Maggie sighed, trying not to allow a wave of hopelessness to slip in. “Those are a lot of questions,” she finally agreed.
Maybe he shouldn’t have laid it out like that, Jonah thought. But now that he had, he asked Maggie, “Got any answers?”
She shook her head. “I don’t even have one.”
He had another, possibly easier question for her to answer.
“When you were up that tree, did you happen to see anything from that vantage point?” he asked. There was a possibility that perhaps Maggie saw something that she didn’t even realize she was seeing.
“The only thing I saw were rising waters,” she answered.
Until Jonah had come riding up like a real live hero, she had started to seriously worry that maybe she wasn’t going to make it back for her sister’s wedding. The thought of the water rising so high that it would eventually engulf her had become an increasingly serious concern for her.
“But you didn’t see anything else?” he asked.
“To be honest,” she admitted, “nothing else was on my mind except getting back to town for my sister’s wedding. When I saw you riding up on Cody like some white knight out of a story about King Arthur and his Round Table, my heart stopped. I could have sworn you had a gleaming white light shining all around you like some huge halo.”
He grinned at her narrative. “That would be my saving-a-damsel-in-distress aura,” Jonah told her—and then laughed. “I’m just really glad I was able to find you.”
“That makes two of us,” she told him in all honesty. The next moment, she realized that they had ridden up to the tree in question.
Cody was trained to remain where he was once Jonah dropped his reins and they touched the ground. Swinging off the horse now, he turned toward Maggie. “I’ll help you down,” he offered.
If she had any confidence in her abilities to sit astride a horse, she might have told him that she was perfectly capable of getting down herself. But she hadn’t built up that sort of confidence. Luckily, her common sense wasn’t in short supply.
Meeting his offer to help with a simple, “Thank you,” she gratefully allowed him to put his hands on her waist in order to help her dismount. She was itching to begin the search.
Chapter 9
Taking hold of her waist, Jonah eased Maggie off her horse. She slid down, her body not even a whisper away from his.
By the time her feet touched the ground, all sorts of alarms had begun going off in every inch of her throbbing body.
And by the expression on Jonah’s ruggedly handsome face, she could tell that she wasn’t the only one whose body temperature had risen from a normal 98.6 degrees to a temperature that was just too high to be measured by a regular thermometer.
Maggie was even more unclear about what happened next. For the life of her, she wasn’t sure exactly who made the first move.
Maybe it was simultaneous, born and executed in the heat of the moment.
She didn’t know—she didn’t care. All she was aware of was the intense yearning that washed over her. She was aware of that and of the overwhelming kiss that all but exploded between them.
He kissed her.
She kissed him.
They kissed each other.
Exactly who instigated that first kiss was utterly moot—except for the all-consuming effect that occurred in the wake of lips meeting lips.
Maggie gave in to the feeling instantly, as if she had been waiting all of her life for this one moment, this one occurrence.
Maybe, looking back, she had been. James had never kissed her like this.
Rising up on her toes, Maggie immediately lost herself in this kiss. She was aware of everything going on within the small, tight sphere that only the two of them occupied. The rest of the world wasn’t there. All that mattered was that he was.
Jonah hadn’t meant for this to happen, although he would have called himself a liar if he hadn’t admitted to thinking about this.
Longing for this.
Ever since he had arrived back in Whisperwood and saw Maggie from across the room, talking to his brother Donovan and her sister, desire had slowly taken root within him. Once rooted, it continued to flower and spread with a vengeance despite his efforts to keep it all under control.
But the moment her body had made contact with his, it was as if a blazing lightning bolt had flashed through him, disarming him even as it temporarily disengaged his common sense.
Jonah cupped the back of her head as his lips came down on hers, claiming her. Branding her.
Branding him.
He felt far more alive than he had in years.
His heart was pounding so fast, sending adrenaline racing throughout his entire body, as if there was a need to alert every single fiber of his being that there was something magnificent going on.
Something to celebrate.
Jonah slanted his mouth over Maggie’s again and again, the kiss growing deeper and more consuming each time until they were both utterly submerged in it.
Maggie could feel him wanting her. They were out here, all alone in the world except for the horses. There was no one to see them.
The conditions were far from ideal, but right now, she didn’t care.
She—
Moving backward to get a better footing, Maggie felt her heel hitting something and she stumbled. Startled, she gasped, her lips breaking away from Jonah’s.
His arms quickly closed around her. If they hadn’t, she would have fallen backward and wound up on the ground.
“Maggie?” Surprise underscored her name, and Jonah looked at her, confused.
With the moment abruptly stolen from them, Maggie looked down to see what she had stumbled on. She thought she saw something white-ish poking up out of the ground. Her brow furrowed as she tried to look closer.
What was that?
She was certain that the last time she had been at this location, that white thing had not been here, or at least not sticking out. The floods and winds had played havoc with the dirt and leaves that had been clustered at the foot of the tree, gathering at that spot since forever. The hurricane was responsible for clearing it all away and exposing whatever that was underneath.
