by Cara McKenna
Jesus, why had he even thought this might work? They didn’t even fucking know what they were looking for. What had Vince expected—that one of them was just going to magically trip over a pile of human bones, with, like, an ID card clipped handily to its rib, telling them exactly who—
“Hey!” It was Casey’s voice. “Hey, I found a shaft.” Some muttered words followed, probably Casey making a dick joke to himself. Vince headed to where his brother’s beam was moving around at the edge of the foothills.
Sure enough, a familiar sight, obscured by brush—weathered plywood boards set sloppily into cement to seal the old entrance. And the board on the right had been pried off and replaced. It was clear from the way it was splinted along one edge.
“Smells like fire,” Casey said.
Vince sniffed the air and nodded. “Smoke. Could be transients . . . though they’d have a hell of a job, keeping these digs quiet now that the construction’s started. More likely it was nosy workers.”
Welch joined them. “Are you going in?”
Vince nodded. “Stand guard. Me and Casey will check it out.”
Vince tucked his flashlight in his armpit and yanked at the loose board. It was about as big as the side of a fridge, and it came off easily. He set it aside, stooping to sweep his light inside.
“They barely bothered to fill this one in at all.” A few boulders had been backhoed in, but not much else. It was the big operations they’d really plugged—ones with steep drop-offs or a greater likelihood of cave-ins. The fun ones, as Vince had thought of them when he’d been a disappointed kid, newly deprived of his Temple of Doom reenactments.
They entered, the space just barely high enough for Vince to walk upright through the middle, and domed like a cave. The entire place was maybe as big as the front room of Benji’s. He waved his light around, the glow illuminating rock on all sides, no apparent shaft continuing off into darkness, like maybe this entrance had been drilled but never put to use. His light lingered on something, a massive dark smear on the rounded ceiling—char black rock where it should have been red. “There’s your fire, Case.”
“No doubt.” Casey approached it. “Not crazy-fresh. Couple weeks, maybe three.”
Vince cast his brother a sideways look over that odd pronouncement, then left him to wander around. He peered into the shadows, not really knowing if they were looking at a true crime scene or just misdemeanor trespassing.
Then his beam caught something curious—a flash of white peeking from beneath a sloped outcropping of rock in the distance. His heart thumped hard as he crossed the uneven ground and crouched for a closer look, but the white wasn’t bones. It was a scrap of fabric, looking like lightweight cotton—a handkerchief, perhaps. White, with little red polka dots . . . no, not dots. Tiny embroidered strawberries. Vince’s stomach felt sour, the feminine, even childish nature of the thing curdling his insides. Where the cotton wasn’t white, it was black—fully charred, as though it had caught fire and floated away from the greater blaze to rest here. He wanted to touch it, but he wasn’t that stupid. Instead, he pulled out Miah’s camera and snapped a dozen photos, the flash making the whole scene look all the more surreal.
“Get in here, Welch,” he called.
The man appeared at his side half a minute later, his beam joining Vince’s to light the scrap.
“Odd,” Welch said, “but not necessarily sinister.”
“Get some video of it.”
Vince kept it lit, and Welch angled his phone this way and that, examining the cotton from all angles.
“This rock’s all been burned,” Vince said, swinging his light along the nearest wall.
Casey walked up, sniffing the air again. “Accelerant was diesel.”
Vince frowned. “You some kind of pyro bloodhound? Just smells like burned shit to me.”
“Definitely diesel. And they didn’t torch just clothes in here,” Casey said, shining his beam up the sloped ceiling.
“What do you mean?”
Casey rubbed at the blackened rock. “Clothes would leave a dry, powdery ash—cotton would, anyhow. Synthetics would’ve left a stink like burned plastic. But this shit’s greasy, man. Like a barbecue. You can smell it yourself—charred meat. Explains the coyotes.”
Vince exchanged a look with Welch.
