Southern Cross (10 page)

“Isn’t
that what we’ve been doing for the past twenty-four hours?”

He
made a face at me and pushed the door open, nudging me inside. Once we were in,
I sat on the end of the bed, on the alert once more. The room was small—barely
big enough for the double bed and a bureau. Diggs paced the three feet or so of
space half a dozen times before I snapped.

“Diggs,
seriously? Spit it out, or get the hell out so we can both get some sleep.”

Abruptly,
he set his bag on the bed, unzipped it, and pulled out a file. He tossed it on
the bed beside me.

“What’s
this?” I asked.

“You
don’t run,” he said shortly. I picked up the file, completely confused.

“What?”

“You
don’t run. You never run. You fight. You get answers, or you die trying. You
don’t just sit back and let some nameless monster take over your life.”

I
opened the file. My hands were shaking. “What did you do?” I asked hoarsely. I
already knew, though. I knew exactly what he’d done.

There
in front of me, keen eyes staring up, was a sketch of the hooded man. The angel
of death. My nightmare, come to life. And beneath it, in bold letters, was a
name.

The
attic bedroom where Solomon was staying used to belong to Ashley, when we were
still kids. I remembered sneaking in there one summer night when I was staying
with Wyatt, sure she’d secretly been up waiting for me to come along. It hadn’t
worked out that way, though: She’d screamed bloody murder, and Wyatt’s father
sent me packing early that summer. It would have saved everyone a lot of
heartache if I’d just seen the writing on the wall that night.

The
room seemed smaller now. My heart was pounding and my palms were sweating, and
the bedroom ceiling was so damn low I could barely stand up straight. My leg
hurt like hell, as did my jaw. I had a headache, too, but none of that held a
candle to the beating my ego had taken in the past twenty-four hours.

Solomon
looked at the sketch I’d handed her, then back at me.

“What
did you do, damn it?” she asked a second time.

I
swallowed hard and wet my lips, nodding toward the file. “His name is Mitch
Cameron. I had a friend of mine do a composite sketch based on my description,
then I put his face through every database I could think of until something
came back.”

She
closed the file. When she looked at me, her eyes were burning. I’ve been on the
receiving end of Solomon’s wrath more than once—the truth is, it’s kind of a
turn on. But not this time. Anger is one thing, fear another entirely. And
Solomon was positively terrified.

“Where
the hell do you get the right?” she hissed at me. “I asked you—”

“No,”
I said. My voice was raw. “You told me—late one night when you could barely
breathe, a month after Cameron held the gun to my head, you called and told me
not to look into it. You never asked. You never talked to me about any of this
shit. And by then it was too late, anyway—I’d already started.”

She
ran her hand through her hair, turning her back to me. “And now, he knows,” she
whispered. She shook her head. “That’s why he’s here—he knows you’ve been
looking.”

“I
don’t think so. I covered my tracks,” I said. “The very model of the modern
paranoiac. I swept for bugs, used burner phones, tapped only my most trusted
sources. He’s here because we’re together, just like he said—that’s it. He
would’ve just killed me otherwise. He’s just making sure we stay scared.”

She
laughed. The sound was a hollow echo of the one I knew. “Well, mission
accomplished. Goddammit, Diggs.” She wheeled on me. “Why couldn’t you just
leave it alone?”

“Because
this isn’t you,” I said. “You can’t let this bastard break you like this. Your
father’s out there. A killer is out there, and they’ve waged a friggin’ war.
And you’re letting them get away with it.”

She
looked me in the eye, her chin tipped up, her jaw hard. She pushed me lightly
in the stomach, her anger mounting again. “You’re the one who begged me—the one
who tried to drive us in the opposite direction of all the trouble back in Maine, all the while telling me it was all too dangerous. We sat in that cave and you ran
me up one side and down the other for being so selfish. You said I needed to
back off, and I did. So why now—”

“Because
I won’t lose you over this,” I shouted. The words felt like they’d been
wrenched from somewhere deep; somewhere I was powerless to cap. Solomon looked
at me with those brilliant green eyes, and I could smell her shampoo and the
cinnamon on her breath and the fear that rolled off her in waves. “If you don’t
want me, that’s one thing,” I said. It was too late to go back now. “I’ll
handle it. I’ll let it go. Wish you and Juarez the best. But I’m not saying
goodbye with the lame friggin’ excuse that you’re being noble; that you have to
walk away to save my life.”

