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But no.
No glittering gems or stacks of bills.
Instead . . .
What the hell?
What the bloody hell?
The flashlight’s beam landed on a skull.
A human skull.
With empty black sockets where eyes had once been, the jaw open, teeth visible in an eerie grin of death, the fleshless face seemed to stare straight into the bottom of Bronco’s soul.
He let out a scream before he saw the second skull, next to the first, smaller and just as long dead. The clothes on the bodies were tatters, blouses, one with a bra, shorts and sneakers. Bits of jewelry winking in the flashlight’s glare.
Oh, fuck!
Kids!
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Frantically, he scrambled backward, as if expecting the skeletons to stand and start chasing him. He stood quickly, his head cracking painfully against a rough beam.
His knees buckled, but only for an instant.
Then he ran. Knocking over boxes and bins, banging his knee against a forgotten chest of drawers, Bronco Cravens ran as he’d never run before.
CHAPTER 2
“You buyin’ this?” Detective Sylvie Morrisette asked from the passenger seat of Reed’s Jeep. His partner for years, she was a small, compact woman made up of west Texas grit and muscle. Her platinum-colored hair was spiked, a tattoo of a snake’s tail visible at her neckline and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone in the department, or anywhere else for that matter, thought about her. And right now she was irritated. Disbelieving, scratching her chin as she thought, her eyes laser-focused through the bug-spattered windshield.
“Buying what?” Reed asked, taking yet another detour out of Savannah. The hurricane had torn through the city, destroying buildings, smashing cars and uprooting hundred-year-old trees. Power poles had been mangled and leveled, parts of the town flooded, and every city worker was working overtime to get the town’s basic services restored. Traffic was being diverted by road crews from the city and power company. Many streets had been cordoned off where trees and electrical wires had been downed. Some roofs had been blown off, exposing the interiors of damaged homes. Cars had been overturned or stalled in the flood waters, sign posts twisted in the violent winds, most traffic lights dead. Traffic, what litt
le there was of it, was stalled and crawled through detoured streets as the main arterial roads were being cleared.
“Buying what?” she repeated. “Sheesh, Reed. You know what I mean. That some dick found a body in the basement of the old Beaumont mansion,” she said, her weathered face screwing up in thought. “I mean, what the hell? Who was out there?”
“Don’t know. Yet.”
“And they were just out there after a category five? Right on the river? Makes no sense.” She cracked her window, allowed some air to rush in. “Whoever it was, he was up to no good. Or jerking our damned chains!”
He wasn’t about to argue that. Sylvie Morrisette was in a mood, as in a bad mood. Detective Pierce Reed had been her partner for enough years to recognize the signs. Today she was fidgety and sharp-tongued, well, sharper than usual, and she was popping Tums as if they were going out of style. Morrisette had grown up in west Texas, her drawl still evident, was prickly by nature and had been married four times—bang, bang, bang, bang in her twenties, though she quit tying the knot after her fourth husband and father of her children had turned out to be “a real prize, if you’re into bullshit awards.” Now, her lips pursed, her eyes squinting through the windshield, she was definitely antsy.
“Jesus, Reed, could you drive any slower?” She shook out the last two tablets from the plastic bottle and tossed it onto the floor.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine. Just a little heartburn.”
“A little?”
“Yeah! That’s what I said. And why the hell are you drivin’ like an old lady?”
Traffic was stacked in front of him. He sent her a questioning glance. Where the hell did she expect him to go?
“You could hit the lights and siren, y’know.” She twisted her neck until it cracked, then fiddled with the air conditioning, then played with the automatic windows, something she did when she was nervous. “Shit, I could use a smoke right about now. I know, I know.” She held up a palm. She’d given up cigarettes years before. “And if I dared come home with even a whiff of tobacco on me, Priscilla would have a shit-fit.” She rolled her eyes. “My daughter has taken the position that she’s the rule keeper at the house at seventeen. As if!” She let out a long-suffering sigh. “But it gets worse.”
