78. You Were Right

       Nicole blew a raspberry out through her lips, dropping the sheet back over the body as she stood up straight. The only difference between this kill and the last had been that it was dumped in a different location and that it obviously wasn't the same woman, but they both had looked the same. Same hair color. Same age range. Same body build. This Revenant obviously had a type, so it'd be easier to get those with the same description to protect themselves. 

       But the fact that she now had a serial killer staked out somewhere in her town made her stomach churn like nothing else. 

       She walked over to Dolls, who was chatting with one of the kids who had found her's mother. He excused himself when he saw her approach and met her halfway. "They didn't see anything else," he sighed, flipping his notepad closed and pushing it into his pocket. 

       The Sheriff pursed her lips. "Let's just hope the autopsy finds something. He didn't have the water to wash away his mistakes this time." 

       The Marshal nodded in agreement. "You need to get Waverly in tomorrow. There's gotta be something we’re missing here, and she knows more about the Curse than anyone." 

       “Anything’s better than nothing at this point,” she mumbled, running her hand down her cheek. He traced his eyes down her body slowly, looking back up at her with a hitched eyebrow. She threw him a look, seeing how he was judging her suit. “I was at a wedding , ok?” 

       He shook his head, walking past her with a rare laugh. “You better go change or people’re gonna think we’ve got an Oompa Loompa running around.”

       She turned towards him with a scoff, “You best shut your damn mouth before I Oompa Loompa your head in.” 

       He opened the door of his car, seeing that they had everything they needed and a few people were loading the body up. “Now now, Tex. We’ve got work to do.” 

       The redhead walked over to her cruiser. “I love me some paperwork.” 

       “Mm, I was thinking we’d take a detour . . .”

       She looked up at him with an interested raise of her brow. “What did you have in mind?”

       “That maybe we’d have some luck chatting with an ugly fur coat?” 

       The redhead’s eyes widened, but she smiled with a nod, “As long as I can change first.” 

.  .  . 

       "Alright, you three. Let's go." 

       "Nooooo," Chrissy, Wynonna, and Waverly all whined in unison. 

       The wedding was winding down and people were starting to stumble out the doors. But the wasted trio had decided they didn't want to go yet. Jessie and Topher were about to head out, but the bride wasn't going to leave until she was sure they were going to get home ok, so she has called the Law. 

       Literally. 

       Nedley put his hand on his hips, shooting a look towards his daughter. "Don't make me call your mother, Christine.” The blonde’s eyes widened, and she gave in, taking a few wobbly steps towards him. The man looked from her to the other two, clapping his hands. “Vamonos!” 

       Waverly let out a dramatic sigh, grabbing Wynonna’s arm and dragging her along as Nedley led them all out to his car. “Why isn’t Haught babysitting you three?” He questioned as the three giggled to themselves in the back as he pulled away. 

       “She’s hangin’ out with ‘nother body,” Wynonna informed from the middle. 

       His eyebrows shot up and he looked up at her through the mirror. “ Another ?” 

       "Yap," Waverly confirmed. 

       He shook his head. "Lord." 

       Randy drove on, eventually pulling up to the Homestead. With a smidge of trouble, he got the Earp's up to the front door, giving it a knock. Michelle opened it, eyes hardening as she flicked between her two daughters, then landing on Nedley. "What'd they do?" She questioned, crossing her arms. 

       "Oh no. They didn't do nothing. Just needed a little assistance leaving the after-party that’s all." 

       Michelle looked between them, pursing her lips as she looked up and down her youngest’s outfit. She turned sideways, allowing Randy to get them in the door. The mother thanked him and he turned away, heading back to the car to his probably passed out daughter. She closed the door behind them, holding each of their arms as they walked into the house. “Seriously, you two?” 

       “Hey, this is the first time I’ve gotten drunk since the baby,” Wynonna slurred, almost falling over the couch. 

       “Mm, that’s nice. Now be quiet because we have been trying to put your baby to bed for the last two hours because you were out wedding-ing and her dad is at Shorty’s, filling Waverly’s shift.” 

