Bad Blood
Page 18
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“You’re being ridiculous,” Michael told her.
“Do you love her?” Lia asked, her voice dripping with syrupy sweetness.
I could see Michael’s temper fraying. He ran his thumb over his bloodied lip and stared at Lia. “Longer and better than I’ve loved you.”
We found Celine Delacroix the next morning, sitting on the edge of a dock a two-hour drive from her house—the same dock where she and Michael had been photographed years before. Beside me, Dean watched, stone-faced, as Michael walked toward the end of the dock—toward Celine. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face when she spotted him. I couldn’t hear his greeting or the words she offered in return. But I saw the exact moment when the fighter in Celine gave way to something softer.
Something vulnerable.
“This is what happens when they’re together,” Dean said, and I knew that he wasn’t talking about Michael and Celine. “Michael knows exactly what Lia’s feeling. Lia knows every time he lies to her. They hurt each other, and they hurt themselves.”
I thought about everything that had happened: Michael’s confrontation with his father, his fight with Lia, the realization that we’d been dragged away from hunting for my mother’s captors by what amounted to an elaborate prank. We’d been on this case for less than twenty-four hours, but even that felt like too much.
One day until Michael’s birthday. Three days until April second. As I watched Michael sit down next to Celine, the countdown to the next Fibonacci date resumed in my head.
“Relax, Dean,” Lia said, coming up behind us. “I’m fine. We found the girl. We saved the day. If you think I’m going to get all emotional over Michael Townsend, clearly I’ve been doing this cold-hearted shrew thing all wrong.”
Michael didn’t tell us what Celine had said. He didn’t tell us whether she’d explained why she’d done what she’d done or what she’d hoped to gain by it. By midmorning, we were back on the plane, a whole herd of emotional elephants in tow. Briggs didn’t say a word to Sterling about the fact that she’d known from the get-go that this case had nothing to do with the Masters.
Sterling didn’t say a word to Briggs about the way he’d jumped the moment her father had indicated how high.
Michael and Lia didn’t acknowledge the angry words that had passed between them.
I didn’t tell Dean that the night before, I’d dreamed of his father, of my mother, of blood on the walls and blood on her hands—and on mine.
Once we were in the air, Judd pulled me to the back of the plane. He settled into one seat and nodded toward another. I sat. For several seconds, he said nothing, like the two of us were sitting side by side on the front porch of the Quantico house, enjoying our morning coffee and a bit of quiet.
“Do you know why I said yes to this case?” Judd asked finally.
I turned the question over in my head. You want the Masters as badly as I do. They’d killed his daughter. But though this case had appeared related, my gut said that Judd—unlike the director and Agent Briggs—had watched Agent Sterling very carefully through the whole exchange.
He hadn’t been backing Briggs’s decision. He’d been backing hers.
“A girl was missing.” I repeated the words Agent Sterling had said the day before. “A girl that Michael knew.”
“Michael was coming back here.” Judd had never doubted that—not for a second. “And when one of my kids goes down an emotional rabbit hole like that one, he—or she—sure as hell doesn’t do it alone.”
Judd gave those words a moment to sink in, then reached into his bag and pulled out a folder.
“What’s this?” I asked when he handed it to me.
“A file someone tried very hard to bury,” he replied. “While you were off gallivanting after Miss Delacroix this morning, one of Ronnie’s contacts managed to dig it up.”
Ronnie was short for Veronica—as in Agent Veronica Sterling.
“Inmate named Robert Mills.” Judd resorted to speaking in fragments as my fingers found their way to the edge of the folder. “Convicted of murdering his ex-wife. Killed in prison not long after he was convicted.”
The man Redding talked to. My grip on the edge of the folder tightened. The one whose ex-wife’s body was never found. The one who was taken, just like my mother.
As I opened the folder, Judd caught my chin, and his weathered hands turned my face gently toward his.
“Cassie-girl, don’t go down this rabbit hole alone.”
The information in the file was bare-bones. Robert Mills had been convicted of murdering his ex-wife. Despite the fact that her body had never been found, there had been a preponderance of physical evidence. His DNA was found at the crime scene, which was soaked in his ex-wife’s blood. He had a history of violence. Mallory Mills had been living under an assumed name at the time of her murder; Robert had recently discovered her location. The police had found three blood-soaked bullets at the scene, and each had tested positive for Mallory’s DNA. Forensic analysis of a gun found in a nearby Dumpster had revealed that at least six shots had been fired, leaving police to conjecture that the other three bullets had remained embedded in the victim’s body.
The gun was registered to her ex-husband.
You were left, shot and bleeding, on the floor for more than five minutes. There were pools of blood—upwards of 42 percent of the blood in your body.
Beside me, Dean studied the crime scene photos on his phone. Back at the house, Agent Sterling was probably tacking up her copies of these pictures, one more piece of the puzzle on the basement wall. I’d chosen a different location to process what I’d read on the plane.
The cemetery.
I stared at my mother’s name, etched into the tombstone: LORELAI HOBBES. I’d known before we’d buried the body that the remains we’d laid to rest there weren’t hers. Now I was trying to wrap my mind around the fact that they might belong to Mallory Mills. This wasn’t the first time I’d thought about the life my mother had snuffed out to save her own. But now I wasn’t just thinking about the body six feet beneath us; I was thinking about a living, breathing woman, holding her image in my mind as I walked back through the evidence that had been used to convict her ex-husband of murder.
