AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She couldn’t make it better. Not for any of them.
Tears filled her eyes and she ignored them as they spilled over and ran slowly down her cheeks. She couldn’t help them, either.
“Arriving at destination.”
Oh, Bonnie, do you have any idea where you’ve brought me? And what happened here?
What might have happened there. She had no idea at all if those numbers were coordinates. And if they were, what map they were coordinates for.
But the numbers meant something. Something more than another rape. Wakerby had been adamant about not “doing babies.” Had something happened with Allie? Something important enough that Wakerby had written down map coordinates so he could make it back to this spot?
Was there something of Allie’s here?
Was this just a memory for him? Maybe one of the few good memories in his life?
Or were the numbers significant in some other way entirely?
Getting out of the car, Lucy wiped her eyes, but couldn’t stop the moisture from filling them right back up.
&nbs
p; It wasn’t completely night yet, but it was dark enough that she had her flashlight out and was shining it in an arc in front of her. She turned, and arced again. And again. Standing completely still, she surveyed the area, afraid that if she moved, she might somehow destroy evidence. She realized that the thought was ludicrous. She’d just driven on the land she was standing on.
And twenty-five years of weather, rain and snow included, would have long ago washed away any evidence that might have been present. She took a few steps. And a few more, her eyes dry now as she concentrated.
She knew what to look for. Anything out of the ordinary. Anything that didn’t seem right. Anything disturbed from its natural state.
Darkness was falling rapidly and she was out in the middle of nowhere, presumably on private land, though she’d seen no fences or signs marking it so. Someone had trenched a road out here. Someone had seen that the road made it on a map. Maybe there was a house down at the end of the road. Maybe an address that would have been recorded for postal delivery.
She felt like Sandy and Allie were right there with her, but knew that feeling was more a consequence of the afternoon she’d put herself through than any kind of intuition.
She also knew that the best way to solve a crime was to get inside of it. To be able to figure out what happened, she had to understand what people were thinking. Feeling. She had to know what drove them to do what they did.
Leaves crunched beneath her feet. And something rustled off to her right. She wasn’t all that far from Aurora. It wasn’t as though there were bears in the area.
There were deer. And skunks and porcupines and…
Had someone seen her drive in? A female all alone? Had they followed her?
Hand on her gun, Lucy continued to look around. Maybe she could have waited to make this trek, but waited how long? Wakerby was talking to his lawyer on Monday. She had no faith that the D.A. would deny a deal. And if a deal was made, Wakerby could be out on bail by Monday night.
Another noise, more than just the wind whistling through the branches, stopped her for a second. She could go back. The car was only thirty feet away. But she was with Sandy all day on Sunday. And Monday she started five shifts—two evening rotations to allow her to be at home with Sandy for Thanksgiving dinner—and then it was off to Comfort Cove for Emma’s wedding.
She couldn’t wait another eight or nine days to check these coordinates.
She wasn’t leaving.
She heard more rustling and almost changed her mind. Until her light passed over a turkey hurrying through the brush toward the road. Presumably to get away from her—the human who’d disturbed its Saturday-evening repose.
Walking on, Lucy shined her light first in front of her and then, turning, behind her, studying every inch of the ground she passed from both angles.
She felt as if she had to pee, but knew she was just scared. About twenty minutes into the trek, she was studying a mound of earth and tripped over a tree root. Her hands came out in front of her, the flashlight flying out of her grasp as she broke her fall, but her left hand slid on the leaves and she came down hard with her chin on another part of the root. Or a different root.
She couldn’t be sure. She just knew that her head was spinning, her mouth was bleeding where she bit her tongue and her chin stung. Lying still for a moment, Lucy took stock of herself enough to know that nothing was so severely damaged that she couldn’t move.
Slowly, gingerly, she sat up. To face the mound of earth that was now right in front of her. There was something odd about the mound, which was what had stolen her attention to begin with, causing her to miss seeing the root she’d tripped over. Grabbing her flashlight, and still sitting down, she scooted closer to the mound of earth.
It wasn’t new earth. Wasn’t disturbed earth. But it was different earth. The entire foot and a half round piece of earth not only hilled up slightly, but it was covered in a thick growth of moss. Not roots. Not the dry, long strands of grass that covered the rest of the earth around her, but moss.
