Page 72 of The Witch’s Orchard

It’s an hour and a half at the station, for the second time in two days, making a statement and signing all the paperwork. I’m sitting, filthy and exhausted, in the same little room as before initialing everything with a Bic ballpoint, barely even reading it, when AJ comes to get me.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Shower,” I say, getting up with a groan and almost plowing into him. “Food.”

Thirty minutes later, I pull up outside the cabin. AJ, who traded his cruiser for his personal truck, pulls in right behind me. I go straight around the side of the cabin, where I’d seen a little garden hose the day before. AJ starts to follow me, then turns around when I strip naked and toss my filthy clothes in a heap.

“Please,” I shout to him. “Dinner.”

Then, I take a bracing deep breath and turn the cold water on my body, not wanting to breathe any of the steam that might come off me in a hot shower. Once the water running onto my feet is mostly clear, I shut off the hose and walk, stark naked, back around to the front of the cabin. There, AJ is waiting with a towel, his eyes averted and a deep blush in his cheeks.

“Feel better?” he asks.

“Almost.” I take the towel, wipe my feet on the mat, pad into the cabin, and head straight for the bathroom.

I turn the shower on and step in. In spite of my best efforts with the hose, streaks of black and gray still spiral around my feet and disappear down the drain.

“Gross,” I mutter. “This is disgusting.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” AJ hollers through the bathroom door.

“Yeah,” I shout. The cut on my shin opens under the scalding water. Bright blood mixes with the streaks of gray. “I’ve had worse.”

There’s no reply, and after a few minutes I ask. “You order that dinner yet?”

I wash everything three times, scrubbing with one of Max’s nice pale blue washcloths and honeysuckle body wash and wishing I’d asked AJ to just hand me the bottle of dish soap from the kitchen.

After the third scrub, I toss the washcloth toward the trash can, but miss. It hits the wall with a wet slap and leaves a dark streak as it slurps down to the floor. I pull another one from the little hutch above the toilet and start over.

When I get out, I wrap a clean towel around my middle and give my hair a good tousle with another one, run a comb through it. I pull the bag out of the trash can and tie it off, replace it. I look in the mirror and find that I am pink and shiny. Satisfied, I let out what could almost be called a contented sigh.

I go into the kitchen, towel still wrapped around me, hair dripping down my shoulders. AJ’s got a fire going in the fireplace and the cabin is toasty and nice and I realize I’ve probably been in low-level shock since I woke up next to AJ’s cruiser.

“Oh,” AJ says when he sees me. “You’re bleeding.”

I look down and find that the cut on my shin is open again. A streak of red runs onto my foot.

“Come on,” he says. He holds out a cold beer as a lure and leads me to the kitchen chair.

“Max has a first aid kit in here,” AJ says as I sit and take the bottle and have a good, long drink.

AJ opens a cabinet over the stove and pulls out a little red hard-shell case and then kneels down on the floor in front of me and opens it up. He cleans the wound with an alcohol pad. I grit my teeth, but I don’t hiss or shiver.

“What were you doing in there?” he asks.

“Shower,” I say.

He gives me a “You know what I meant, smart-ass” look and says, “DrakeCo Toy Factory.”

“Tam Hoyle told me that someone saw his dad and Dwight Hoyle over there. I thought… what if it had something to do with Jessica and Molly?”

“Well, it was searched after the girls were kidnapped. The FBI did an entire investigation around it; I saw the files today. Ever since, it’s hosted a few unsavory types and we have to run them off, but, as far as I know, you stumbled into the first meth lab.”

“Lucky me,” I say.

He holds the back of my calf in one hand, cradling the muscle like a bird, while he applies antibiotic ointment with a swab. His touch is so light, I barely feel it.

“Deputy Flora questioned Tommy at the hospital. Hesayshe was just visiting his cousins.”