The Waves Break Gray
by Sibella Giorello
Published by Running Girl Productions
Contact the author at [email protected]
Copyright © 2016 Running Girl Productions. All rights reserved.
Kindle Edition
Printed in the United States of America or the country of purchase.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, 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 permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and incidents in this novel are either products of the imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, either living or dead, to events, businesses, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is dedicated to my husband, Joe, for bringing so much love and laughter into my life. And for always finding time to dream out loud.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Acknowledgments
About the Author
And freedom, oh freedom, well, that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone
~ “Desperado”
CHAPTER ONE
All my life I’ve run from love.
“Harmon!”
Fifteen yards ahead, FBI Special Agent Jack Stephanson sprinted down the mountain trail. I could catch him. Easy.
“Better kick into gear!” he yelled.
I could pass him. Win this race.
But at this very moment, liquid gold sunshine poured over the silver-granite mountains that surrounded us like a metal bowl. It was bittersweet October light, the kind that balanced summer’s fading ease and winter’s coming darkness—always whispering the warning.
Savor this moment.
“Loser!” Jack glanced over his shoulder.
I picked up speed as he leaped for the boulders that formed a disjointed path above the trail. The large rocks led to a cave. Crouching like a cat, I vaulted over the rocks, right hand raised, so ready to tag that cave.
“And the winner—” Jack lunged, “—is—”
The cave was inches from my hand. But a stench hit me.
Jack slapped the cave’s mouth. “—me!”
One split second behind him, I brushed my hand against the stone wall. It felt cold. Damp.
“Thought you—” Jack doubled over, hands on his knees, panting. “Wanted to race.”
“I did.” My nose wrinkled. I glanced into the cave’s gaping black mouth. The odor was rank. Mildewy, and stomach-churning. “So catch your breath.”
He looked up. Jack’s eyes were blue-green, a color that could shift like sharkskin. The colors always made my heart trip.
“What?” he asked.
“We’re only halfway.” I smiled. “So catch your breath. You still have to run back.”
“Wait, what—” Sweat dripped from his angular face. “You’re saying the race is round-trip?”
“And the winner buys lunch. That was the deal.” I opened my arms, taking in this dusty mountain trail, the towering North Cascade peaks, the Icicle River flowing fast below us. “Do you see a burger joint around here?” I pretended to search the area. “Nope. Not here. That means we have to run back into town.”
“Harmon.”
“Yes?”
He lifted the edge of his white T-shirt, wiping the sweat from his square chin. He had a good face.
No.
A great face.
The kind of face that said way back in his DNA some warring Viking bred with a high-born Anglican, and ever since, that domineering masculinity had kept marrying intellectual ability.
I could’ve stared at that face all day. Or stared at the holstered Glock under his T-shirt. Instead my gaze was pulled to his flat stomach. Twelve-pack of abs with a V-pattern of brown hair peeking above the waistband of his shorts. The hair grew in a twinning pattern, like the crystal named orthoclase. Like feathers. Like—my mind grasped for any example of when two symmetrical sides are joined at the middle—elm leaves?—pleading with my mind to convince me those washboard abs were nothing special.
“Harmon.”
It didn’t work.
“What?” I looked up.
“You don’t play fair.”
“Gee, I wonder who taught me that trick?”
He laughed.
Weightless laughter. Free as sunlight. It moved around us as effortlessly as the water paddling down the river below. A musical sound with nothing cynical attached. Real laughter. The sound that said nothing bad could touch it. And it sounded so good that I started to laugh with him. But as soon as my throat opened, I felt myself pulling back. My feet hadn’t moved one inch from this stinking cave yet my mind was already leaving, separating me from Jack, from his laughter, from the sunlight that brushed his russet hair. From … life.
“Okay, that’s it.” I pivoted. “Let’s go.”
Jumping down the rocks, I landed on the flat trail and was about to take off when he grabbed me. In one controlled move, he spun me around and hooked his elbow around my neck. The rear naked choke hold—I knew this move—Quantico taught it to us.
Quantico also taught us how to break the hold.
I grabbed his bicep. The hard muscles rippled under my fingertips.
He whispered, hot in my ear. “Surrender.”
“Never.”
“Never’s long time.”<
br />
“Exactly.” I shifted my hips, bent at the waist. One more pivot and … I looked up.
My oxygen should be gone by now.
“That cave stinks,” he said.
“It’s a cave.” I shrugged. “Caves stink.”
