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"Right." Ethan glanced away.
Rachel's eyes narrowed as she took in the scene once more, her thoughts racing. There was a story here, written in blood and silence. She could almost hear the whisper of the wind through the creek bed, taunting her with secrets it refused to reveal.
"Let's get this taped off," she said, breaking the stillness. "And call it in. See if the coroner can double time. Bodies have been here a while." She frowned, glancing at her watch.
"More jurisdictional disputes?"
"Almost guaranteed," she said quietly."
Ethan nodded, already reaching for his radio. The light cast long shadows over the crime scene, the day's heat beginning to fray at the edges.
Rachel squatted beside the nearest body, her fingers hovering above the ragged tear in the woman's blouse. The fabric was darkened, stiff with dried blood. "Look at the wound edges, Ethan." Her voice was low but authoritative. She pointed without touching. "Entry is too clean for a scattershot."
"Means what?" Ethan asked, his stance rigid, eyes not leaving the ghastly site.
"High-velocity round," Rachel murmured, her gaze fixed on the macabre pattern. "No close-range stippling. Shooter was far."
"Sniper?" Ethan ventured, skepticism lacing his tone.
"Possible." Rachel straightened up, her eyes scanning the horizon as if she could conjure the assailant from the sparse landscape. "I'd guess .308 caliber. It's common for long-distance."
"Speculation?"
"Education," she corrected him softly, her mind flitting to lessons learned under stark reservation skies. From the hard lines taught by her estranged aunt, to the precision demanded by the FBI mentor who honed her instincts. "And experience."
She turned from the bodies, her keen eyes catching a disturbance in the dust. Small pebbles scattered, dirt displaced. She followed the subtle trail with the precision of a hawk soaring over prey. Drag marks.
"Over here." She beckoned Ethan with a tilt of her head, her boots crunching softly on the arid earth.
"Dragging..." Ethan observed, catching up. "From where?"
"Or to," Rachel countered. She crouched again, fingertips grazing the ground just shy of the disturbed earth. "Two sets. Two bodies. Strong enough—or desperate enough—to move them after the kill."
"Trying to hide their tracks?" Ethan's question hung between them, unanswered.
"Maybe," Rachel said, her voice almost lost to the creek bed's silence. "Or it was interrupted. Couldn't finish whatever plan they had."
"Which means?" Ethan pressed.
"Which means," Rachel said, rising to her full height, her silhouette sharp against the fading sun, "someone didn't plan this. At least, not here."
"Think so?"
"Let's follow the trail," she decided, her voice betraying no hint of the adrenaline beginning to course through her veins. "Carefully."
"Right behind you."
The scrubland was quiet, save for the crunch of boots on parched earth. Rachel let the coarse blades of dead grass slip through her fingers where they were bent and broken. "This way," she murmured, eyes tracing the subtle chaos amidst nature's order.
Rachel's gaze was steel; each disturbance a breadcrumb. She rose, following the trail with predatory precision.
They moved in tandem, her shadow lengthening as it mingled with the sunlight casting an orange hue over the scene, but Rachel's focus pierced through the shadowed clarity. She took note of snapped twigs, scuffed dirt—a narrative written in the detritus.
"Here." The word sliced the dusk as she halted at the edge of the road. Underbrush lay disturbed, branches pushed aside in haste. A story of flight, or pursuit.
Ethan followed, his breath a subtle echo of her own.
And then, through the trees, a glint of metal. Ghostly quiet. A truck, abandoned, its color dulled by dust and neglect. She approached, senses sharpening, reading the silence like a prelude to a scream.
