AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Back to hell.
The mental pep talk he was having with himself wasn’t as effective as he needed. The muscles in his chest were so tight that they were vising his lungs. He had to keep it together. He couldn’t give into the sickening dread that was crawling its way through him.
Tessa.
These were her bones.
She was dead.She was really dead.
So, that’s where he put his focus. Spelling out the logic of what he was seeing. That would help him process it. And some things fit for this to be her. The general size of the skeleton, even though it was hard for Rafe to tell exactly how tall this dead person would have been.
Then, there was the location, which was only a mile from her home. That fit, too. And the fact that it appeared the boneshad been here long enough for the sixteen years that Tessa had been missing.
However, the clincher for this being Tessa was that red leather jacket, the only clothing that hadn’t been decomposed in all this time the body had been in the ground. It was custom made with silver wings embroidered on the cuffs. Definitely a unique piece.
For sixteen years, Rafe had believed that Tessa was out there somewhere, living her life. Without him. Yeah, thatwithout himpart had been a kick to the gut at first. However, that feeling had faded over time because he’d believed that Tessa had turned her back on him and was living it up elsewhere.
But she hadn’t been living at all.
Because she was here, in the ground.
Around him, Rafe heard the murmurs of the responders and workers who were no doubt also having to deal with their own shock. The two CSIs, two uniformed deputies from the Canyon Ridge PD, and several members of the work crew who’d unearthed the body about an hour earlier.
Soon, there would be more.
After one of those workers had called 911, things had moved damn fast because Rafe had gotten the call from Tessa’s father, Wade Wainwright, shortly thereafter. Since Rafe lived only twenty minutes away, he’d driven straight over. Wade was on the way from a business meeting in Austin and would be arriving any second now.
This was going to bring Wade to his knees.
And it was going to put a lot of others on edge.
Because Tessa hadn’t gotten into that grave by herself. She’d been put there either by a killer or someone who’d wanted to conceal her death.
There was another person who would no doubt fall in that “on edge” category. Sheriff Bree O’Neil. Apparently, she, too,was on her way back from a meeting in San Antonio, which was less than an hour away. Bree wouldn’t be pleased to see Rafe at her crime scene, so he’d have to deal with that.
“Just an estimate, but I’d say the body’s been here for more than a decade, probably closer to two,” Rafe heard the medical examiner say.
He was Oliver Barlow. Folks called him Ollie, and he was someone Rafe had known most of his life. Then again, he could say that about many people in the small ranching town of Canyon Ridge. Rafe had moved away when he’d left for college, but basically, he knew anyone over the age of twenty.
Ollie was belly down on the ground, peering into the gaping hole at the remains. “I’ll send the body to a forensic anthropologist who can give us a better timeline of when she was put here,” Ollie added.
Herewas a hole in the ground about thirty yards from an abandoned Victorian-style inn. Not exactly a shallow grave either since it appeared the body had been buried about three feet down. And she might have remainedherehad it not been for a work crew clearing the area so the inn and grounds could be restored by a developer from San Antonio.
One of the workers had discovered the remains and called 911. The dispatcher, who was a close friend of Wade’s, had then called him.
Now, the restoration of the inn would be delayed since this was a crime scene. Or rather, a part of one anyway. Rafe had no idea if Tessa had been killed here or if this had been just the site of the body dump. An ideal site to a killer since the inn had been abandoned nearly three decades and was far off the beaten path.
“You’re sure the body’s female?” Rafe asked Ollie.
“Oh, yeah.” Ollie added a firm nod to that. “A wider pelvis and smaller thorax. Dead giveaways for IDing gender.”He stopped, cursed. “Sorry. Somebody should probably get me a thesaurus for Christmas so I can learn words that aren’t insensitive.”
“I’m not sure there are any better words that could make this easier to hear. Or see,” Rafe muttered. He cleared his throat and continued. “Any signs of trauma?”
“Yes,” Ollie confirmed, but there was hesitation in his voice. “Her skull’s been bashed in. Can’t tell though if it’s post mortem or if it was what killed her.” Ollie looked up at him and pointed to his own temple to indicate the specific location.
Since Rafe didn’t have a good view of that particular part of the skeleton, he used the stepping stones the CSIs had already set up and went to the other side. Yes, her skull was caved in in all right.
“Could have some from a hard blow,” Ollie remarked.