At a loss as to what was going on, Jonah continued holding on to her. He searched her face. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I will be once—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence and maybe that was just as well because she had almost said something about her racing heart. Instead, she looked down again, staring at what she’d thought was a white stick.
That was when she realized that it wasn’t a stick at all.
A scream rose in her throat, but she managed to stifle it. However, her eyes, flying open so wide they made him think of proverbial saucers, gave her away.
Grabbing his arm, she pointed to what was protruding out of the earth. In a hushed whisper, she asked, “What is that, Jonah?”
For the first time, he looked down at the ground. What she was pointing out didn’t make any sense to him. Jonah dropped to his knees beside the newly uncovered article to get a closer, better look at it.
Gathering her courage, Maggie knelt down beside him.
“Omigod, is that—” She had to swallow in order to produce enough saliva to allow her to say the word and not have it stick inside her mouth. “Is that a bone?”
Taking his handkerchief out, Jonah cleared away the remaining dirt that was clinging to it. “It’s a bone all right.”
“Is it human?” she whispered.
“It certainly could be.” Before he could say anything further, he saw that Maggie had started digging in the dirt that was just beneath where they had found the bone. He caught her hand, momentarily stilling it. “Maggie, maybe you should wait for the police chief.”
But she shook her head, r
ejecting that idea. “This might not be what we think it is and then we’ve gotten him out here for nothing. He’s got enough to deal with with the flood and everything else. We need to be sure this is an actual human body before we drag him out here.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “But only dig just enough so that we can be sure it is a human body. The second we are, we’ll stop digging.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
“Stop talking and start digging,” she insisted, sinking her hands into the muck and moving as much as she could each time.
* * *
It didn’t take long for them to find the rest of it. The rest of the body. The bone that Maggie had accidentally stumbled across had somehow been separated from the rest of the skeleton. That was the result of either some scavenging animal searching for food, or maybe even the hurricane itself.
When they had cleared away the dirt and debris, Maggie stared in horror at what had been uncovered. It was the fully mummified skeletal remains of what appeared to be a woman, due to the larger, rounded pelvis region.
And then it suddenly dawned on her. “This is it,” Maggie cried, looking up at Jonah. “This is what Adam Corgan wanted me to find.”
It didn’t make any sense to him. “How is finding this woman supposed to set Elliott Corgan free?” Jonah questioned. He looked back at the skeleton. “And who is she?”
Maggie struggled not to think of the skeleton as the remains of what had once been a living, breathing human being, but just as the embodiment of a puzzle. She looked down at the mummified body. There were no clues, no indication who she had once been. Nothing to identify the woman.
“I have no idea who that is,” she confessed.
“Well, maybe the chief might be able to tell us,” Jonah speculated. “Thompson’s been part of this town it seems like forever. According to my parents, he was definitely on the police force when all this went down.” Getting up, he offered his hand to Maggie and helped her to her feet. “He must have heard about a missing girl, one who hadn’t been accounted for when those other bodies—seven in all—started turning up in shallow graves.”
She still seemed a little uncertain about bringing this to the chief’s attention. “He told us not to get involved,” she reminded Jonah.
“Well, we obviously are,” he said, gesturing toward the preserved remains. “And he’s got more important things on his mind than to take us to task for not listening to his advice.” Jonah looked back at the body. “For one thing, he’s now got an unidentified mummified body to deal with.”
“So are we going to ride back into town to tell him?” she asked Jonah.
He didn’t think that was a good idea. “I don’t think we should leave the body. You never know, another animal might make off with part of it. Besides, we don’t even know if the chief is in town. He might be anywhere.” Jonah took out his cell phone from his back pocket and held it up. “I’ve got a signal! The lines have finally been restored,” he told her. He looked at his phone to double-check. There were bars. “We’ll call Thompson and tell him what we’ve found.”
Maggie looked down at the mummified body again. “He’s going to be thrilled,” she murmured.
“Thrilled or not,” Jonah said, “the chief needs to be told.”
The cell phone on the other end of the number that Jonah had keyed in rang a total of nine times. On the tenth ring, he knew his call was about to go to voice mail. Just then a gruff voice picked up and answered, warning him, “This had better be an emergency and it had better be good.”
Jonah looked down at the mummified remains wrapped in plastic. “Well, it definitely qualifies as an emergency. As for the other part, it all depends on your definition of ‘good.’”
“Is that you, Jonah?” Chief Thompson questioned, although he was fairly certain that it was.
In his haste to get the chief down here, Jonah realized that he hadn’t identified himself. The lines might be up, but obviously caller ID wasn’t functioning yet.
“Yes, it is,” Jonah said.
A trace of annoyance came through. “Jonah, what the hell are you going on about?”
“Well, Chief, I’m out here with Maggie Reeves,” Jonah began.
“Where’s ‘here’?” the chief asked.
