Page 87 of The Graveyard Girls (Detective Ellie Reeves #11)

EIGHTY-SIX

Green Gardens Cemetery

The memorial at the graveyard had been vandalized. Not only had it been spray painted with red paint, but someone had stuck a pitchfork in front of it as if to indicate the devil was present on the land.

There was opposition to the memorial and others in favor. Some locals claimed they didn’t want it because it drew attention to the toxic land. Members of the community wanted folks to move back and help Brambletown get back on its feet.

Others wanted attention to the deaths and illnesses caused by the toxins as a reminder to the government that they’d abandoned the clean-up process and to take action.

But he hadn’t come here to see it. Hetty had called and asked him to meet her. She didn’t have to say exactly where.

He knew.

He walked past the old graves, his stomach twisting at the sight of two children’s headstones.

The fire had once wiped out entire families, the toxins killing others slowly with cancers, lung diseases and other illnesses.

He stepped onto the land that had once been a forest of green but now looked brown and barren and wove along the unmarked path, hating the silence of the woods without forest creatures.

A cold breeze picked up, rustling dry brush and reminding him of death. He trudged on, his memories suffocating. Yet if he had to go back, he’d do the same thing all over again.

Another mile in and a sense of doom overcame him just as it used to when his foster father would go ape shit and beat the hell out of him for no good reason, except the old man talked with his fists and had a machine gun mouth that constantly hammered home how nobody wanted him or would ever love him because he was a sorry piece of shit.

Ellie loves you .

At least she loves the part of you that you’ve shown to her.

Would she still love him if he confessed his sins?

A noise ahead startled him and he saw movement. Hetty? Or was someone else in the woods?

The person who’d killed Ruth, Bonnie Sylvester and Jacey Ward?

The cold wind beat at the back of his neck as he spotted Hetty hunched with a shovel in her hands standing at the very spot they’d been fifteen years ago.

Twigs snapped beneath his boots and she turned as he approached, a sinister look in her eyes. Hetty had always seemed angry and a little off, but he knew the reason. They shared a connection that way.

Earl Bramble had taken her in which everyone thought seemed a nice thing to do, except he had gotten money from his brother’s death in return. She hadn’t been his daughter and he’d used her like Cord’s foster father had used him, as a whipping post.

He glanced at the shovel clutched in her hands and noted she’d been shifting dirt and brush to make the area more natural.

Cord cleared his throat. “Why did you want to meet here? Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”

Hetty’s lips thinned, and she clenched the shovel. “It is. But I wanted to make sure you keep your mouth shut. If you don’t, I’ll ruin you.”

She raised the shovel as if to swing it toward his head, but he caught it with his hand and gave her an icy stare. “You can,” he said. “But if you do, you’ll take yourself and Ida along with me.”