       Wynonna looked towards her mother, now hearing the sound of Alice screaming her little baby lungs out upstairs. “Poor baby,” she said with a pouted lip, pulling them towards the stairs. 

       “Uh-unh.” Michelle stopped her. “You are gonna go get changed and go to bed. We’ll handle her.” 

       “But-

       “No. You’re shitfaced. Now go. Both of you.” She gave them both a look of order and they groaned, stumbling up the stairs. They drunkenly changed out of their clothes and got into some pajamas before both passing out on Wynonna’s bed without a second thought. 

       Michelle smiled slightly, leaning on the door frame of her room. She turned away, heading to the room over to join her sister in their attempt to put the baby to bed. Gus was pacing as she bounced the almost-three-month-old, cooing softly to her. The younger one walked over and gently took her from her arms. “Let’s try this, shall we?” She carried her back to Wynonna’s room and sat down on the edge of the bed, laying her in the small space that was left between the two sisters. 

       Alice continued to wiggle around for a few more seconds before recognizing her mother lying next to her, then turning her head to find her aunt there as well. Her cries slowly faded and Michelle smiled, looking up at Gus, who was also smiling at the moment. 

       They waited several minutes for the little one to finally fall asleep, and once they were sure, Michelle lifted her back up and carried her back to her nursery, pressing a kiss to her head before placing her into her crib. Once her baby monitor was on, she turned quietly out the door, giving Gus a high five as she went. 

.  .  .

       The thumping behind Waverly’s eyes woke her up, and the tiny amount of light in the room burnt her eyes. She let out a groan, flipping over to her stomach. She moved to fold her arms under her head, seeing that she didn’t have a pillow, but she felt her elbow knock somebody in the process. She furrowed her brows, opening her eyes slightly in the direction, but smiled after seeing the mop of red hair sprawled across her pillow. 

       She scooted closer to Nicole and the Sheriff let out a small grunt before flipping to her side and letting her curl into her chest. She took in a breath, but pulled her head back from the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke. Her eyes narrowed at her, realizing on further inspection that she was still in her uniform presumably from the night before. “I swear to God , if you were smoking I’m going to beat you over the head with the stiletto I was wearing last night,” she warned through her teeth, reaching up and grabbing her face, pulling it down to so she could look at her. 

       “I wasn’t,” the redhead mumbled groggily through squished cheeks, eyes blinking open. She let go of her. “I was with Bobo and he was.”

       “ Bobo ?!” Two voices exclaimed. Waverly looked up, now seeing Wynonna hovering above Nicole’s shoulder on the opposite side of her. It was then that some of the hazy memories of the night before came back to here, and she realized they were all in Wynonna’s room on her bed. 

       “Bobo,” Nicole confirmed, pushing Wynonna back from spooning her and rolling to her back, rubbing her eyes. 

       Waverly scooted closer to her once again, moving under her arm and resting her head on her chest. The redhead wrapped her arm around her, rubbing her thumb on her side. “Why the hell were you with Bobo ?” Wynonna moved under her other arm, mirroring Waverly’s position despite the huff from Nicole. 

       “Cause me and Dolls wanted to see if he had anything to do with it,” the Sheriff answered. “He just gave us a bunch of bullshit the whole time, but we both think he didn’t even know we were suspecting a Revenant was the killer.” 

       “Bobo knows everything, though,” Waverly mumbled. 

       “Exactly. And he had no idea.” 

       “So we have a wild Revenant?” Wynonna questioned. 

       “Seems like it,” Nicole sighed. 

       The Earp girls let out a synchronized groan, “ Perfect .” 

       “Mhm.” Nicole was quiet for a few seconds, feeling one of the two, probably Wynonna, toying with one of the buttons on her uniform shirt. “We need your brain today, Wave.” 

       “ Me ?” She questioned.

       “Your name is Wave , isn’t it?” The older brunette questioned, mocking Nicole’s tone. Waverly smacked her arm. “Why are you even in my bed, Haughty?” 

