By dawn, we’d checked the hotel and Bite again, just in case, but with no more luck. Bones’s cell hadn’t rung once. He started heading back in the direction of my apartment when he suddenly slowed his bike, pulling over to the shoulder of the road.
Up ahead a couple miles on the highway were the flashing red and blue lights of multiple police cars. What little traffic there was on the road this early was being routed into the single far lane. The other three were blocked off with flares that went all the way into the nearby trees.
“There must be an accident, we should take another way,” I began before gazing around with a feeling of déjà vu. “This place looks familiar….”
His jaw was granite as he turned around. “It should. This is where Hennessey dragged you away to bleed you. Well, not right here. Up where the coppers are.”
I stared at him and those flashing lights beyond, which now seemed more ominous. “Bones…”
“I can hear them,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone. “They’ve found a body.”
His hands were knotted into fists on the handlebars, and very softly, I nudged him.
“It might not be her. Keep going.”
He revved up the bike and pulled back onto the highway, tersely saying only not to take my helmet off no matter what. I knew he wanted to keep my features hidden. Just in case there was anyone watching.
With the reduced speed and merging, it took us over thirty minutes to reach that two-mile marker where police activity was the thickest. I heard them, too, talking among themselves, calling in the medical examiner over the squawk of the police radios, taking detailed notes on how the body was found….
Every head passing that area turned to gawk, so the officer directing traffic probably didn’t think much of the stare Bones leveled at the form on the ground that was the center of attention. I only caught a glimpse—and then my arms tightened around him.
Long black hair spiraled out from behind the policeman bent over the body. His bulk concealed most of it as he meticulously took photographs, but that hair was distinctive. And the arm partially visible was skeletalized.
I was so numbed at seeing Francesca’s remains, decomposed to her true age as they had been, that I barely noticed the weaving, erratic way Bones drove. He took back roads, gravel roads, and no roads before reaching the woods bordering the cave. If anyone had tried to follow us, they would have gotten lost ten times over. Then he effortlessly carried the bike one-handed the last two miles to cut the noise while I walked beside him. It wasn’t until we were well inside the cave that I spoke.
“I’m sorry. It’s not adequate, I know, but I am so sorry Hennessey killed her.”
Bones looked at me and a small, bitter smile twisted his mouth.
“He didn’t. Bloke would have done many, many things to her, but killing her straightaway isn’t one of them. Her body was dumped within an hour or two at most after I spoke with her. Hennessey would have kept her alive for days at least. Until he’d found out every detail of what she’d relayed to me. There isn’t one of Hennessey’s sods who would have gone behind his back and done it themselves, either.”
He wasn’t making sense. “What are you saying? Then who killed her?”
His mouth twisted further. “Francesca did. It’s the only logical explanation. She must have been trapped, saw there was no escape, so she killed herself. It would only have taken a second for her to run a silver blade through her heart, and then there’s not much they could do about it afterwards. Hennessey’s leaving her where I nearly finished him was just his way of saying he knew who she betrayed him to.”
I couldn’t imagine the ice-cold courage it must have taken for her to do that. It reminded me of the Indian who’d given Bones the cave. Deciding his manner of death was all he’d had left also. One last stand before that final fall.
“Your part is done in this, Kitten. Finished.”
His uncompromising tone whipped me out of my contemplation. “Bones,” I said gently. “I know you’re upset—”
“Bollocks.”
He seized me by the shoulders, and his voice was low and resonating.
“I don’t care how pissed you are or what you threaten me with. End our relationship, don’t speak to me again, whatever you fancy, but I will not continue to dangle you out as bait to the kind of people Francesca killed herself rather than be at the mercy of! I couldn’t bear it if it was you I was waiting for a call from that never came, or if it was your body I had to see stretched out on the sodding ground….”