“They did it in a barrel, probably,” Casey went on, scanning the ground. “Something contained—not bonfire-style. You can tell from the concentration of the smoke, and how this spot on the ground’s not as sooty as everywhere else. Metal trash can, probably—fifty-five-gallon job, common as dirt around a construction site, same as the diesel. And a barrel would act like a chimney, funneling the heat and smoke real tight, just like this.”
Vince stared at him. “How do you know all this shit?”
Casey was suddenly very interested in the wall.
“What the fuck you been up to, the past nine years?”
“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, yeah—unless some hobo really botched a roadkill cookout, thousand bucks says some poor motherfucker got broiled in here. I just hope to shit the guy was dead before they cooked him.”
The guy—or woman, or even a kid, Vince thought, picturing that fabric. The smell had begun to make his guts twist.
“Could forensic testing prove that?” Welch asked Casey. “That a human was burned in here?”
“Shit, forensic testing can prove every fucking thing,” Casey said. “If you’re sloppy. And these amateurs were damn sloppy.”
Vince felt cold. He’d heard every horror story there was in prison, often straight from the sickos’ mouths, but it was different standing here, seeing this. Smelling it, and imagining the men capable of it. Suddenly the question of Alex being murdered didn’t feel like a question at all. And then he thought of Kim.
“Keep taking pictures,” he told them, handing Miah’s camera to Casey. “I need some air.” And a cigarette. Jesus, he needed a cigarette.
Outside in the quenching night cold, the world was so still, Vince could hear his heart pounding. He was far from sheltered, but this shit had him shaking . . . Whoever had done that to a human being—cooked the fucker, maybe even alive—was a grade A psycho. Or crazy-desperate. A week ago such a scene likely wouldn’t have upset him like this, but a lot had changed in that time. And it drove something home that he’d been thoroughly, willfully blind about.
He had to get Kim away from here.
No matter how important it was to finger the guys she’d heard, seeking answers and justice for two dead people couldn’t come before keeping her safe. Not if the bad guys they were up against were this sick.
I wanted her here. And not just because of what she saw, or what Mom said. He’d been so insanely selfish. The way he suspected Alex had been killed was the work of a cold, calculating man, but this business with the barrel . . .
Even if someone had merely intended to destroy a corpse, it took a certain breed of monster to curl another human being’s body into a trash can or an oil drum and burn it like garbage. And if that monster had been one of the two men Kim had overheard?
He shuddered to think it. Shivered, even as his blood boiled.
Selfish, he repeated to himself. She’d put her normal life on hold to be what he’d needed her to be in all this drama, even knowing it might be dangerous. And he’d let her. He’d gotten so wrapped up in chasing the question marks . . . and yeah, in the sex. He’d prized Kim’s safety enough to move her to the Churches’, but having seen and smelled evidence of exactly what sorts of people were at the heart of this . . . Jesus, the moon wasn’t far enough, when it came to making sure she was out of these bastards’ reach.
When Welch and Casey eventually joined Vince outside, he met each of their gazes in turn, shunting the more complex feelings aside.
“What next?” Casey asked.
“Next,” Vince said, “I get Kim the fuck out of town.”
The other men nodded, and Vince knew it was the right thing. Rip the bandage
off.
Vince went on. “Then we haul the sheriff into this, whether he likes it or not. We rub his nose in this shit until he takes it seriously, and if he won’t, we go over his head.”
Casey made a shifty face but dipped his chin once, tightly, in agreement.
“I’d suggest we do both,” Welch said. “No offense to your charming local law enforcement, but having made your sheriff’s acquaintance, I’d put more faith in the feds . . . I’ll make the call myself.”
Vince mulled it over. While the feds wouldn’t have been so impressed to have an ex-con making demands of them, the legal face of a big-ass corporation was quite another animal. “Could be smart.”
“I could call tomorrow. Before or after we go to the sheriff?”
“Tremblay mentored Alex . . . Loved him. We give him one last chance to take the reins for himself. Tell him if he doesn’t call the feds in, you’re happy to do it for him.”