       “Cause I was tired as shit and here was closer than our house last night. Nedley had texted me, so I knew Waves was here already anyway.” 

       “That doesn’t tell me why you are in my bed .” 

       “Because one of the rooms is now a nursery, Doc’s on the couch, and the other room has y’alls mother in it and I’d rather sleep with you and my fiancée than her,” she retorted. 

       “What are you hinting at there, Sheriff?” Wynonna smirked at the way the redhead had worded that statement. 

       “That is a very good question.” They all looked up, seeing Michelle in the doorway holding Alice. Nicole felt her face go tomato red. “Should I question this or . . .” She gestured to their position. 

       “No, Wynonna’s just being annoying,” Waverly mumbled as she walked into the room. 

       “I prefer the word bonding ,” the other brunette corrected, wrapping her arm around Nicole’s middle as she snuggled further into her chest. The redhead rolled her eyes. 

       Mama did a long nod. “ I see .” She sat down where she had the previous night. “Someone wanted to say good morning.” 

       Nicole grinned, flapping her fingers at her and Michelle smiled, handing the baby over. She held her above her face, looking up into her still-bright blue eyes. “Hi, Baby!” She cooed, wiggling her a bit before bringing her down and pushing a bunch of kisses to her forehead as the other two occupied her other cheeks with their own set of kisses. Alice let out a squeal of enjoyment, getting a dose of love from the trio all at once. 

.  .  .

       “This is all you have so far?” Waverly questioned, looking up at the rather dull board with pictures and other forms of information pinned to it. 

       “This killer hasn’t left us much behind,” Dolls said as he added the new autopsy report to the mix. It, of course, hadn’t told them anything they didn’t know already. “All we know is he’s got claws of some sort . There is no other way he’d be able to tear them apart like that.” He walked over to his chair, sitting down and thumbing through some papers.

       “ And that he has a second location,” Nicole added, leaning back onto the table and crossing her arms. “We didn’t find any blood around the lake and there was no excess blood where the latest one was found.” 

       She nodded, walking along the board and taking a closer look at the pictures. “Did you ID the latest woman yet?” 

       “Yea. There’s no connection between the two besides their looks,” the redhead answered. 

       “Mm.” She turned and walked back over to the table, picking up the papers of all the information they had so far and skimming through it. “Well, I can’t name a clawed Revenant off of the top of my head,” she sighed. “But I’ve got a whole list of them around here somewhere that were known murders back in the day.” She looked up at Nicole. “I’ll look through those and see if any of them had the same type.” 

       The Sheriff smiled, standing and cupping her cheek as she pushed a kiss to her temple when she walked past her. “Thank you, Love.” She rounded the table and sat down in front of her laptop, for she had been running Revenant names against owned abandoned buildings in the area. 

       Waverly watched her for a second, smiling softly as the redhead put on her focused face, poking her tongue slightly out of the corner of her mouth and creasing her brow. She looked back down at the papers she was looking through and flipped to the page of the new case.

       Her brow immediately furrowed and she flipped back to the beginning of the other one. She quickly set it down and grabbed a highlighter out of the container of pens and such sitting on the table, opening it with her teeth as she marked each page. 

       Nicole looked up at her, having noticed the haste in her movements. “What . . .?” 

       The brunette looked up, taking the cap out of her mouth. “They each had been dead for almost 24 hours before they were found, right?” 

       “Uh-huh.” Dolls and Nicole both walked over to her. 

       “And neither of you noticed that they were exactly a month apart?” She handed her fiancée the paper and her eyes bugged looking down at it. They had each been killed May 2nd and June 2nd, and then found May 3rd and June 3rd. 

       “No they didn’t ,” the Marshall mumbled under his breath as he snatched the paper out of her hands, slowly looking up at the brunette after a few seconds. 

       She threw her arms out, tipping her head. “So either it’s a crazy coincidence or we have 29 days to catch a killer before another body pops up and I’d rather not find out which it was!” 

