The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel Read online

  She looked fresh from wardrobe.

  Honestly.

  What was happening?

  “Oh my goodness.” She lifted the section of counter that swung up and over (because of course it did) as she exited the back to approach me, her hand already raised. “I’m Polly Pickler.”

  She was not.

  No one was named Polly Pickler.

  Unless she was named by Dashiell Hammett.

  “And I know you get this a lot,” she went on, taking my hand, clasping it in both her own, and hers were so small, both of them didn’t even cover one of mine, “but I’m your biggest fan.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but was unsuccessful.

  Still holding tight to my hand, she bounced it with her words.

  “I really, really, really loved Those Years. I didn’t miss that first episode when it was airing. I even taped it while I watched it, just in case. I have them all on DVD now. Boxed sets. All ten seasons. Even so, I watch them on Hulu.” She released me only to snap in the air. “I just pick an episode, any episode from any season, and I’m transported back to happy times for at least a half an hour. But I tell you, most of the time, I’ll just settle in and watch four, five, even more episodes all back-to-back.”

  I again opened my mouth.

  And was again foiled.

  She leaned into me, and I unconsciously bent down from my five-eight height (well, more like five-eleven in my booties) to her four-eight as she carried on.

  “But We Pluck the Cord is the best book of all time. I will argue it with anyone. And I have. Yes, To Kill a Mockingbird is fabulous. Of course. A classic. But don’t hand me any of that 1984 or Lord of the Flies or The Sun Also Rises nonsense.”

  I stared aghast at her.

  “And yes, The Handmaid’s Tale was exceptional. But just because the author also starred in one of the funniest, and I’ll say most poignant and often very touching and real sitcoms in television history does not mean she hasn’t written the modern classic that will be on par with Woolf, Fitzgerald and Salinger.”

  She wagged a finger in my face.

  I’ll repeat, she wagged a finger in my face.

  “Mark my words,” she concluded.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Obviously, considering We Pluck the Cord won every literary award going, made a fortune in royalties (and still does), was added to high school literature reading lists across the globe, and had more than nine dozen credit hours devoted to the dissection of it at universities in seven different countries, and I wrote it, I was not going to debate her opinion.

  However…

  “We teach it in school, here, in Misted Pines,” she proclaimed proudly. “And that was before you moved to town.”

  “I—”

  “I’ve called Sheriff Dern and told him to get his keister here right away.”

  She did not use the word “keister.”

  “No lip from him,” she blathered on. “No excuses. He was supposed to get out to the lake and see you, I know. I told him he needed to go.”

  “Oh no, that’s not why—”

  “And now look what he’s done.” She blew an irritated puff of breath out of her mouth that was so strong, I felt it go through my sweater and touch skin. “You had to come all the way into town.”

  “It isn’t that far,” I said swiftly.

  “You’re right. Still. I mean,” she leaned in again, “you…are…safe. No one would harm a hair on your head. Including keeping mum about you being here with us. We love you in Misted Pines. Everyone loves you.”

  That was part of the problem.

  There was one man out there who loved me way too much.

  “Though,” her mind seemed to drift, “it prolly would have been good when you came in that you brought Jace.”

  Jace?

  She waved a hand far up over her head like she intended to pat her crown but missed. “Now it’s no never mind. You’re here and you’re as safe as you could be, right here where—”

  “Woman!” a male’s voice boomed from behind me. “This better be damned good to call me—”

  I turned.

  Sheriff Dern was blustering in, shaking his oilskin coat at his shoulders like he was voiding it of drops of rain, though it wasn’t raining.

  He was wearing a brown sheriff’s campaign hat with a star on the front and gold cord wrapped around, the tassels resting jauntily on the front of the brim.

  He caught sight of me.

  Shut up.

  Stood still.

  And stared.

  I did too, my heart sinking, my stomach twisting.

  Because upon sight of him, as I suspected, all his puzzle pieces fell right into place.

  And I hoped Bohannan was as good as everyone thought.

  Because her fate in this man’s hands, Alice Pulaski was doomed.

  Eight

  The Toy Aisles at Target

  The first thing I noticed in Sheriff Dern’s office was the large, gleaming, intricate and impressive, custom glass-fronted gun cabinet.

  It’s interior, however, did not boast a collection of antique firearms, such as pearl-handled pistols or Revolutionary War muskets.

  It displayed a frightening set of automatic weaponry, the scope of which even Rambo would turn his head to the sheriff and grumble disapprovingly, “Dude.”

  “Impressive, don’t you think?” the sheriff asked.

  I did not.

  There were pieces of the puzzle when it came to the male gender that I tried very hard never to read. But in the face of this cabinet, I had no choice but to understand this lawman had a very small penis.

  “Take a seat, take a seat,” Mr. Magnanimous said, not noticing I did not reply, nor, I knew, caring that I didn’t.