“Agreed.”
“This shit doesn’t fly in my town,” Vince said, staring at the shaft’s half-boarded entrance. “I’m gonna find whatever motherfuckers did this, and I’m gonna make them wish they’d never set foot in Fortuity.”
Chapter 24
Kim woke with a deep suck of breath, shocked to discover she’d nodded off. Vince’s knocking had roused her, and he’d let himself into her room, that tall form never quite so reassuring as it was right now. Back in one piece, lit warmly by the bedside lamp.
“Hey,” he said softly as he shrugged out of his jacket and holster.
“Hi.” She sat up, pulling the covers to her throat against the night chill. The clock read four thirty-one. “You survived, I see. Find anything interesting?”
His gaze moved to the shapes of her knees beneath the blanket, and he exhaled in a tired little puff. Her heart thumped hard, and she was instantly wide awake.
“You did find something, then? What?” She braced herself, every nerve prickling. “Bones?”
He shook his head. “No bones. But creepy shit.” He stooped to unlace his boots.
She hugged her knees. “Tell me.”
“We looked around inside one of the old mine entrances. Found a little scrap of charred fabric—handkerchief, maybe. And nasty black soot on the ceiling and along one wall. The fire had to have been reasonably recent—you could still smell it. And it smelled . . . It smelled fucking terrible. Like burned meat.”
Her eyes widened, blood going ice-cold. “What? Like someone burned a body in there, or . . . ?”
He nodded—the faintest, stiffest tilt of his chin. “No proof, of course, but on top of everything else, it’s our best guess.”
“Oh my God.”
“I can’t even imagine what Alex must have seen. I’d been picturing like, white bones. Like a prop from a movie or something. Something old. Something impersonal. Not burned black, or smelling like . . .”
She shivered, trying and failing not to picture what he was suggesting. “Come here,” she said, and sat up against the headboard, spreading her legs in a wide V beneath the sheets. She patted the space between them, and Vince reclined against her, his back to her chest and his head on her shoulder. He was heavy, but it felt good to have something solid and warm to pin her in place. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed a palm over his heart, seeking its rhythm through the cotton of his tee. He smelled like the earth and the cool of the desert night. And yes, just a tiny hint of smoke.
They sat that way for long minutes without speaking. Then, after a deep sigh, Vince said, “We need to get you out of here.”
She blinked. “Get me out? From where, the ranch?”
“No. You need to get away from Fortuity, at least for the time being. Far away.”
She stared up at the old rafters that ribbed the ceiling, her new world seeming to slip apart like a tugged bow. The rug jerked out from under her, when she’d just now taken her shoes off and started to make herself at home, come to love the feel of the pile between her toes.
It went far beyond her role in this scary situation, she could admit that. She’d come alive in this landscape, and at night, alone with this man. She’d shed her upbringing since arriving here, turning her back on all the instincts her father had drilled into her. He labeled those values caution, reason, preparation. But in the three years since she’d distanced herself, Kim had come to know them by their real name—fear. Her father’s fearful world was cold and sterile and lonely. Out here it was hot, dirty, throbbing with life. It was everything she’d ached for, trapped in the catacomb of her old reality, suffocating in her dad’s grief.
“I won’t go,” she said firmly. “Not until I’ve had a chance to do my part.”
His words rumbled through her as he spoke them, their bodies pressed so close together. “This isn’t a discussion. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”
She craned her neck to seek his gaze. “I’m in this, Vince, same as you. Your mom saw it, and we both know it. I can’t just go now.” Even as she said it, her fingers went to his neck, cupping it as though needing a handhold, or needing to hold him in place, control him. Fat chance. His pulse thumped against her wrist, so much steadier than her own rushing heartbeat. “I need to identify those men I overheard. That’s, like, crazy important.”
“Not as important as your safety, sweetheart.”
“Jesus,” she huffed. “Don’t sweetheart me now.”