       Nicole nodded with a swallow, moving towards the table and reaching under it, pulling the tote with all of Waverly’s research out and setting it down. “Call Doc and Wynonna. We need all hands on deck.” 

       All she could do was hope and pray that they could catch the son of a bitch because if she had learned anything in her criminology class in college, it was that killers never did anything for no reason. 

.  .  .

       And unfortunately, she had been correct.

       “It's bullshit ,” Nicole huffed. “Any bit of evidence there is, we have. We have the bodies . We’ve run complete autopsies on all of them, chemical screening of the skin and everything . I have scoped out both locations far too many times and there is nothing else there. And Dolls and I have gone out to almost every fucking building or structure there is in the area and there is nothing. This Revenant is so fucking precise and neat with everything, even Waves and her beautiful brain couldn’t find anyone matching the profile we gave her, and that probably means this isn’t the first time he’s done this.” 

       She looked down, picking at the grass. “And . . . Now there’s another. Getting woken up by a call while you’re in a different country, saying that they’ve found another body already isn’t fun. And I hoped that if there was another, we’d at least be home already to deal with it- That’s why we flew out yesterday and are flying back tonight . . . Of course not, though.” She shook her head, glancing down at the blades of grass she had braided together. “Nedley called and told me that since they’ve officially reached serial killer status that I have to make a statement to the public, and I . . . I don’t know if I can.” 

       She dropped the grass and looked up, trying to hold the tears back. “I mean, there’s a fucking killer running around and I’m supposed to be protecting everyone. B-But I’m not. It’s been three months and I’ve gotten nowhere . No leads. No suspects. Nothing . I’m failing everyone and now I have to go up and talk about how I’m just letting innocent women get ripped to shreds!” Her voice cracked as a couple of tears escaped. She sniffled, tugging her shirt collar up to cover her nose, resting her elbows on her knees. “I just don’t know what to do anymore, Liz,” she mumbled with a shake of her head, looking sadly at the headstone in front of her. 

       Nicole had insisted on not going to Las Vegas this year since Liz’s anniversary happened to land on the suspected next kill date. But Waverly had told her it would be good for her. That it’d be good to get her away for a day or so, even if that was all it was. And maybe she had been right, but she still was anxious as all hell that her Deputies were having to handle this one all on their own, with Dolls’ help of course, but still. 

       She dropped her head back to her hands, pulling her knees to her chest as a well-overdue sob pushed out from deep within. Waverly watched on from their rental, heart crumbling to pieces as she watched her body shake as more pushed themselves out. She told her she was going to give her space to let her do her thing, but she wasn’t going to sit there and watch her cry like that. She fumbled with her seatbelt for a few seconds before finally getting it off. She pushed the car door open and rushed around towards her. 

       She sat down behind her and pulled her into her arms, hugging her head to her chest. “Shhh,” she soothed softly as the redhead curled around her arm. “Breathe, Sweetheart. You’re ok.” 

       “I c-can’t do this,” she cried into her shirt.

       “Can’t do what?” She asked softly, hugging her tighter. 

       “This fucking case, an-and everything that’s coming with it . . . It’s too much .” 

       Waverly pushed her hand through her hair. “You’re doing everything you can, Nic. And you’re handling it just like you should be . . . I know it’s hard, but you need to take a step back. Look at it at from a different angle. It’s not like we’re never gonna catch him. And if it takes a while, it takes a while. No one can deny that you aren’t giving this everything you have.”

       The Sheriff lifted her head a bit and Waverly took her face in her hands, kissing her tears away. She met her watery brown eyes with a small smile and Nicole look down for a second as she let out a breath, but raised her eyes back to her’s to return the smile. “. . . Thank you,” she mumbled, voice still wavering. 

