Finally, Cade exhaled and set the clipboard down with a soft clack.
“No obvious cause of death on bone,” she said. “No fractures, no blade marks, no bullet grooves. But she wasn’t out there long enough for the elements to do this on their own.”
She tapped one of the tags with a gloved finger.
“Minimal weathering. No scavenger scoring. You don’t get remains this clean sitting under open sky on Miller’s Ridge.”
Tessa’s brows drew in. “Stored?”
Cade nodded once. “Stored. Cool, dry environment. Temperature-controlled—or at least stable. Somewhere the bugs couldn’t touch her, and the animals couldn’t drag her off.”
She paused, eyes sharpening.
“He kept her,” Cade said. “For a while.”
A fresh layer of cold slid over Tessa’s skin.
“Then he brought her up there and staged her like a display. Badge beside her. Like an exclamation point on the end of a sentence.”
Tessa didn’t look away. “This wasn’t disposal,” she said quietly.
Cade’s gaze flicked up, finding hers.
“No,” Cade agreed. “It was communication.”
Scout’s voice came out rough, clipped. “It’s the first week of deer season.”
Both women turned toward him.
He swallowed hard, eyes still on the table. “Stevens told half the bar the night before he went that he was heading up there at first light. Catch My Draft was packed. Everybody heard him.”
Tessa’s gaze sharpened—not on Scout, but on the implication.
If Stevens said it out loud… someone else heard it too.
Cade’s mouth went tight. “Miller’s Ridge in deer season,” she said. “That’s a stage. Not a dump site.”
Her voice didn’t soften.
“You’ve seen what happens when a story shows up looking finished,” she said. “Neat. Tidy. Like it wrapped itself up.”
She looked straight at Tessa.
“When someone decides the ending for you.”
Tessa went very still.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I have.”
Tessa’s voice dropped. “You didn’t just find Lauren,” she said.
Cade’s eyes held steady on hers.
“He let you.”
Silence hit like a weight.
Burke finally spoke, voice low and raw. “Sara was working this case.”