“Do you love her?” Lia asked, her voice dripping with syrupy sweetness.
I could see Michael’s temper fraying. He ran his thumb over his bloodied lip and stared at Lia. “Longer and better than I’ve loved you.”
We found Celine Delacroix the next morning, sitting on the edge of a dock a two-hour drive from her house—the same dock where she and Michael had been photographed years before. Beside me, Dean watched, stone-faced, as Michael walked toward the end of the dock—toward Celine. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face when she spotted him. I couldn’t hear his greeting or the words she offered in return. But I saw the exact moment when the fighter in Celine gave way to something softer.
Something vulnerable.
“This is what happens when they’re together,” Dean said, and I knew that he wasn’t talking about Michael and Celine. “Michael knows exactly what Lia’s feeling. Lia knows every time he lies to her. They hurt each other, and they hurt themselves.”
I thought about everything that had happened: Michael’s confrontation with his father, his fight with Lia, the realization that we’d been dragged away from hunting for my mother’s captors by what amounted to an elaborate prank. We’d been on this case for less than twenty-four hours, but even that felt like too much.
One day until Michael’s birthday. Three days until April second. As I watched Michael sit down next to Celine, the countdown to the next Fibonacci date resumed in my head.
“Relax, Dean,” Lia said, coming up behind us. “I’m fine. We found the girl. We saved the day. If you think I’m going to get all emotional over Michael Townsend, clearly I’ve been doing this cold-hearted shrew thing all wrong.”
Michael didn’t tell us what Celine had said. He didn’t tell us whether she’d explained why she’d done what she’d done or what she’d hoped to gain by it. By midmorning, we were back on the plane, a whole herd of emotional elephants in tow. Briggs didn’t say a word to Sterling about the fact that she’d known from the get-go that this case had nothing to do with the Masters.
Sterling didn’t say a word to Briggs about the way he’d jumped the moment her father had indicated how high.
Michael and Lia didn’t acknowledge the angry words that had passed between them.
I didn’t tell Dean that the night before, I’d dreamed of his father, of my mother, of blood on the walls and blood on her hands—and on mine.
Once we were in the air, Judd pulled me to the back of the plane. He settled into one seat and nodded toward another. I sat. For several seconds, he said nothing, like the two of us were sitting side by side on the front porch of the Quantico house, enjoying our morning coffee and a bit of quiet.
“Do you know why I said yes to this case?” Judd asked finally.
I turned the question over in my head. You want the Masters as badly as I do. They’d killed his daughter. But though this case had appeared related, my gut said that Judd—unlike the director and Agent Briggs—had watched Agent Sterling very carefully through the whole exchange.
He hadn’t been backing Briggs’s decision. He’d been backing hers.
“A girl was missing.” I repeated the words Agent Sterling had said the day before. “A girl that Michael knew.”
“Michael was coming back here.” Judd had never doubted that—not for a second. “And when one of my kids goes down an emotional rabbit hole like that one, he—or she—sure as hell doesn’t do it alone.”
Judd gave those words a moment to sink in, then reached into his bag and pulled out a folder.
“What’s this?” I asked when he handed it to me.
“A file someone tried very hard to bury,” he replied. “While you were off gallivanting after Miss Delacroix this morning, one of Ronnie’s contacts managed to dig it up.”
Ronnie was short for Veronica—as in Agent Veronica Sterling.
“Inmate named Robert Mills.” Judd resorted to speaking in fragments as my fingers found their way to the edge of the folder. “Convicted of murdering his ex-wife. Killed in prison not long after he was convicted.”
The man Redding talked to. My grip on the edge of the folder tightened. The one whose ex-wife’s body was never found. The one who was taken, just like my mother.
As I opened the folder, Judd caught my chin, and his weathered hands turned my face gently toward his.
“Cassie-girl, don’t go down this rabbit hole alone.”
The information in the file was bare-bones. Robert Mills had been convicted of murdering his ex-wife. Despite the fact that her body had never been found, there had been a preponderance of physical evidence. His DNA was found at the crime scene, which was soaked in his ex-wife’s blood. He had a history of violence. Mallory Mills had been living under an assumed name at the time of her murder; Robert had recently discovered her location. The police had found three blood-soaked bullets at the scene, and each had tested positive for Mallory’s DNA. Forensic analysis of a gun found in a nearby Dumpster had revealed that at least six shots had been fired, leaving police to conjecture that the other three bullets had remained embedded in the victim’s body.
The gun was registered to her ex-husband.
You were left, shot and bleeding, on the floor for more than five minutes. There were pools of blood—upwards of 42 percent of the blood in your body.
Beside me, Dean studied the crime scene photos on his phone. Back at the house, Agent Sterling was probably tacking up her copies of these pictures, one more piece of the puzzle on the basement wall. I’d chosen a different location to process what I’d read on the plane.
The cemetery.
I stared at my mother’s name, etched into the tombstone: LORELAI HOBBES. I’d known before we’d buried the body that the remains we’d laid to rest there weren’t hers. Now I was trying to wrap my mind around the fact that they might belong to Mallory Mills. This wasn’t the first time I’d thought about the life my mother had snuffed out to save her own. But now I wasn’t just thinking about the body six feet beneath us; I was thinking about a living, breathing woman, holding her image in my mind as I walked back through the evidence that had been used to convict her ex-husband of murder.
