Dark Skies: A Fox County Forensics Lesbian Romantic Suspense

by Malone, Cara

  Dark Skies

  A Fox County Forensics Lesbian Romantic Suspense

  Cara Malone

  Copyright © 2021 by Cara Malone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Content Warning

  This book contains references to sexual assault. There are no on-page depictions or graphic details, but characters discuss an event in which sexual assault occurred. Discretion is advised.

  Contents

  1. Amelia

  2. Simone

  3. Amelia

  4. Simone

  5. Amelia

  6. Simone

  7. Amelia

  8. Simone

  9. Derika

  10. Amelia

  11. Noah

  12. Amelia

  13. Simone

  14. Amelia

  15. Clark

  16. Simone

  17. Amelia

  18. Simone

  19. Amelia

  20. Cal

  21. Simone

  22. Elizabeth

  23. Amelia

  24. Elizabeth

  25. Cal

  26. Simone

  27. Amelia

  Epilogue

  A Note from Cara

  Sneak Peek: Chain Reaction

  1

  Amelia

  It was a dark and stormy morning…

  That was the thought that blew through Dr. Amelia Trace’s mind the minute she stepped out of her condo and the wind whipped her blonde hair over her face. It stuck to her tinted lip balm and tangled around the chunky tortoise shell frames of her glasses, and there it would have to stay until she got to her car because she had a lunch bag and briefcase in one hand and a steaming travel mug of coffee in the other.

  The skies were eerily dark even though it was only a little past seven-thirty in the morning. Daylight savings time had begun a few weeks ago, so her morning commute was no longer pitch-black—at least on an ordinary day.

  This morning, a serious storm was brewing and Amelia just hoped she would get to the office before the skies opened up and all those heavy rain clouds dumped their contents on her. She got to her BMW parked in the driveway and a struggle ensued between her, the door, and the wind. It damn near made off with her coffee mug, but in the end, Amelia prevailed.

  She needed that coffee—it was a Monday morning and those tended to be the busiest of the week. She was the chief medical examiner for the county, and her first task of the week was always to check on the cases that had come in over the weekend. Then she would distribute them among herself and the other four pathologists in the office.

  If anything happened over the weekend that wouldn’t keep until Monday, whoever was on call would have to come in and work, and this weekend it had been Amelia’s turn. Of course, with her luck, that meant she’d spent all day Sunday in the morgue working on an apparent homicide victim that had been badly decomposed.

  Hence the mug of extra-strong coffee this morning.

  On her twenty-minute drive to the office, the mug stayed in its cupholder and Amelia drove with both hands clamped to the wheel as the wind buffeted her car and threatened to shove her out of her lane. It had been a pretty rainy spring so far, but this weather was something else and by the time Amelia pulled into the ME’s lot, she was stressed and shaken by the drive. She parked, then sat in the car for a minute, regaining her composure and sipping her coffee in peace before the day began.

  “Oh, that’s the good stuff,” she said, closing her eyes to really savor the creamy hazelnut blend.

  She’d allowed her sister Frances to talk her into buying a fancy Nespresso coffee maker a few weeks ago. Even though she knew Frannie mostly wanted it for when she came to visit, Amelia couldn’t deny the appeal now that she had it.

  But the wind just kept rocking her car, refusing to let her forget that at any moment a torrential downpour could unleash itself. “Okay, let’s do this,” she said, gathering her things. She pushed her door open, again with significant resistance, and the wind whipped it shut as soon as she was clear. Bang.

  And then, nothing.

  In an instant, the wind died, the world fell silent, and the hairs on the back of Amelia’s neck stood on end.

  “Oh shit,” she said, seconds before a siren began to wail in the distance. Amelia took off at a run across the parking lot. She lost her grip on her mug—as well as her lunch bag—and left them both where they fell. She reached the medical examiner’s office and burst through the door, shouting to her wide-eyed receptionist, “Tornado—get to the basement!”

  “Seriously?” the girl, Reese, asked.

  Amelia nodded. “Seriously. Go!”

  This wasn’t the first time in her ten years here that the tornado siren had gone off and she and her staff had to take cover, but it was the first time she’d actually been standing outside and felt the wind die, felt the air crackle with electricity. It felt real, imminent. And it scared the hell out of her.

  Fortunately, Reese didn’t need telling twice. She got up and bolted through the lobby, heading for the basement, and Amelia called after her, “Take the stairs, not the elevator.”

  Amelia didn’t follow her. As the boss, it was her responsibility to make sure all her employees were safe, even though her pulse was racing so fast she was damn near palpitations. She made a quick circuit through the investigators’ cubicles, getting them all to take the siren seriously, and thankfully everyone on the administrative side of the building had already been sufficiently spooked to go downstairs.

