I was grateful to see my Camaro parked right where I’d left it, next to Richard’s black pickup. We climbed in quickly, and I cranked the engine, revved it a couple of times. “You just had to accuse Richard of killing Lucius, didn’t you?”
Trey sounded insulted. “I did not. I simply asked—”
“Yeah, I heard you. And then you accused him of covering for Dexter. And then he threw us out of the tent—”
“We were already leaving.”
“—and now he’s not going to be volunteering any more information because you pissed him off.”
Trey rubbed his gloved hands together in front of the heater. “Those were important points to establish, especially since—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—your uncle had means, motive, and opportunity, and Richard was with him almost the entire night when Lucius presumably died.”
“Dexter didn’t kill Lucius. And neither did Richard.”
“I was relieved to hear nothing that made me believe otherwise.”
He kept his eyes on the dashboard. Now that we were back in a vehicle, his shoulders weren’t quite so hunched, even if the furrow on his brow remained.
I cranked the heater up to full blast. “Did you catch the other part? That Kenny’s a computer genius?”
“I did.”
“Who didn’t know Lucius real well.”
Trey shook his head. “That part isn’t true.”
“I suspected not. But I’m glad you verified it.” Despite the heater, my breath still made puffs of fog. “What about the rest of what Kenny said?”
“He was telling the truth when he said he relieved Lucius at the chapel at three, and that that was the last he saw of him. But he was lying when he said that Lucius wasn’t acting suspiciously.”
“Uh huh. And Richard?”
Trey considered. “Mostly telling the truth.”
“Technically true but deliberately evasive?”
“Yes, that. Somewhat. But not exactly. He seemed to be…I can’t explain. But he wasn’t lying.”
I checked my phone. No messages. No service either, not surprisingly. I stuck it back in my pocket.
“You know what I think? I think Lucius filched Dexter’s keys so he could get into the chapel. I think he took the bones and burial goods and delivered them to someone else—”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet, but everybody I’ve interviewed so far—Cat, Chelsea, Fishbone—they’ve all said the same thing, that Lucius had been working with a new partner, somebody he met online. And I bet that partner was up there that night, to take the loot off Lucius’ hands. Because Lucius himself never left the chapel. He died in there. And I bet this secret partner is the one who killed him.”
“But how would this partner get on the property?”
“There’s a million ways—you saw that as we came in. Duck through someone’s backyard, park in a commercial lot and sneak in.”
“But your uncle was also there, and—”
“Jeez, Trey, whose side are you on?”
“I’m simply trying—”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” I tilted my head back against the seat. “I’m tired and frustrated and it’s like the answer is hovering two inches out of reach.”
Trey fastened his seatbelt. “So what do we do now?”
“Now we go home. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
Trey looked relieved. He was an urban creature, accustomed to the cycles of rush hour, at home in the steel canyons of Buckhead. Atlanta was by most standards a green city—I’d seen it from the air, coming down into Hartsfield, the dense emerald canopy of Piedmont and Centennial and a hundred smaller parks. But it was a tame green, civilized and domesticated.
Not like the mountain woodlands, with a night sky so deep black it had texture, and stars so bright they seemed cut from crystallized light. The wild wasn’t a metaphor out here. It was real, and close. I could feel it pressing against me, and while it wasn’t the salt-rimmed wild of the Lowcountry, I knew it nonetheless. Like an old lover in a new bed.
I took the car into a three-point turn and headed back to the park entrance, driving slowly, letting the tires feel their way down the dirt path. Trey was exhausted, in desperate need of the order and discipline of his black-and-white apartment, his safe space, his recovery zone. He kept his eyes on the windshield as if he couldn’t wait for Atlanta to appear in the headlights.
I flicked on the high beams, and a long low shape hurtled across the road. I slammed the brakes just in time to avoid a collision. A coyote. It froze at the edge of the road, facing us head-on, yellow eyes gleaming. Trey locked his door, then reached across me and locked mine with a hard slap, like we were confronting a carjacker.
I shot him a look. “Seriously?”
He huddled in his seat, double-checked his seatbelt. “Keep moving. There’s probably more of them.”
“And not a single one has thumbs.”
He ignored me. I honked, and the coyote loped into the underbrush without a backward glance.
***
Once we got back to the shop, Trey said goodnight at the door. “Call me tomorrow. I’ll be presenting the resiliency design paper at two, so call before that.”
“I will.” I reached up and tucked his scarf tighter around his neck. “Thank you for coming with me tonight. And this afternoon. I had a good time.”
And I had, even when I’d been holding the trash can for Chelsea or pursuing Fishbone across the park or tromping after a faux Confederate in the woods. And I hadn’t felt a single pang of panic. Not one. And Trey had managed to keep his gun in his holster the entire time.
“It was…interesting,” he said.
“Come on, it was more than that.” I adjusted his collar, his skin warm beneath the wool. “Your head may want things calm and boring, boyfriend, but your heart is a tricky beast. It has completely different wants.” I patted his chest. “And it does want.”
He didn’t drop his eyes. “I know that.”
“Because every time I call you with a problem—snake problem, surveillance problem, uncooperative witness problem—you show up. And you stomp around and scowl and lecture me incessantly. But you show up.”
“I do not stomp around.”
“Come on, Trey. You’re a former SWAT team leader, a Red Dog roughhouser. You’re not gonna convince me that you’re happy sitting behind a desk pushing paper. You come alive out there, in the wild.” I moved closer, close enough to feel the heat of him. “With me.”
His eyes dipped to my throat, then further down, and it was as if he could see inside the ivory armor of my ribcage, right into my shivering red heart. And the only thing between us was a threshold. I stood on one side of it in the warm low-lit shop, and he stood on the other in the cold, still night.
And all he had to do was reach for me—one finger, one word, one step—and I would drag him upstairs into my brand new bed and not let him out until we were both sated and spent. But he stood unmoving, his expression sheared clean on the surface, a layer of ice on a frozen river with whitewater roaring underneath. His raised his eyes to mine again, and the yearning in them was so fierce I caught my breath.
“Trey?”
His voice was rough. “Yes?”
“It’s the wanting that’s hard, isn’t it? Because it’s all tangled up together—who you are, who you were, when to act, when to hold back.”
“Yes, but…” He shook his head. “I don’t understand why I can’t…I’m trying, please believe me. But I have to figure it out before I can change it. Do you understand?”
I thought of the words that still trembled behind my tongue, the words that no act of will could force to the surface, no matter how hard I pushed.
“Yes,” I said. “I understand. With all my heart.”