Page 106 of The Last Straw

“I never found any family for the three missing women,” Wyrick said. “When you go to inter them in a cemetery, pick a nice place, bury them side by side and send me the bill.”

Floyd was touched. “You don’t have to do that. The city has a fund for—”

“I know I don’t have to,” Wyrick said. “But they were tortured, murdered and buried on land belonging to their killer. I think they deserve better than charity burials.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Floyd said. “I’ll make sure the right people know.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Charlie said.

“Of course,” Floyd said. “I have one more bit of news regarding Barrett Taylor’s sentencing. We didn’t work the case, but you and Wyrick have done so much for us, I thought she might like to know. Taylor is forty-five years old, and he just got handed a sentence of thirty-five years, with no possibility of parole.”

Wyrick gave Charlie a thumbs-up and walked out of the room.

Charlie grinned. “We appreciate that,” he said. “Have yourself a good day.”

Late that same day, Wyrick found out about Farrell Kitt after the media picked up on the story, posting the byline “Hit man dies by his own hand.”

She read it, then deleted the story. Burch was off the streets. The missing women had been found. Now Farrell Kitt was gone, Raver was gone and Taylor was in prison, and wherever Wallis was, he’d be on the run. She no longer felt the need to trail him, because the fortress of the cult he’d been with had come down like the walls of Jericho.

A calm was settling within her.

She searched YouTube for cooking demonstrations, and was online daily looking for a new recipe to try. Learning was a passion, and she’d never had a passion before.

Charlie became the taste tester, and she grew more confident of herself as a person, and not just “the test-tube genius” she’d been before.

Charlie loved it. And he was falling deeper and deeper in love with her.

It had been so long since he’d had these feelings, but he remembered them, and the longings and the passion for more that came with them.

But this was Wyrick. And he wouldn’t cross that line and risk losing her.

About two weeks after Rachel Dean’s rescue, Charlie was working at his desk when he got a text. He stopped to check the message, and then got up and took it to show Wyrick.

“Look,” he said and laid his phone down in front of her.

It was a brief text.

We’re Tulsa bound.

There was a picture with the text, of Millie and Ray, with Rachel standing between them. They were all smiling, and Rachel was holding up a sign that read:

THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY LIFE.

“It was a good save,” Wyrick said. “Tell her we say you’re welcome.”

“Done,” Charlie said and went back to his office and sent it.

That evening when they went home, Wyrick felt the stirrings of a new level of peace. Maybe, just maybe, there would be a way to regain some personal space, and as much anonymity as a woman like her could expect to have.

But Wyrick had forgotten about the little girl named Bethie. Unaware that what had taken place between them that day at Stackhouse Burgers had been filmed, she didn’t realize how tenuous her new joy had just become.

And Bethie’s parents had forgotten the incident, too, until they took Bethie back to her doctor for her next round of blood tests.

Lola Franklin, Bethie’s mother, knew her daughter had been eating better. She even let herself believe Bethie was getting a little color back in her complexion.

Her father, Bud, had always read to Bethie every night after they put her to bed, and often had to rub her legs to help her fall asleep, because she lived in constant pain.

But lately, she’d hadn’t cried about the pain, and was falling asleep without the rubs. So they were hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the cancer in her body was going into remission, and maybe the tumor in her head was shrinking enough to alleviate some of her pain. They knew they were grasping at straws, but hope was all they had left when they took her in.

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