as the officers ran toward him from both directions. Zach jerked his hand up, moving it left and then right, holding them back as they skidded to a halt. His heart was in his fucking throat.
Charles gave him one last weary smile. “Tell Caleb . . .” Charles began, his voice barely emerging as his eyes began to close. “Tell him, he’s my . . . legacy.” And then he stretched his arms wide, his head tipping toward the sky as he took the final step back. Zach threw himself forward, his chest hitting the ground, head hanging over the edge, reaching, trying to grasp hold but not even coming close as Charles plunged to the water below, his body hitting with a hard smack and floating, lifeless, to the surface.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Three Months Later
He stood alone, hands in his pockets at the edge of the curved path, his form immediately recognizable. Beloved. Her Reed. Several feet away, on a grassy slope, two men with shovels tamped the earth where Cora Hartsman’s bones had just been buried, along with a container of ashes that held the remains of her son.
Perhaps, if they’d been reunited in life, things would have been much different, not only for them but for so many others. That was the hardest part about their jobs. About life in general. You couldn’t deal in what might have been, only what was.
Beside her, Ransom walked silently, both their gazes fixed on Reed as he turned their way. His expression registered surprise then something that looked very near embarrassment as they approached. He glanced down, his brow lowering. “I didn’t plan on being here,” he said, as though they required an explanation as to why he’d shown up to watch the burial. Liza’s heart ached for him. He looked so conflicted. He was there to pay respects to the part of his birth father that had exhibited mercy at the end, and he didn’t know how to untangle that from the monster he’d always viewed Charles Hartsman as.
You are such a good man, Reed Davies. So filled with kindness and decency, and I will love you until the end of all time.
“Man, no one blames you for wanting closure,” Ransom said. “For Josie, for yourself . . . No one blames you at all.”
Reed nodded, breath escaping as his expression registered relief. “Thanks.” His gaze turned to Liza and his eyes moved over her, bouncing from one spot to another, assessing her well-being, a tinge of desperation etched into his beautiful features. He did that a lot lately, a product of the shock at realizing how close he’d come to losing her, as the atrocious details of what she’d experienced in that underground cavern came to light. She had suffered some post-traumatic symptoms of her own. It was getting better though. They were all healing. Moving forward.
Liza stepped to him, taking his hand and squeezing it. He released a breath, wrapping one arm around her and kissing her temple. “Thank you for coming.”
Liza glanced at the grave that held mother and son. “They’re together again,” she said. It felt right to her, and she understood why Reed had made the decision to bring them back together in death, even if he still struggled mightily with his birth father’s role in the case and the clashing emotions it’d brought forth.
The three of them turned, standing together for several minutes, watching the men with shovels as they completed their work. Liza had respects of her own to pay. The man being buried had solicited her teamwork at the end, and because of him, she was standing there. Alive. The warmth of Reed’s hand wrapped around her own.
Tell Caleb he’s my legacy. Those had been Charles Hartsman’s dying words, and though the man had brutally victimized so many, though he was cruel and vindictive, he had been right on that score. He had given life to a man who was a force of goodness in the world. From darkness had come light, a luminous ray of strength and virtue that shone brightly on the dim corners of the world, on her.
“Ready?” Liza asked softly.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Together, they turned and moved toward the parking lot. Two people stood around a new plot nearby, perhaps the family members of another of Gordon Draper’s victims, the bones of which had finally been released after months in evidence.
In total, the remains of twenty-eight women had been unearthed from the garden behind his home, the details of the