AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Could be," Rachel echoed, but her mind was already sifting through other possibilities, darker currents that ran beneath the surface.
Ethan took pictures of the discovered contraband. He poked at a bag with the eraser end of a pencil and whistled under his breath. "Looks like some pretty pure stuff."
She turned from the bags, attention drawn to the splatters of blood painting the earth a morbid hue. Methodically, she began to trace the pattern. The droplets told a story—one of violence.
"A single shooter, most likely, but he moved between shots," she said after a moment, more to herself than to Ethan. "The spread's all wrong for a single point of fire."
Rachel's eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun, her gaze tracking an invisible line across the barren landscape. She moved slowly, deliberately, each step a silent question posed to the earth beneath her boots.
"Look at this," she called out, fingers hovering above a flattened shrub, its branches broken in a telling way. "Bullet passed right through here."
"Which way?" Ethan's voice, a low timbre against the hush of the desert.
"Up there." Rachel pointed towards a cliff ridge, a jagged silhouette against the sky. The perfect vantage point for a sniper.
"Damn good eye," Ethan muttered, pulling his hat brim lower against the sun's relentless assault.
Her thoughts laser-focused on the scene unfolding before her inner eye. A shooter lying prone, the rifle's cold kiss against their shoulder, finger caressing the trigger.
Ethan circled back to the abandoned truck, hands and eyes sweeping over every inch. Hidden compartments. Smuggler's tricks. Something caught his attention—the faintest outline of a panel near the wheel well where they'd found the drugs.
"Got something," he grunted, prying it open.
Fake documents spilled out onto the dusty ground, their edges curling. He picked up a passport, thumb flicking open the cover.
"What's the name there?"
"Maria Ramos," Ethan read aloud, tucking the passport into a clear evidence bag. "Think Kendra is a fake or Maria?"
"Check it out, I guess."
He nodded, pulling out his phone. Ethan muttered, almost to himself, as if the name were a stone he turned over in his mind. The screen cast pale light on his features, the stark blue making him look like a specter. "Connected. Maria is her real name. There are ties to the Santora cartel."
"What ties?"
Ethan glanced up from his phone, his eyes filled with a mixture of concern and surprise. "Family ties," he replied, his voice laced with a somber tone. "Maria Ramos is the younger sister of Victor Ramos, one of the top lieutenants in the Santora cartel."
Rachel's mind raced with the revelation. The abandoned truck, the hidden drugs, and now the connection to a powerful drug cartel.
Ethan nodded in agreement, his gaze fixated on the distant cliff ridge where the sniper had once lain. "The Santora cartel doesn't mess around. Might be they had some enemies. Came after the drugs."
"What about Anna Longshadow?"
Ethan frowned. "That's the name the sheriff gave?"
"Yeah."
"How did he know her name? I didn't see any documents on her. No pockets, for one."
Rachel shook her head. "Good question. Maybe he recognized her."
She trailed off, and they both drifted into silence.
She paced, her footsteps soft whispers against the dirt, mind racing faster than her stride. Something about the bodies, the way they lay discarded by the creek bed—it nagged at her.
She turned and moved away from the blood spatter, back through the wooded partition, and to the location where the corpses remained. The coroner still hadn't arrived.
Rachel’s gaze lingered on the second body, her eyes tracing the contours of the victim’s exposed skin. Allegedly named Anna Longshadow—barefoot, a dress scarcely clinging to her frame and lingerie visible; it whispered secrets of a harsh life lived at the mercy of others' desires.