“Kim,” he corrected stiffly, and sat up, taking his heat and reassurance away as he moved to kneel beside her. “We’ve got other evidence now—enough to make the sheriff take this seriously, and if he doesn’t, Welch is calling in the feds. You can ID this guy remotely, if he is one of the men—we can send you photos. Keep you safe. You’re the ears and the eyes, my mother said. You heard what was needed, and saw the faces of the men who know what really happened to Alex. You’ve proved yourself in every way my mom said you would. You’ve done plenty.”
“Maybe . . . But you also told me when you explained your mom’s visions, you couldn’t make me stay. And you can’t make me go, either.” And go where? Home? She had no home now—no house to return to, just a bitter ex, storing her things. An estranged father. A history, but no future she cared to chase. She couldn’t say yet if her future lay in Fortuity, but she coveted the present and the presence she’d found here. The immediacy and impulse and momentum of Vince’s world. And yes, the man himself.
“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “Something bad’s going on, and it’s finally starting to take shape—a shape that scares the ever-loving shit out of me. It’s gotten too real.”
I thought you and I were becoming something real. “I’m a part of this,” she said lamely.
“I know. But you’re a person, too, with a life. And I want to protect you. And that means sending you home until some of the smoke lifts.”
“When?”
“ASAP. First flight out of here this morning. We sleep a couple hours; then I’m borrowing Miah’s truck and driving you back to Elko. It’s the most important thing to be done right now.”
Numb, she stared at the far wall.
“What?” he asked, reaching out to smooth her hair.
“That’s just so soon. I’m not ready to go.”
“Like I said, you can still ID those guys, from the safety of Portland.”
“It’s not only that . . . I want to be here.”
“Fortuity will still be standing in a few weeks or months if you decide you can’t stay away.”
“It’s not just this town. I like . . . I like you. And being with you, how we’ve been.” She held her breath, shocked she’d even said that to him and momentarily scared of what he’d feel about it. But she needn’t have worried.
“I’ll still be here, too,” he said with a smile.
“You’d better be. Because I’ll come back, and I know where to find you.”
“Hope you’re not getting attached to me,” he said gently, and traced her jaw with his fingertip. “Nobody’s ev
er made that mistake before.”
Her cheeks warmed, and relief stilled her nerves. “Guess I’m the first, then.”
He drew her down to lie with him, facing, the covers a twisted mess between them. His lips moved to hers, just a soft sweep of skin. “I’m not the first for you, though. Bet you’ve had plenty of guys get attached to you.”
“Only a couple.”
“Like that one you let go, to stay here.”
“I didn’t let him go so I could stay here. I let him go because he was . . . I don’t know. But he proposed to me, and I just knew I couldn’t say yes.”
Vince blinked at her. “He proposed to you?”
“Yeah. A few days before I flew down for the job.”
“On bended knee? With a diamond ring?”
“Yup.”
“But you told him no?”
“I told him . . . I told him I wasn’t sure. And he made me take the ring and think about it.”
“When’d you decide it wasn’t for you? That night, after we met?”
She pursed her lips. “No. The same afternoon, just before.”
Oh, that disappointed frown.
“You wanted to hear it was because of you, didn’t you?” she teased. God, what a prick. And she’d miss that about him, so damn much.
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“I can’t say that. It’s not true . . . But after I met you . . .” She trailed off, all at once bashful, on the cusp of articulating the truth.
He stroked her hair, scrunched it in his big hand. “What?”
She took a breath and told him. “I was attracted to you. Even though you were, like, completely not my type. And he called me, that night, wanting to make up. That was the call I took in the bar. And maybe, just maybe, if I hadn’t been staring at you the whole time I was talking to him . . . I don’t know if it would have happened the same way.”
His grin returned, deeper than ever. Deep as the ache in her heart, nearly.
The smile lingered in his voice as he spoke against her neck. “Good. That’s what I want to hear.”