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BETHENNY
Bethenny swept her foot across the dirt. She paused in thought, her head angling, her eyes narrowing.
The rustling of leaves caused her head to snap in the direction of the forest. She squinted, but the thick fog ruined any chance of seeing past the first row of trees. She suppressed a shiver and rubbed her cold arms, returning her gaze to the patch of disturbed ground.
Anyone else might’ve missed it, anyone else might’ve run past it without another look—but Detective Bethenny Monroe had seen enough crime scenes to know that something was, or had recently been, buried beneath this patch of dirt.
She pulled out her phone, her heart sinking a little when she didn’t see any bars in the corner of her phone.
No signal.
She sighed, weighing her choices. She could run back toward town and call Mitch when she was within range, or she could find out if there was actually something buried here before she wasted everyone’s time.
She looked back at the dirt, which looked more like a shallow grave with every second that passed. Her eyes swept over the low-lying vegetation leading up to this spot, but with so much greenery she knew there would be no tracks, no footprints to follow. Her eyes landed on the dirt once more, and she questioned herself.
If someone had gone to the effort of digging a grave here, why not do a better job of concealing it?
Granted, there were other dirt patches around, but not many. For the most part the ground was covered in wet moss and shrubs. The path, no more than ten steps to her right, was almost lost in the overgrowth. Bethenny didn’t think this area of the woods got a lot of foot traffic... which was yet another reason why it was a good place to bury a body: still accessible, but rarely ventured into.
Her toes swept across the ground again, her mind making its own decision.
She looked for a stick, wary of contaminating a possible crime scene. She snapped a branch off, gasping when a splint of wood shot off, almost hitting her in the head.
Undeterred, Bethenny used the stick to scratch the surface of the ground. She looked over her shoulder as a sense of unease tickled her spine. She peered into the fog once more, but saw nothing and heard nothing.
If a body was buried here, Bethenny knew it had been buried very recently. It could’ve even been in the last twenty-four hours. She looked over her shoulder again, forcing herself to take a deep breath. She flicked her wrist, knowing she had three hours until she was to be in church—a commitment she never broke unless absolutely necessary... such as happening upon an impromptu grave.
Bethenny paused when her stick snagged on something. She inhaled a deep breath and lifted the stick a little, sweeping off the top layers.
She saw a curl of blonde first, then a fingernail painted blue.
She pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut.
Her hunch had been right, but this was one occasion she’d have been happy to be wrong.
A squeal came from the forest and her breath hitched in her throat. She stilled, listening. Suddenly the forest seemed to be alive and a sea of bats flew across the sky. Bethenny’s heart skipped a beat when she saw them gliding out of the mist and straight overhead.
She suppressed another shiver. She was a homicide detective and not much rattled her, but something about this crime scene felt off. The woods felt off.
She felt like someone was watching her.
She unlocked her phone, snapped a few pictures of the grave, the surrounding area, and the views so she could find it again, then turned and ran back to the path.
Bethenny kept her phone in her hand, her eyes dancing between the path and the trees. She might’ve questioned why she’d decided to go on a seven-mile run through the foggy, isolated forest, but she knew why—she was trying to escape. Escape from the pain of the car accident and the nightmares that haunted her every time she closed her eyes. She wanted to escape it all, but no matter how far she ran, she couldn’t leave it behind. And it seemed she couldn’t leave death behind either.
She silently swore under her breath as she ran, white puffs of steam the only evidence of her frustration. The path thinned and she stepped into the thick forest, the darkness caressing her like unwelcome hands.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but she continued forward, one foot in front of the other. The path was hard to see, made even harder by the fact that Bethenny seemed to be the only person who had used it recently.
But she hadn’t been, had she? Someone else had been up here.
That thought spurred her legs on, running faster. She focused on her breath and nothing else, ignoring the animal calls as she disturbed their serenity by fleeing through the forest.
She hadn’t noted the time, but when she finally cleared the forest and ran out into the fields that bordered the town, the sun was peering out from the stormy clouds.
She slowed to a walk as her lungs screamed for her to take a break. She looked over her shoulder at the thick woods, a sense of unease still clinging to her.
Female, blonde, murdered recently evidenced by the lack of decomposition.
