Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

“Yeah, I do.”

“Why?”

“That night, I saw him at his house. He came after me.”

“You sure you remember that?”

“He hasn’t been wrong so far, has he?” Cos asks, her voice not so sweet anymore, and I love how she’s got my back.

Elba looks uncomfortable. “It’s a big accusation. It won’t stick without proof.”

“Look, Ross said his mom was wearing a swan pendant when she left. And you found the pendant. Isn’t the husband the first suspect?”

He watches me closely. “That’s right. But being the husband isn’t enough to indict Jasper Jones, even if we confirm that the skeleton belongs to his wife.”

“Can’t you search his house? That ax…” I fight the shiver that sneaks down my spine. “Ross said Jasper still has it. Maybe there’s blood from the victim on it?”

“That’d be hard, after all this time.” Elba spits in the dirt. “But yeah, I could search the house on grounds of suspicion for murder. Oh, and thanks for the heads-up on this graveyard.”

Cos whimpers.

He claps my back again, knocking the air out of me. He’s thin but strong. “Good seeing you. If there’s anything else I can do…”

“As a matter of fact, there is one thing. Did you talk to Ross?”

“Ross was taken away by the paramedics to sew the gash in his shoulder Jasper left him with.” He frowns. “Why? Do you think he knows something more pertaining to the case?”

“I honestly don’t know. But we’re going to the hospital to talk to him anyway.”

Ross is in a half-empty room, with only two other patients who seem asleep, or probably doped up on painkillers and other good stuff.

He’s reclining in a narrow bed, propped on two thick pillows, watching a small muted TV screen mounted on the wall with a scowl on his face.

From the way Matt told the story, I thought the knife had barely scratched him, but the gash is long, starting from his chest and going over his shoulder. Streaks of blood run down his bare chest, under the big white bandage taped in place over the stitches.

Holy shit. Looks less like Jasper threw a knife at him and more like he tried to carve him up. Old habits die hard?

“Hi, Ross,” Cos says, and he jerks as if touched with a live wire. “How are you holding up?”

His gaze skitters around the room, as if expecting an attack, and when it lands on her, he relaxes.

The whole thing only takes two seconds, but it replays in my mind like a movie. The way he tensed. The way he relaxed when he saw her.

“Still alive,” he mutters. “Yeah, so maybe I shouldn’t have gone back home. If you came to say I told you so…”

“Well, I did.” I shove my hands into my pockets. “And it doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Does it hurt?” Cos asks. “Shall I ask the nurse for more painkillers?

He grunts an unintelligible reply, but he’s staring at us like we’re apparitions, eyes a little wide.

I stare right back at him, trying to figure him out.

Ross is two years older than me, roughly Octavia’s age. He’d always seemed huge to me as we were growing up. I guess he was much taller than me for most of my life, when two years seem like a huge difference, but it’s almost as if I’m looking at myself on that bed.

With added tattoos and scars and the new bandage, and of course the ever-present sneer, that is.

It could have been me. What if he’d been born to Maggie Watson, and I’d been born to his now dead mother? If I’d grown up with our dad, would I have turned out like Ross—and would he have turned out like me?