  He was sweeping off his hat and putting it on a very populated coat tree that clearly had been where he deposited things for a very long time and forgot most of them. Shunting his oilskin came next, and it was hooked on the tree. Both of these were accomplished with natural movements that were nevertheless exaggerated.

  The man was in the room, you mustn’t miss it, he’s here, he’s in charge, pay attention.

  Onward to the desk with his shoulders swaying like they were broader than they actually were, and he needed to use them to conduct his weight forward.

  He rounded the desk, not looking at me.

  Though, when he did, and he noticed I’d come to stand in between the chairs at the front of his desk, he threw his arm out at the same time he aimed his “keister” to the old-fashioned, wooden rolling chair that he’d stolen from the set of the Andy Griffith Show, indicating I should claim a seat.

  However, this action threw off his coordination, or perhaps even his office furniture knew he needed to be expelled from it, and it did the best it could, being inanimate, because that keister glanced off the edge of the chair and he nearly landed on the floor.

  He grabbed the desk and caught himself in a squat, shifting back, his cheekbones sharpening as a flush of anger at his embarrassment rushed across them.

  I looked away and took my time arranging myself in a seat opposite him, tucking my purse in my lap.

  When I looked back, he declared, “Polly will never let me hear the end of this, making you come—”

  He didn’t finish that, appeared alarmingly befuddled for a moment, his gaze drifting to the door.

  It snapped back to me. “Where’s Jace?”

  Who was this Jace?

  “I’m sorry. Jace?”

  “You came here without Jace?”

  “As I don’t know who Jace is, I did indeed.”

  “You don’t know who Jace is?”

  I decided to stop talking.

  “One of the twins,” Dern told me.

  This seemed important to him, it made no sense to me.

  “Jace, Jason. Of Jason and Jesse,” he continued. Then he shared that he’d buried the lead. “Bohannan. Cade’s boys.”

  I’d forgotten.

/>   Celeste had mentioned them, Jace and Jesse, though I didn’t know they were twins, even if I assumed they were related to her.

  Considering Celeste was sixteen, I also didn’t know they were old enough to provide physical protection to a millionaire who was paying a great deal of money for said protection.

  In fact, I was so wound up in Celeste, I didn’t think of Jesse or Jace at all.

  “I haven’t yet met…the twins,” I told him.

  “What are you doing, wandering around town without a bodyguard?” he demanded.

  I opened my mouth to reply.

  Whereas Polly, in her excitement at meeting me, and just because she was nice, I had no issue being interrupted or not allowed to speak.

  My reaction was instant when Dern did it.

  I found it infuriating.

  “It’s my understanding you have some sicko sending you pictures of women he’s torturing, making them play out episodes of your TV show in between raping them.”

  I flinched.

  He again didn’t notice that, or care.

  “And you’re wandering around on your own?” he asked incredulously, like you’d scold a child for leaving your cart and zooming to the toy aisles in Target.

  “I have—”

  “I know. That Cuban told me you’re covered with all that tech crap, but also, he’s got the Bohannans looking after you. You’ve still got no business going out on your own.”

  I felt a tingling at my lower back. It was urging me to do things I might regret, like stand and tell the local sheriff to go fuck himself before I walked out.

  I did not know Hawk Delgado’s ethnicity.

  I did know he had a name.

  That was one.

  Two, I was an adult who, in the course of my life, had no small amount of attention from people who had, in some cases, rather severe issues with their perceptions of me. Thus, they acted on them.

  I was also an adult who participated fully not only with the FBI, but my hand-selected security team, deciding what was best with the utmost goal being to keep me safe.

  But also, there were no guarantees this person who was currently making two women’s lives a living hell would be caught anytime soon. And even though those women’s lives had been horrifically derailed, I was fortunate enough to have mine, in large part, free to live.

  As such, I had worked with my team to make certain I could live it, even if I did so under the cloud of unsuccessfully attempting to bend my brain into taking no responsibility for the horrors a man I’d never met was perpetrating on two women who would, even if rescued, never recover.

  Delgado told me he would, on regular occasions, either come himself or send members of his team to make certain the plans that were made and carried out were still effective.

  In the interim, I had locals he trusted looking out for me, but he didn’t want me to know who they were.

  There was sound reasoning for this.

  That being, if something got through their net, and someone was watching me, he didn’t want them to see I had someone at my back. And even knowing I shouldn’t do a thing to let this information be known, unconsciously, I could communicate it. That would put me in danger, because it would give my stalker a target to take down my shield before he took me.

  Unless I didn’t know who was watching me.

  Now, I knew who was watching me.

  The Bohannans.

  “I’m calling Jace,” Dern announced, reaching for the phone.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  He ignored me.

  “I said, don’t do that.”

  The receiver of his desk phone was in his hand, but he did not mean he’d call Jace.

  After punching a button, he barked into it, “Polly, get Jace on the line.”

  The man couldn’t even make his own phone call.

  “Jace is probably outside right now,” I informed him after he put down the receiver.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “I was not meant to know who my local detail was. Was that not communicated to you?”