  Reese must have warned Dylan and Elise, the lab techs, on her way to the basement because their labs were empty. Amelia made sure the morgue was too—at least empty of those with a pulse.

  The siren became muted the deeper into the building Amelia went, but she could hear the wind picking up again, reaching a train whistle pitch as she got to the stairwell. Oh God, she thought as she practically flew down the stairs, that’s exactly what they say tornados sound like right before they touch down.

  “Amelia, in here!” somebody called to her the second her feet touched the concrete floor. A hand hooked around her elbow and her lead investigator, Maya, was pulling her into the women’s locker room.

  “Is everyone accounted for?” she asked as they rushed past a small row of metal lockers and into the tiled shower area.

  “Best we can figure,” Maya said. “It’s time for a shift change so everybody we know was in the building is down here.”

  That would just have to be good enough, because in that moment, the overhead lights died and somebody—Reese, maybe?—let out a yelp. Amelia’s ears popped as the air pressure spiked, and she crouched in the dark, feeling along the cool tile floor until she found the wall. Then a coworker clutched her hand.

  “Hold on, everybody,” Amelia said. “It’ll be okay.”

  Ironic words for a woman who dealt with death day in and day out, and investigated cases where people were very much not okay. It’ll be okay wasn’t a promise anyone could actually make.

  But sometimes platitudes were all you had to hold on to—that and an anonymous coworker’s hand.

  2

  Simone

  It was out of the frying pan and into the fire for Lieutenant Simone Olivier and her crew.

  She was already at the fire station when the tornado sirens went off. She’d been going over some basic safety procedures
with a brand-new batch of three probationary firefighters—probies—and they’d had to drop everything and take cover. The wind whipped up forcefully and shook the solid brick building, but there was no damage to the station when all was said and done.

  As much could not be said for the rest of the city.

  Simone was tuned into the emergency channel on her radio, and the whole time the wind whistled around the fire station, dispatchers and police officers were calling in downed power lines, injuries and flipped vehicles.

  Even the more seasoned members of Simone’s crew looked a little overwhelmed—Fox County hadn’t had a natural disaster like this for as long as Simone had been a firefighter. But the probies were downright freaked.

  “I can’t believe this is happening on my first day,” one of them, Larson, said when the danger passed and he crawled out of the fetal position.

  “Lucky you—trial by fire,” Simone’s best friend at the station, Carter, said. He always took great joy in teasing a new batch of probies, but as the station lieutenant, Simone was the one who actually had to deal with them. And today she had to deal with three recruits and a city on fire.

  “Shut it, Carter,” she said. He made a crude but playful gesture, and Simone waved her crew out of the hallway where they’d taken shelter. “Come on, everybody, we’ve got work to do.”

  She could tell from the chatter on the emergency channel that there would be fires to put out, both literally and figuratively. The five regular day shift crew members, Simone included, and her three probies headed upstairs where she told them all to suit up.

  They started to walk toward the fire engine and she clapped her hands, shouting, “Come on, get the lead out!”

  The three probies—Larson, Velez and Williams—broke into a run and Simone kept an eye on them. They were slow, more concerned with putting everything on in the right order than with getting out the door. There’d be plenty of time to adjust clothing while they were on the rig.

  When there wasn’t a natural disaster to deal with, she’d have to run drills with them to get it right.

  Just then, the station alarm started to wail. They were getting a call, and now it really was a matter of urgency.

  Simone’s four vets all hopped onto the fire engine. They didn’t need to be told twice, but the probies were still struggling with their gear. Simone herded them toward the vehicle. “Go, go, you can fix it on the way.”

  “I think I’m gonna puke,” Williams complained as he boarded the fire engine.

  “You can do it on the way,” Simone said, and then they were out the door, sirens blaring.

  Williams did look a little clammy, as did Larson. Simone couldn’t blame them for being nervous on their first day, let alone a first day that had started like this one. But every time she looked at Velez, the only female among the new recruits, she was stone-faced and determined. Maybe she was freaking out on the inside just like the other two, but if she was, she was fighting like hell not to show it.

  You couldn’t when you were a female doing a job like this, with so much testosterone and macho energy all around. The men all gave each other shit any time they showed weakness on the job. For a female firefighter to be perceived as weak… it was career suicide.

  By the time the fire engine came to a stop in a residential neighborhood about five minutes away from the station, Simone had a burgeoning respect for Velez and high hopes that she’d do well in this job. Larson and Williams would probably be fine too, but they didn’t remind Simone of her younger self the way Velez did.

  At least nobody had upchucked.

  “Okay, everybody out,” Simone said, mostly for the benefit of the probies. Her regular crew knew the drill—they rarely needed her to direct them.

