Chapter Thirty
Bree
For the first time in two days, Bree had walked through the front door without Eric glued to her side. He’d been driving her nuts, but now she missed him. She’d had to put her whole” take care of Allison and her family” plan on hold until her doctor cleared her to drive again. Eric dropped her off in the mornings, with the dog, and Tyson drove them back to Eric’s when he was done for the day. She’d just gotten the call okaying her to drive. Tyson was driving her home for the last time.
“Jump in. I have news,” Tyson told her when he pulled up. “The RCMP found a burned out beige Cadillac sedan at the race track south of the city.”
“You’re kidding!” That made so much sense. Nobody had passed the car heading into or out of Winnipeg, and the race track was on the other side of the highway. It was far enough away from the road that a fire wouldn’t have been immediately noticed.
“Your psycho drove it over a berm and torched it before he stole another car and drove away,” Tyson said. “Any evidence of you in the car is gone. What the fire didn’t destroy, the foam and water did.”
“Do they know what car he stole? What he’s driving now?” Bree asked. If the police knew he stole a car, they had to be looking for it.
“He ditched it at St. Vital Mall. He’s smoke,” Tyson said.
“Damn it!” It wasn’t fair. It had taken two appointments but she’d given a good description to the sketch artist. Marcus and Allison had come in as well, and between the three of them, they’d done a great job. The media was plastering the picture all over the place but there was no response from the public yet. It was bullshit; he had to be somewhere.
“What has Eric said?” Tyson asked.
“Nothing.”
“What? He’s back to I can’t trust you?”
Bree had to cut her friend’s husband off at the pass. If he told Allie that, Bree would hear about it for the foreseeable future.
“No, he’s back to, ‘We’re going to end this guy when we find him. Why don’t we have any leads?’ That kind of nothing.”
“Oh.”
It was more complicated than that.
A couple days earlier, after Eric finally let her do more than move from the bed to the sofa, Bree had volunteered to be the pretext in case anybody asked why the VP of the Ice Road Warriors were in the same place as a WPS homicide sergeant. Eric and Marcus had arranged a meeting in her rental unit under the guise of discussing her moving out and into Eric’s place while she healed.
“There’s no good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. Every Calendar Killer victim ties back to the Warriors,” Eric told Marcus.
“Bullshit.”
Eric laid it out. He didn’t give Marcus all the details—Bree had seen the full files and knew what he was holding back—but he hit the high notes. “Rayna Wilson, the woman he killed this month, divorced one of your guys ten years ago. He died in a MVA that same year, so you probably never heard her name. Kelly Mays moved to Hamilton because her brother was out east. He’s one of yours too, out of an Ontario chapter. You know about the other three women. We’ve turned these women’s lives inside out. We’ve found one common factor. You.”
If that news didn’t shove Marcus over the edge, Eric’s next revelation did. “Are you saying this was my fault?” Marcus had asked after Eric told him Psycho had accused him and Bree of having an affair.
“I’m saying you are the only Ice Road Warrior she’s met with lately. Either this fucker is fixated on you in particular right now, or he’s been alternating watching your club members and was trailing you the day you met a woman who fit his preferred victim profile,” Eric said.
“Fuck, Bree—“
“It wasn’t your fault,” Bree said, interrupting him. “Not yours, not Eric’s, not mine. But now that we know, what are we going to do about it?”
“For starters, we’re moving you out of this rental for real. I’m terminating your lease,” Marcus said. “Can you take her, or should I find her other accommodations?” he asked Eric.
“I’ll take her,” Eric said.
“I’ll stay with him until this guy is caught,” Bree amended. She wasn’t moving in with Eric permanently—not yet. They were still negotiating. Bree was losing badly, although she didn’t really mind. But Marcus didn’t need to know all the dirty details.
“I suppose you expect us to work with you on this,” Marcus said.
“You don’t have to, but it might help keep the body count down. Since he’s going after your women,” Eric replied.
“Making sure your guys pass on the picture to all the women they know doesn’t make you two besties. It’s working together to catch a very bad man. Now that we know who and what he wants, we’d all be morons not to do everything possible to stop this psycho. And we aren’t morons. Are we?” Bree asked both men. If logic failed, she had no problem appealing to their egos.