  He stared at me, befuddled again.

  I sought patience, and as I had practice doing this in my life, what with the two men I chose to marry, and a lot of other men besides, I found it.

  “I know you have quite a bit on your plate, Sheriff Dern, but my understanding from Mr. Delgado was that he’d explained all this to you. Personally.”

  He threw his chest out. “I do got a lot on my plate.”

  Right now, he did.

  But this was explained to him before Alice got carried away in the woods.

  If I was not wrong, prior to Alice, his department’s main objective was to make certain the senior citizens didn’t get too rowdy during bingo at the rec center.

  An old-fashioned intercom sitting on his desk chirped with Polly’s voice.

  “Leland, Hawk Delgado’s on the line for you.”

  It was good to know Jace knew what he was doing.

  I was relatively certain I did not smirk, but I looked at my lap anyway, just in case.

  I heard the receiver snatched up and the click of a button being pushed and then, “Yeah?” Pause then, “I know. I know.”

  He did not know.

  A longer pause and then, “Listen, don’t you—” A pregnant pause and a clipped, “Understood.”

  The receiver crashed in the cradle.

  It had been a long time, but I was an award-winning actress, therefore I had the appropriate expression on my face when I lifted my head again.

  “I got things to do, Ms. Larue, and it seems like you got yourself covered, so can you tell me what you’re doin’ here?” he commanded.

  I could and I did.

  “I would like…anonymously…to offer a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who provides information that leads your department, or anyone working with your department, to find Alice Pulaski. And if that information leads you directly to her, that reward will be one hundred thousand dollars.”

  His face went slack.

  “I understand when you announce something like this, everyone will be calling. You probably have limited resources. So, if this is deemed necessary, I will be happy to pay for a phone bank to be set up to take those calls.” It was difficult to say this next, but since it was also smart, and I hoped in the end, helpful, I said it, “It’s probably better if trained personnel take these calls, rather than volunteers, which could mean a task force is needed and likely, overtime for your staff. So, I’ll make a further one-hundred-thousand-dollar donation to your department to cover that.”

  Sheriff Dern had nothing to say.

  “Again, for obvious reasons, but also for personal reasons, this needs to be anonymous. Although you undoubtedly need to discuss this with the Pulaskis, but even with them I’ll ask you not to mention me. And overall, I would really appreciate your assurance that I will be kept completely out of it.”

  He found it in him to speak.

  “No one will know.”

  I nodded.

  His gaze fell to the purse in my lap then came back to my face.

  “You got your checkbook with you?”

  Lord.

  I couldn’t fight it.

  Though he was who he was, so I didn’t much try.

  I hated this man.

  Nine

  Terrifying

  I was not born yesterday.

  I also did not carry my checkbook with me.

  But those weren’t the only reasons I declined to proffer my offer before Dern had even discussed that line of strategy with the family whose daughter had been taken, not to mention his team, or the man he’d called in to help handle this.

  Nevertheless, I was surprised, that in the three days since I’d left the sheriff’s department, I hadn’t heard anything from him.

  I had heard from Polly, who called the very next day and told me her nephew was, “real good around the house, he knows how to do everything.”

  Indication tha
t those lengthy NDAs did nothing to keep the local contractors from talking.

  I made a mental note to share this with Hawk as I listened when Polly spoke on.

  When she did, she told me her nephew also had a newly pregnant wife and needed some handyman work because, “we’ll take care of them, we do good baby showers in Misted Pines,” but, “diapers don’t come cheap, and you only get one shower, but you got a kid for a lifetime.”

  I explained I’d have to look into her nephew, but I would, as, at the very least, the new light fixture had been delivered and I could get that unsightly smoked-glass contraption out of my great room.

  I did not ask how a woman who seemed pretty together (pleated skirt at a fashion-disaster length for someone of her stature notwithstanding) worked with that pompous, incompetent piece of garbage.

  But apropos of that, nothing, except perhaps in working with him, her innate understanding that anyone who met with him for any reason would experience some form of disaster, her voice dropped when she told me anyway.

  “Someone’s gotta be around to see to things, you know?”

  In history, there were innumerable unsung heroes like Polly who “saw to things” when some asshole conned his way into a position he had no business occupying.

  Thus, my answer was, “I know.”

  There had been silence since the call.

  Hawk had shared that Polly’s nephew was all good to meet. He also shared the fact that he’d communicated to all four contractors that I already had the money to relocate should my current situation become unsafe. However, they still would be paying for that effort after I took their businesses, homes and children’s college funds if one of them breathed another fucking word about Delphine Larue being in Misted Pines.

  He assured me that this message had been received.

  And when Delgado assured you of something, you were assured.

  As the days went by, though, I began to understand why Sheriff Dern hadn’t jumped on my offer.

  This was because he was being eviscerated by the Tri-Lake Chronicle, as well as the very local paper that came out once a week, the Misted Pines Herald.