“And yet you still want to check it out?” His eyes were the color of the mineral azurite.
“Of course.” I shifted my gaze. The expression in those eyes. I found myself staring at his throat. Whiskers. Same color as that hair on his stomach…. Stop or you’ll—
“Harmon.”
“What.”
“I want to ask you something.” His voice was close, and hoarse. Raw. “You need to answer honestly.”
“Okay.”
“Really honest.”
“Jack, I’m always—”
The dog barked.
The sound fractured the autumn air. I spun out of the choke hold and looked down the trail. It was empty. Stone. Gravel. Falling aspen leaves. No dog. I glanced at the river. White water flowed out of the mountains, breaking gray on the rocks. No dog.
She barked again.
“Madame?” I lifted my hand, blocking the morning sun, and scanned the steep hillside. Granite. Pine trees. Blue sky. “Madame, where are you?”
She barked again. Urgent. Only this time the bark sounded like an echo. Distant, retreating. Hurry.
Panic bolted through my heart. “Where is she?”
Jack sighed. “I told you that dog would be trouble.”
I moved toward the sound of her bark. It seemed to be coming from above. But how did she get up there? She was running behind me. I’d taken off her leash as soon as we came off the main road. She hates leashes. And she never runs off unless …
“Something’s wrong.”
“I’ll say.” Jack pointed wearily toward the rock face. “It sounds like she’s up there.”
I grabbed the bristly limbs of the pine trees and pulled myself up over the dry loose soil. Sap clung to my fingers and the soil slipped under my shoes. About fifteen yards above the cave, I found a narrow trail.
“Madame!”
She barked. I was closer. But she sounded even more insistent.
I ran up the trail, heading into the morning sun. My shoes kicked up dust, the drought-stricken grains skittering down the mountainside and falling on the trail below, plunking into the river.
“Madame—where are you?”
I wanted to sprint, but the trail was too narrow and too steep. My right hand stayed on the rock face as I balanced my way down the path that was no more than eighteen inches wide. The mountainside plunged on my left.
“Madame!”
She barked. Twice.
I sped up. A hundred feet later, the mountain split apart and I came to a meadow. A breeze swayed wheat grass and pale wild flowers, revealing the small black dog that sat waiting.
She barked and stood up.
“Alright,” I ran to her. “Alright. I’m here.”
But she didn’t run to me. She stayed fixed to her position, to the grass, to whatever she’d trapped there.
I moved slowly, carefully. Here on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains, the high desert climate was perfect for rattlesnakes and poisonous spiders. “Madame, don’t move.”
She didn’t move.
But when I reached her, it was no rattlesnake. No spider.
It was human—or part of one—sticking up out of the ground. The fingers had turned deep purple, that sickening jewel-toned hue I’d seen only one other place. The morgue.
Behind me, I heard Jack say, “What did I tell you?”
I turned. He was coming up the trail, head down, panting slightly from the climb.
“I told you that dog would be a problem,” he continued. “But, no, you had to bring her.”
I watched the sun light up his great face, all his annoyance mixed with his amusement. And right then, right there, I knew it. Things would never be the same again.
I stepped back.
“What’d she find, a snake?” he asked.
“I wish.”
His gaze drifted down to the ground, then locked on the hand. The wrist was torqued, like someone had been waving from the ground.
When Jack looked back at me, his green eyes were changing to blue.
Police blue.
CHAPTER TWO
Seventeen minutes later, standing with Jack in the high mountainside meadow, I watched as two vehicles raced down the road.
One car was a blue state trooper cruiser. The other was a white wagon. Both turned into the gravel parking area for the Icicle Creek Trail.
“That’s right,” Jack was saying into his cell phone, standing beside me. “And I need a list of all missing persons for this area.” There was a pause. He glanced over his shoulder, staring at the hand. What was left of it. “Can’t tell. But it’s small enough that I want to say female.”
Madame quivered in my arms. Her black fur felt warm from the sun beating down on us. I watched the parking lot below. An officer got out of each vehicle. One wore a blue uniform—the trooper. The officer driving the white wagon wore brown. A local deputy, I figured. He started running. The trooper in blue followed, but struggled down the trail.
I lifted Madame and whispered in her ear. “Good girl.”
“Gotta go.” Jack disconnected the call and moved down this higher trail to meet the new arrivals.