“So
this is your ego?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re gonna get us all killed
because of your goddamn male pride? Juarez and I talked about this. He
agrees—it’s time for me to let this go.”

“Juarez doesn’t remember the first thirteen years of his life. And he’s
fine
with it.
I don’t care how much time you spend with the guy, kid, you’re never gonna be
that zen.”

She
pushed me again, harder this time. For the first time, fury outweighed the fear
in her eyes. “Fuck you.”

“Nice
comeback.”

“Juarez is a good guy,” she said. She advanced on me, pushing me toward the wall. “He’s
nice, and he’s stable, and he’s not tortured by every freaking mistake he ever
made. He—”

My
blood was boiling, and I knew she was just getting warmed up. There were things
I could say, arguments I could make, but words had never seemed so pointless
before. And so I grabbed her—one hand at her side, the other at the back of her
neck—and pulled her to me. My mouth crashed down on hers. She fought me for a
second, no more, before she fisted her hands in the front of my shirt, her body
moving against mine.

I
pushed her back against the wall, my tongue pressing past her lips, and for
three miraculous seconds, she gave as good as she got: her teeth nipping at my
lower lip, her hips pressed to mine. And then, she came to herself. Her hands
flattened on my chest and she pushed me away so hard I stumbled. Her eyes were
wide. We stood there, silent, our breathing ragged, for another quarter of a
second before her hand came up. I caught her just before her palm made contact
with my cheek.

“No
hitting,” I said quietly. “It’s bad form.”

She
lowered her hand. Pushed me one more time, hard, and grabbed her bag. “Drop it,
Diggs,” she said again. “All of it. Get on with your life. But do it without
me.”

And
she left.

<><><> 

Solomon
slept in the car that night. Because I was feeling spiteful, I let her—something
Jack Juarez sure as hell never would have done. In the morning, I brought her a
cup of coffee. It was cold outside, a dismal gray dawn just breaking on the
horizon. Solomon was cocooned in her sleeping bag in the backseat with
Einstein, wearing half her wardrobe and a purple ski cap. She hid her head when
I opened the driver’s side door and got in.

“Go
away,” she said. Her voice had that whiskey rasp to it that I love about
Solomon in the morning.

“Good
news: we’ve kept the Four Horsemen at bay another day. And I brought you
coffee.”

“I
don’t care.” She burrowed more deeply into the sleeping bag. “I’m not speaking
to you.”

“Because
of Mitch Cameron, or because of the kiss? Or because you
liked
the
kiss?”

She
sat up. Einstein scrambled out of her arms. She opened the door and let him
out, then closed it again and pulled the sleeping bag up around her. I looked
at her in the rearview mirror, blinking in the harsh light of day.

“We’re
not talking about the kiss, all right? The kiss didn’t happen. I’m with Juarez—you know that. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

“Well,
it’s hard to argue with that logic. Let’s just pretend it’s not there and maybe
it’ll go away. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.”

“You
spent the first fifteen years we knew each other pretending it wasn’t there,
you asshole,” she said, the fire back in her eyes. “You should be pretty good
at it by now.”

Touché.
“All right, fine. I didn’t kiss you last night. You didn’t kiss me back. What
about Mitch Cameron? Are we pretending he doesn’t exist, either?”

She
rubbed her forehead. I’d seen Solomon exhausted before, after days of not
sleeping and emotional turmoil and serial killers… but I’d never seen her this
bone weary before. “I don’t know. That was the plan.”

“Come
on, Solomon. Were you really planning on going through life calling him ‘the
hooded man’? ‘The guy in the cloak’? He has a name. A past.”

She
took the coffee from me. “Let’s just drop it for right now, okay? Put a pin in
it.” It was clear she’d spent the better part of the night coming up with that.
“Can we focus on one mystery at a time? I’d still like to figure out what the
hell happened to Wyatt—and what Jesup Barnel had to do with it. Or is that no
longer a priority?”

“It
is. But I’m not giving up on Cameron,” I said. “Whatever happens between you
and me, someone still needs to bring him down.”

