and their badass Zen master, they were a team.