“Live Oak Ranch,” Jonah said quickly. He didn’t wait for the chief to say anything further but dived straight into the heart of the reason he was calling. “And we’re looking at what appears to be the mummified remains of possibly a young woman. There’s nothing near the body to tell us who she is.”
There was a long pause on the other end and Jonah thought he might have lost the connection. But then the chief’s booming voice came on, calling him on the carpet. “I thought I told you two to stay clear of all this.”
“You did say that, Chief,” Jonah agreed, steering the conversation in another direction. “And we really weren’t looking for them. Maggie and I just happened to find the remains totally by accident,” Jonah said, his eyes slanting toward Maggie. He wanted to protect her from the chief’s anger.
“Uh-huh.” Anyone could tell that the chief didn’t believe him, Jonah thought. “Just where are you on the ranch?”
“We’re right on the site of the ranch’s biggest oak tree, the one the Corgans claimed is the oldest tree in the whole state. Are you familiar with it?” Jonah asked Thompson.
“I’m familiar with it,” the chief replied. His voice was strangely devoid of all emotion and sounded as if he was half-dead inside.
“Well, we found the body right near the tree,” Jonah told him. “I guess the hurricane must have blown away all the dirt that killer used to bury the body in his attempt to hide it from anyone’s view,” he added, trying to get some sort of a response from the chief.
Thompson sighed. “All right, since you found this body, I want you to stay right there with it,” the chief instructed. “I’m coming out with my forensic team to see if the killer left any evidence.”
“I don’t think they’re going to have much luck, not after the hurricane went barreling through here,” Jonah told him.
“We’ll see,” the chief said, his tone still unreadable.
Sensing that the chief was about to hang up, Jonah had one last thing to ask him. “Hey, Chief, do you have any idea who this last girl might have been?”
“Yeah,” Thompson answered grimly. “I do have an idea.”
When the chief didn’t say anything beyond that, Jonah pressed the man, “Well? Who was it?”
Jonah thought he heard the chief make some sort of noise, but he wasn’t certain. “I’ll talk to you when I get there,” Thompson said almost curtly just before he terminated the call.
“What did he say?” Maggie asked the second Jonah put his phone away. “The chief’s got a booming voice, but I couldn’t make out everything. He’s coming, right?”
“Yes, he’s coming,” Jonah told her. “And he’s bringing his forensic team with him.”
Maggie nodded, pleased. “Well, that’s good.” She thought of the last thing that she’d heard Jonah say to the chief. “Did he say he knew who this was, or that he at least suspected who it might be?”
Jonah shook his head. “No, he cut me off when I asked.”
Maggie frowned. “That’s not like Chief Thompson,” Maggie noted. “If anything, he’s usually very outgoing and friendly.”
Jonah shrugged. “Well, I guess this hurricane has been hard on everyone,” he told her. “It’s been making people behave in ways that they didn’t think they ever would.”
She looked at him. Was Jonah talking about the chief, or was he possibly referring to himself? Specifically, was he referring to what had happened between them seconds before she’d accidentally uncovered that mummified skeleton?
Maggie felt her cheeks growing warm. If she hadn’t taken that step back and tripped on it, who knew what might
have happened?
She had felt him responding to her. It wasn’t all in her head. He’d wanted her as much as she had wanted him. Both of them had been lost in the heat of the moment and they could have easily taken it to the next level and gone further.
The idea of making love right on top of a hidden skeleton was appalling to her now that she knew the body had been there, but at the time, they hadn’t known anything except the hunger that was so obviously consuming both of them.
She shivered, thinking how grateful she was that fate had intervened when it did. What if they had gone along with their erupting passions, if they had made love right then and there? Once they discovered that they had come together right on top of the wrapped-up remains of a murder victim—because it was obvious that was what she must be—what might have been the beginning of something beautiful would have been forever tainted. They would never be able to look at one another without remembering that they had made love on top of a murdered woman’s hidden grave.
Jonah watched Maggie’s expression change. She was obviously thinking about the dead woman again. And judging by her face, Maggie’s thoughts were unsettling.
“Are you okay?” he asked her gently, still watching her for any indication that she wasn’t telling him everything.
“You mean other than feeling sick to my stomach because we just found the remains of a mummified murder victim?” Maggie asked.
“You’re right.” He understood what Maggie was implying. “That was a stupid question I just asked. As soon as the chief gets here with his team, I’ll take you home.”
“The hell you will,” she said with such effusive spirit that it surprised him. “I’m not going anywhere. I want to find out who she is.”
Jonah sighed. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The Maggie Reeves he had come to know these last few days wasn’t about to retreat and go home if her questions weren’t answered.
Chapter 10
They didn’t have that long to wait, which was good, because every extra moment she had to occupy in the same vicinity as the wrapped-up, mummified skeleton was beyond unsettling for Maggie. Her heart leaped when she heard the sound of the chief’s all-terrain vehicle coming closer and approaching the area where they were.
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