“Diggs.”
I turned to face her. She studied me for a few seconds, the pain in her eyes
palpable. Her voice quieted. “Do you know how much blood I’ve got on my hands?
Matt Perkins; Joe and Rebecca Ashmont… Max Richards. Will Rainier. And I still
don’t know how much the fire on Payson Isle had to do with my father... But
clearly this guy—Cameron—wiping the Payson congregation out had something to do
with my dad.”

“None
of that’s
because of
you,” I said. “You didn’t pull the trigger, for
Christ’s sake.”

“But
if I’d gotten the cops involved sooner, or I hadn’t pushed so hard, or I’d
warned someone…” she said. She shook her head stubbornly. “I’m not asking for
absolution here. I’m telling you: I’m done. I won’t watch him kill you, knowing
I could have done something. I won’t lose you.”

You
already have
was on the tip of my tongue,
but I held back. Instead, I took a deep breath and nodded.

“All
right. We put a pin in it—
for now
. And we move onto Wyatt, and Jesup
Barnel.”

“Thank
you.”

It
wasn’t hard to make the transition from one case to the other: I’d been
thinking about Wyatt and Barnel all night. Well… when I wasn’t thinking about
Solomon, of course.

“Do
you think Barnel did it?” she asked me. “Do you think he’s the one who killed
Wyatt?”

Before
I could answer, Mae came flying out of the house with Rick on her heels. She
headed for the car as soon as she realized I was inside, and I rolled down the
window.

“Have
you seen Danny?” she demanded.

“What
do you mean?” I asked stupidly.

“Danny,”
she repeated. “He didn’t come home last night.”

I got
out of the car. Solomon followed suit.  “He buried his father yesterday, Mae,”
I said. “I’m sure he’s just taking a break. Trying to get some perspective.”
Or, more likely, he was just too stoned to move.

Mae
looked at Rick.

“That’s
what I told her,” the kid said. He was the polar opposite of Danny: buttoned up
and put together, his blond hair cut short, his smile straight and pearly
white.

“You
know how he gets,” Rick continued. “He said he didn’t wanna go back to school
yet. Maybe he’s just takin’ the day.”

“He
could be out with friends,” Solomon suggested. “Or a girl, maybe?”

“Sure,”
Rick said easily. “Could be.” I noticed that he wasn’t looking at Mae, which
told me he probably had a better idea than he was letting on as to where Danny
had gone. I wasn’t ready to call in the National Guard, regardless. I’d been a
teenage boy, after all—one not unlike Danny. A kid like that… things get to be
too much, sometimes you just need some space.

“What
about George’s place?” I asked. “Have you dropped in there? It could be he’s
just bonding with the old man.”

“George
left town last night,” Mae said. “He went on up to the mountains. Said he just
needed some time.”

“Now?”
I said in surprise. “It seems like that could have waited a few days…”

“You
know him,” she said. “He puts on a good show, but he’s takin’ this pretty hard.
Just needs to get his feet back under him is all. Anyway, I dropped by his
place this morning to feed the rabbits. Danny wasn’t there.” A tinge of
hysteria crept into her voice.

“Rick,
why don’t you go in and get yourself some breakfast?” I said. “Give your mom
and me a chance to talk. Everything’ll be fine, though. Danny will show up in
no time, and you’ll be laughing about this by supper. You’ll see.”

Rick
looked at his mother. She nodded. He went inside wordlessly, leaving Solomon
and me alone with Mae. Before I could reassure her, Mae looked at me with wide
eyes, her hands clenched.

“There’s
something else,” she said in a whisper. Mae’s usually the coolest person in the
room. Today, she looked ready to climb out of her skin.

“What?”
I asked.

She
wet her lips, her eyes sliding from mine. “Buddy told me about Wyatt’s
cross—what got done to him, how they turned it upside down and all. He said he
saw it before, too, back when Marty Reynolds got killed in ’02. He said maybe
that’s why they took Wyatt.” I wasn’t making the connection between this and
Danny. Her tears overflowed, spilling down her cheeks. “Diggs, Danny’s got the
mark.”

My
stomach turned. “What are you talking about?”

“Reverend
Barnel’s cross. Danny has it.”

Rage
came before the fear—white hot and boiling over, catching me completely off
guard. I fought to control it. Solomon touched my arm before I could speak. I
held my tongue.

“When
did he get it?” Solomon asked calmly.