From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(61)
Rhodes glanced out his office window and watched the patrol car a few houses down in the alley, wondering how he would get away. He could watch them, wait. He could be patient. The opportunity would—
The patrol car started up, and he stared in shock as it rolled away. He didn’t question them leaving or consider why he smelled spring grass and sunshine and pine, just picked up his papers, packed them in his bag, and zipped it up with finality before he stood and left his home with no fanfare for the last time.
Ares smiled. It had been Artemis, and he mourned not being able to tell Dita what he knew. It would be the perfect, noble way to find his way back to her favor, but it was impossible. He couldn’t get anywhere near her.
As soon as he got the chance, he would try to talk to her again without pushing so hard. He’d need to grovel and beg if he was going to make it convincing—two behaviors that he wasn’t familiar with. But if she got mad, yelled…he couldn’t guarantee that his emotions would stay in check.
She was a burning match, and he was gasoline, and when one touched the other, everything would be devoured until all that was left was ash.
Artemis traced her lips with her fingers as she watched from her tent, elbows resting on the polished table—a slice of a massive tree with hundreds of rings.
Josie was still at the station, and Rhodes was driving west through rural New Jersey. Artemis wasn’t entirely sure she had done the right thing. But the necklace had been her only play, her only chance, and if Josie could get a lead on him, she would catch him and either bring him in or kill him.
Either way, Josie would find closure, and Artemis would win alongside her.
Her tent flap opened, and Eleni walked through with a tray of venison, grapes, and wine, her lips flat and her gray wings folded tight behind her.
“Your supper, mistress,” she said stiffly as she set the tray on the table with a clatter.
Artemis glanced at her with narrow eyes. “Have you something to say?”
“No, no.” Her tone was snide and dismissive. “Nothing you wish to hear.”
“Please, I wouldn’t want you to injure yourself, trying to contain it,” Artemis volleyed, infuriated and combative.
Eleni’s cheeks flushed. “Do not tempt me to speak, Artemis. I gave you my allegiance, promised to follow you, even when you are being irresponsible.”
“Have you no faith in me?”
“When it comes to humans? I have much less faith in you than is appropriate for my station.”
Artemis’s temper flared hot and bright. “I know Josie. Do you not believe that I would protect her?”
Eleni blew out a breath and folded her arms. “You know too little of humans to assume as much as you do. I believe you would protect her, yes, but the competition stands in your way. Should she fall into any danger, you could be helpless to interfere. But none of this matters because you have set your plan into motion with no regard for anyone’s perspective but your own.”
The words bit at Artemis’s conscience, and the niggling doubt in the back of her mind grew stronger and stronger with each argument on the matter.
Her wrath writhed under her skin as she stood and took steps toward Eleni, backing her out of the tent and into the center of camp.
“I do not need your blessing, Nephelai. I am Artemis, Goddess of Wilds, Lady of the Moon, The Huntress, The Maiden, Daughter of Zeus, and your mistress.”
The afternoon sky grew dark as midnight, the stars and moon so bright, they were overexposed. Night creatures woke and sang their songs—crickets and owls, frogs that croaked and hopped into the clearing—as fireflies buzzed in streaks against the tree line.
The nymphs shrank back with their eyes on the sky, and Artemis glowed white and cool as the moon.
“I do not need your blessing,” she said to her camp, her voice booming through the trees. “I do not need your permission. And I will hear no more of this.”
Her wrath ebbed as she turned for her tent once again just as Eleni fell to her knees, trembling in the dust. The daylight returned, the moon gone for the time, and all was once again as it should be.
The sky had grown dark outside Jon’s window, that eerie, ominous dimming of light to dark that came on suddenly, as if the sun had been blotted out. Rain clouds tumbled through the sky, and the low rumble of thunder rolled in the distance. He leaned against the wall with his front chair legs in the air as he eyed the replica of Josie’s evidence wall across the room with one hand rubbing his chin and the other tapping his pencil on his blue notebook resting on his thigh.
The day before had been spent compiling his own version of her wall, and he’d been up almost all night cataloging everything he’d found. He’d started at the beginning, marking each article, every bit of information, getting all of it into a massive spreadsheet before beginning to scour the internet for the articles and police blotters she’d used to build what she had. He’d printed them all to highlight and note them, and as the case had come together in his mind, it had grown until he made one solitary revelation.
Josie was right.
Try as he might, he found no holes other than the lack of substantial, admissible evidence. Rhodes made perfect sense. If he’d killed Jane, Hannah, and Anne, Jon didn’t doubt for a second that he’d killed the other girls too. It was too specific to be a coincidence, not with that many murders.