  Simone had been talking to dispatch on her radio the whole way over so she knew there was one active fire, and several houses in the neighborhood had been torn apart, so there would be search-and-rescue work to do. Her probies were definitely not ready for it—Simone would put Carter in charge of that.

  As soon as she stepped off the fire engine, the extent of the destruction took her breath away.

  This was more than high winds. The tornado had come right through sleepy suburban Balch Street, not just damaging but leveling four houses. The ones that were still standing were almost untouched—a few shingles ripped off here, a piece of siding missing there. And yet their neighbors’ houses had ceased to exist.

  “Holy shit,” Larson said as everyone took in the scene. He pointed to one of the downed houses. “Those people have to be wondering what they did to piss off God.”

  “Those people could be dead,” Simone snapped, glaring so hard he actually shrank inside his fire-resistant jacket. Good, he wouldn’t make the mistake of voicing snarky, insensitive comments like that again.

  She barked out orders, making sure everyone knew what they were doing. She sent the experienced crew to liaise with the police who were arriving on the scene to coordinate the search-and-rescue efforts. Then she let the probies fight their first fire.

  They pulled heavy reels of fire hoses off the vehicle while Simone checked out the burning house and made sure the gas running in from the street had been shut off. The house was still mostly standing, but black smoke was billowing from a broken downstairs window, and if they didn’t act fast, it wouldn’t be standing for long.

  “Over here,” she called to her three recruits.

  Velez led the way with Larson trailing behind her, carrying the slack of the fire hose, and Williams ran over to a hydrant nearby. At least that hadn’t been touched by the tornado. Simone jogged over to join him, showing him how to connect the hose and turn on the water with a special hydrant wrench.

  “Aim low, keep the hose under control,” she instructed.

  While the probies tackled the fire, Simone had one eye on them and one on the rest of the neighborhood. It was still eerily dark for a spring morning, and the sky looked like it could open up and downpour again at any moment. There were at least a half-dozen police cars here, with more arriving all the time. This neighborhood must have been one of the worst hit by the tornado.

  Simone kept scanning while she supervised, but she didn’t see any people—dead or alive—being pulled out of the wrecked houses. Maybe that meant there weren’t any casualties. Maybe they’d all left for work already and that would be the silver lining.

  Fingers crossed.

  “Good,” she told Velez, pointing. “Keep spraying. We want to put this fire out before it has a chance to spread to the rest of these houses.”

  It was a small fire and Simone felt confident that even a crew of complete newbies could handle it, but that didn’t make the situation any less serious. This whole neighborhood was a tinderbox and the last thing she wanted was to lose the last standing houses to fire after the tornado took out the rest of the neighborhood.

  “Incoming,” she heard Carter call.

  She looked up the road, where he was directing traffic as the medical examiner’s distinctive white van crept through the debris and the haphazardly parked emergency vehicles on the road.

  “Shit,” Simone muttered. There was only one reason for the ME to be here—there were casualties after all.

  3

  Amelia

  The scene was like something out of a war zone. Houses had been destroyed seemingly at random, others nearly untouched, and there was a fire burning in one that was still standing.

  Amelia had been a forensic pathologist for ten years, the chief medical examiner for the last three, so she’d seen her fair share of horrible stuff. That didn’t mean it got any easier, though, and as she climbed out of the van, it occurred to her that she should be grateful for that fact. It meant she hadn’t lost her humanity, hadn’t gotten jaded from the job.

  She went around to the back of the van to retrieve an investigation kit. It felt heavy and a little foreign in her hands—her work was mostly done back at the ME’s office. It was rare that she actually came out
to a scene, but today it was all hands on deck. Before she left the office, she’d called in every single one of her investigators and activated the office’s mass fatality protocol.

  And now it was time to get to work.

  “Where do you want me, doc?” Kelsey Granger asked, picking up her own investigation kit.

  She was one of the more junior investigators and usually worked the night shift. She was going to med school during the day, working on becoming a forensic pathologist herself, and though Amelia’s path didn’t cross with Kelsey’s often because of their opposing schedules, she’d offered to mentor her once she got to the hands-on portion of her studies.

  Given the destruction in just this one neighborhood, Amelia knew all her investigators would be working overtime for a while and Kelsey would likely be missing a lot of class.

  “Stick with me for now,” Amelia told her. “I want to get the lay of the land and come up with a game plan before we split up.”

  Kelsey nodded, then closed the van doors.

  They walked slowly up the street, stepping over sticks and bits of debris flung off the houses, and Amelia warned Kelsey to look out for nails. The last thing she needed was an investigator out of commission due to tetanus.

  Amelia spotted the chief of police, and that was how she knew this was the worst-hit neighborhood in the city. She and Kelsey picked their way over to him. He was talking to a couple of cops, directing them to turn off the gas to the rest of the houses on the street.