       Waverly nodded, pushing a soft kiss to her lips as she moved her hair behind her ears to keep it from getting stuck to her wet cheeks. Nicole pulled back after a few seconds, pushing their foreheads together before moving out of her lap and flopping back on the grass, splaying her limbs out. The brunette let out a little giggle, looking down at her. She scooted and laid down next to her. Nicole let out a huff, sitting up and turning, laying back down with her head on her stomach. “Much better,” she hummed in content.

       The younger girl chuckled, bringing her hand down and running her thumb across her abdomen. “Yea?” 

       “Mhm.” 

       They were relatively quiet for several minutes while they both watched the sky as the bright white clouds danced across it, naming whatever shapes they saw every once in a while. Nicole broke the silence a little while later with a real statement, "Y'know you were right," she mumbled. 

       "With what?" 

       "Coming down here . . . I did need it." 

       Waverly grabbed her hand where it had been resting on her chest, threading her fingers through the gaps on the back when she brought it back down to her stomach. "That usually happens.”

       "What?" 

       "Me being right." Nicole could tell she was smirking and she couldn't even see her face. 

       The redhead rolled her eyes as she sat up off of her. “Go get in the car, Cutie,” she said with a playful huff. “I’ll be there in a minute, and then we can go grab lunch somewhere.” Waverly giggled as she stood, leaning down and cupping her face as she pressed a kiss to her lips. Nicole pulled back after a couple of seconds, reaching up and rubbing her thumbs on her wrists with a soft smile. Waverly returned it, pressing one last kiss to her forehead before turning and walking back to the car. 

       Nicole watched her go, looking back towards the headstone and turning her body towards it with a sigh. “44 today, huh?” She asked with a small smirk on her lips. “ Old hag .” Her eyes flicked between her birth date and death date, the only difference between them being the years. “I was gonna call and tell you happy birthday, I promise,” she mumbled with a swallow. “I had the fucking phone in my hand . . . But then the hospital called.” She crossed her arms over her knees, shaking her head as she wiped a stray tear. “I know you said that I’d forget you moving up here, but I didn’t . . . I was just busy with school a lot and then I was getting ready for Academy all summer, so I didn’t have time.” She pursed her lips at herself. “Well I did . . . Of course I did. I just never thought that thing about how you never know when it’ll be the last time to talk or see someone would apply to us so soon . . . But it did.” She dropped her chin to her arms. “I just hope you didn’t go thinking I finally forgot about you . . . cause I didn’t. And I won’t.” She batted at a few more tears, letting out a shaky breath to gather herself. “I don’t know how it works or anything, but if you can, tell those three ladies I’m doing everything I can for them. And I will until we catch this son of a bitch.” 

       The redhead wiped her face one last time and got up onto her knees, getting the green stain of grass off the bottom of the headstone that had stuck on there when the lawnmowers had come by. She wiped her hand off on her shorts and looked it over one last time before pushing herself to her feet with a sigh and walking back over to the car. 

       “You ok?” The brunette questioned as the taller one started the car. 

       She looked towards her, giving her a small smile and dropping her hand onto her thigh. “I’m good,” she assured with a nod. 

       Waverly smiled back, tucking her fingers under the side of her hand and running her thumb across it. She looked out her window as Nicole pulled away, seeing the array of trees that were mixed in with the graves.

       But she did a double-take in the direction of one, seeing a head of red hair leaning against one of them with some flowers in her hand. Her eyes widened as she followed her with her eyes. “What?” Nicole questioned, cocking an eyebrow at her. 

       Waverly looked towards her, mouth coming open slightly. “Uh . . . Nothing,” she said with a shake of her head. “Just a pretty headstone.” Nicole gave her a nod, looking back to the road as she turned out of the cemetery. 

       She did want to lie to Nicole but Sharon had obviously seen them there and was staying back for a reason. She didn’t want to see Nicole and that was completely fine with her because she knew it was definitely for the better. But she couldn’t help but wonder why she there. She had taken time out to get to Vegas from Dallas just to see her sister’s grave who she apparently didn’t like. 

       But whatever her reason may have been, she didn’t really care because she was out of their lives now. And she had enough on her plate to deal with.