for the first time, her voice holding a low timbre that was likely put to good effect when soothing distraught relatives. “Here are my details.” A card taken from a pants pocket, held out. “Call me anytime.”
Taking the card, I slid it away. My father would eventually break out of his paralysis and ask for it, but I wouldn’t volunteer it.
“We’ll make sure to keep you updated,” Regan said. “Please do remember that the investigation is in its very early stages. We’re still working the scene.”
“I’m coming with you.” Hobbling over as fast as the orthopedic moon boot—aka a walking cast—strapped around my fractured bones would permit, I grabbed my outdoor jacket from the hallway closet while Regan was still objecting. “I won’t cross the police tape or make a scene. I just want to know where my mother died.” Where she’d effectively been buried for ten years.
Regan exchanged a look with Constable Neri before saying, “You can ride with us.”
“No, I’ll take my car.” A rental sedan with an automatic transmission that I could drive with one functional leg. Having my own vehicle would also leave me free to go to other places, begin to dig other graves.
Considering the status of my injury, I grabbed the crutches I’d propped to one side of the doorway when I went to get my jacket; the surgeon who’d worked on me had given me the go-ahead to start putting my full weight on my foot, but she hadn’t told me to go hiking.
“Cautious, Aarav,” Dr. Tawera had said after looking at the latest X-rays. “We don’t want to negate all your progress to date.”
No, we fucking didn’t.
My father spoke at last. “I’m coming, too.”
My chest tightened, my solar plexus crushing in on itself, the reaction one I’d thought I’d long ago conditioned out of myself. “We’ll follow you,” I said to the cops, then stepped out after them.
My father trailed silently at my back, not remembering his coat even after he stepped out into the chill winter air, the sky a dull gray that flattened the world. I didn’t remind him as I headed to the sedan. A lackluster dark blue with nothing distinctive about it, it wasn’t a car I’d have chosen at any other point in my life.
It was nothing like the gleaming black Porsche with a custom metallic paint job currently cooling its heels in the garage of my city apartment. Yeah, the Porsche was a piece of dick-waving assholery, but at least I knew it. I’d bought it when Blood Sacrifice turned into a blockbuster book that, in turn, became a blockbuster movie.
Murder and gore.
The world laps it up.
The discovery of my mother’s body, even if her death proved to have been accidental, it’d be terrific publicity. My publishers would dance a quiet jig. And all it had cost was the death of a woman of only forty-one.
3
My hands tightened on the steering wheel as my father got into the passenger seat.
We didn’t speak, my eyes on the unmarked police vehicle up ahead. Driven by Constable Neri, it led us out of the leafy gilded surrounds of the Cul-de-Sac and onto a long and winding road bordered by the dense forests of the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park, with only small hamlets of habitation along the way—and glimpses of breathtaking vistas where the foliage opened up.
Scenic Drive lived up to its name. But only if you weren’t expecting pretty and safe.
All that rich green turned parts of the road claustrophobic. It was never searing hot here, not in the cool darkness of the shadows cast by the forest giants. This was a quiet place, a place that whispered that humanity was an intrusion that would be swiftly forgotten once we were gone.
An unexpected flash of white, a large sign at the entrance to a trail, warning that the area was under a rāhui because of kauri dieback disease. No one was permitted to go on those trails, because the disease spread through the forest on the soles of human shoes, bringing a slow death to trees meant to grow far older than my mother would ever be.
I followed the police car knowing that if it stopped anywhere on this road, it’d be a spot I’d driven past hundreds of times.
Passing my mother’s grave over and over again.
The unmarked car slowed as it turned a corner, and when I followed, I saw flashing lights, road cones, and an orange-vested officer waiting to direct traffic through what had become a single