As he walked away, I reached into my fanny pack and took out my cell phone. Turning toward the site I never wanted to see again, I snapped several dozen photos. Panoramics that showed the setting. Close-ups that identified the hand. And the soil. Dry soil. Uncompacted. A pale beige color, it was soil that geologists call loess. German for “loose.” Soil that gets carried by wind or water or gravity, and deposited somewhere other than where it originated. With the granite peaks above us, the crests stabbing the clear autumn sky like knives, my best guess was that winter ice and snow had deposited this loess.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” Jack was saying.
I glanced over my shoulder. He was leading both officers up the trail. Quickly, I selected the photos and sent them to Peter Rosser, a forensic geologist. I put the phone back in my fanny pack.
“We took a run on the lower trail,” Jack said, pointing.
The officers squinted in that direction. They were surprisingly young, maybe mid-twenties. Beefy, like farm boys who had played high school football. I was zipping my pack as Jack introduced them. Deputy Seiler, the officer in brown. And the state trooper, Officer Wilcove. Both had blond buzz cuts and pale eyes. If it wasn’t for the uniforms, I’d have trouble telling them apart.
“And this is Raleigh Harmon,” Jack said. “She’s …”
I could almost hear his mind searching for what to call me. Raleigh Harmon, former FBI agent? Raleigh Harmon, persona non grata with the federal government?
“Raleigh Harmon.” I held out my hand. “Forensic geologist.”
Deputy Seiler had narrow gray eyes. He squinted them at me. “Forensic—”
“Whoa!” Officer Wilcove pointed. “That’s a—that’s a—”
“Dispatch didn’t tell you?” Jack studied him. “I said there was a body.”
Seiler’s gray eyes filled with horror. But he had more self-control. Swallowing hard, he looked away and said, “Dispatch told us some hikers with a dog found a body.”
He glanced once more at the purple hand with the torqued wrist, then he looked at me. He squinted again. “Your dog needs to be on a leash. That’s the law.”
All three men stared at Madame. She replied with an uncertain wag, then looked up at me. The fur between her shoulders spiked. I ran my hand over it. “The dog didn’t touch the body.”
“Good,” Seiler said. “You got a leash for her?”
I pulled her leash from my pack. Seiler lifted his radio and confirmed that a body had been found, that the dog had been loose, and that somebody needed to contact Evidence Recovery. I glanced at Wilcove.
As the state trooper, he should be taking the lead here. State patrol ran the top evidence recovery team. But all Wilcove was doing was licking his thin lips, like a man on the verge of vomiting. I didn’t blame him. In my ten years with the Bureau, I saw plenty of sickening things, both in the lab as a forensic geologist and in the field as an agent. But this hand—waving for help or clawing for life or pleading for mercy—ranked near the top.
Seiler holstered his radio. “They’re coming.”
Wilcove licked his lips, wiped sweat from his forehead. “You think it’s her?”
Seiler’s gaze flicked at him, a warning to be quiet.
“Her, who?” Jack asked.
“Nobod—” Seiler started to say.
“Annicka Engels.” Wilcove cut him off. “She’s been missing since last week.”
“What happened?” Jack glanced at Seiler.
Seiler said nothing.
“Troubled teen?” Jack asked.
Seiler stayed quite.
“Oh, Annicka wasn’t in trouble.” Wilcove said. He was an eruption of nerves. “She wasn’t in any kind of trouble. She was perfect.”
“Perfect,” Jack said.
“Well, I mean …” Wilcove’s sweating face reddened even more. “She got a full athletic scholarship to U-dub.”
U-dub. UW. Otherwise known as the University of Washington. A Pac-10 school. If she had a full athletic scholarship, she was a serious athlete. I glanced back at the hand. My eyes burned.
“Any suspects?” Jack asked.
“Her boyfriend,” Wilcove said. “Everyone around here suspects the boyfriend.”
Seiler lifted a hand, halting the discussion. “Do you two have some ID?”
“Good call, deputy.” Jack reached under his shirt, exposing the hip-holstered Glock, and removed the small leather case clipped next to the gun. When he held out his credentials, sunlight stuck the FBI’s gold seal. The stars glinted.
“Thanks.” Seiler looked at me, waiting.
“I didn’t bring my cards.” I lifted Madame. “Just thought we were running in the mountains.”
“And it would’ve been if you’d obeyed the law,” Seiler said. “You expect me to believe you didn’t see that big sign at the entrance, the one that says all dogs have to be on leashes?”
The Waves Break Gray (The Raleigh Harmon mysteries Book 6) Page 1