AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I thought about what you said. About the surgery.” Tension solidified in her gut. She’d already made up her mind, but letting go of how she thought her life would play out scared the shit out of her. “Could you be there when I come out of the anesthesia? You know, to get all my crazy ramblings from the drugs on video?”
“Are you asking because you need someone to drive you home afterward?” Leigh could practically hear the woman’s smile through the line. “I’m technically not your physician, so yeah. I think I can do that. That’s what friends are for.”
Friends. Haley Pierce had been her friend once, but this felt different. It felt real. Not based on high-school politics or the past. But the here and now. Who she was now. “Thanks. I’ll message you the time and date of the surgery as soon as I have it.”
“Don’t chicken out. I’ll hunt you down.” Elyse ended the call, and Leigh found herself smiling as she hit the off button on the side of her phone.
Another vehicle pulled up behind hers, and the engine cut off. Chandler Reed shouldered onto the pavement, a grocery bag in hand. He tossed it at her as he limped around the hood. His wounds had been stitched and bandaged. A few pints of blood replaced. A sling supported the arm Boucher’s bullet had gone through. Just like hers. Neither of them had been willing to sit around in a hospital for another few days. They had work to do. “Got you something.”
She caught it with her free hand. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t throw things at people in slings?” Leigh slipped the plastic bag free and laughed. “A Xena action figure?”
“I felt bad about breaking yours all those years ago.” He folded one arm across his chest, exaggerating lean muscle. Nothing like the string-bean kid she’d pulled out of Chris Ellingson’s garage that night. “Especially after you saved my life. But to be fair I know you meant to cut me with that pumpkin carver that Halloween.”
“I love it. Thanks.” She smiled, closing one eye against the sun. She supposed he’d held on to a few features she recognized, but it’d been important for Troy Brody to disappear entirely the night she’d found him. In his place, Chandler Reed was born. At just twelve years old, he’d known he wouldn’t have been able to come home, that he’d always be the one who got away, always be in Chris Ellingson’s sights.
And so she’d hidden him away. In the same abandoned mill Boucher had murdered his victims. Protected. Untouchable. Her parents couldn’t know. The grief had to be real, and it’d hurt. More than she’d ever imagined. Looking back, she’d been too young to make the decision. But with the possibility the police would continue to ignore evidence, that Ellingson would get out on parole or with good behavior even if arrested, or—what scared her the most—Ellingson had been working with a partner, it’d been the only solution to keep Troy safe.
She’d started watching Ellingson then. More than she had before. Surveilling him during school and in the hours after, waiting for him to make his next mistake. The police had moved on, but she couldn’t. Though Ellingson must’ve realized one of his trophies was missing from the garage. He knew Troy had escaped, lived in fear of the truth coming out, but he was careful. Never once letting himself slip.
For months, she’d collected lists of routines, patient names, visitors, changes in behavior. Evidence the police couldn’t ignore this time. She’d been balancing on a double-edged sword. Determined to prove Ellingson had killed Derek Garrison and intended to do the same to her brother. Desperate to make sure that he never touched Troy again. And maybe that, in and of itself, made her a little bit like Boucher as he’d claimed.
But Troy couldn’t live in an abandoned mill for the rest of his life. Alone, isolated. He’d started getting sick. The mold and the cold kept his wounds from healing as they should, and no amount of blankets had fought back the fevers. She hadn’t pulled him out of that garage to watch him die. He deserved to live.
So they’d left Lebanon the day she graduated high school. They moved to Concord so she could go to college and attend the police academy while working two jobs to support them while he put himself through homeschool. Within a few years, he’d earned his diploma, but news of their mother’s suicide doused any happily ever after they’d imagined together.
That was when they’d come up with the plan.
She’d learn everything she could about serial offenders like Ellingson by consulting for law enforcement and aim for CJIS to keep up to date on any similar cases. He’d study forensics and work to become one of the top federal investigators in the country. Together, they’d make perfect candidates for recruitment by whatever agency reopened Troy’s case. And they would reopen it.
All it took was sending a copy of the investigation file to Gresham Schmidt.
Leigh knocked her uninjured shoulder into his. While the plan had been solid, there were certain things they hadn’t expected. Boucher, for one. All of the people he’d hurt. The fact he’d been another victim of the same evil as Troy. She hadn’t planned for any of that, but in the end, she’d gotten what she’d wanted. Her brother home, safe. And a continuing position with the BAU. The scars beneath his tattoos would always remain, but he was still the pain in the ass she’d give up her future to save. Just as Boucher gave up his for Carter.
“I have something for you, too.” Leigh pinched the action figure under her sling and pulled the toy soldier from her blazer. “I thought you could do the honors.”
Chandler stared down at the green plastic, running his thumb over the end he’d clipped for analysis. In his next breath, he threw it as far as it would go into the remains of their old house.
The back door of Chandler’s vehicle popped open, and her father stepped free of the car. “You two knuckleheads finally managed to burn down the house.”
“It’s not that bad. We might be able to save… that shutter.” Chandler’s laugh filled her soul and chased back the tightness in her chest. “Come on. We’ve still got work to do. The little boy you found under our house all those years ago is waiting to be identified.”
Leigh rounded the hood of her rental, glancing back at the place where their home had once stood, and took a deep breath in preparation for what was coming. “I’m ready.”
*
