Propping a boot on top of a fallen tree trunk, he stared down at the shallow, jagged hole in the ground, his mood deteriorating.
The rain had released more odors into the air. The fresh smell of newly turned earth was still there, seasoned with the sharp scent of evergreen and the fresh odor of rain-washed air. Still, he couldn’t shake the sensation that he could smell death. Even if he knew bones didn’t smell.
A frisson of revulsion slid through him, followed immediately by remorse. He propped an elbow on his knee and glared at the hole, as if he could bully it into giving up its secrets.
Are you down there, Marcie?
So now he was talking to dead people? He reined in his runaway imagination sharply. If the remains unearthed here were those of his missing witness, Marcie James, at least her family and friends would have closure.
And he would know for sure that his negligence had gotten her killed. As always, he marveled at his unrealistic hope that somehow Marcie had survived the attack that had nearly killed him. Still, he recognized it for what it was—a last-ditch effort by his brain to protect him from the truth.
She was dead and it was his fault.
He heard the voices arguing with his, like they always did. His captain, assuring him that the Rangers’ internal investigation had exonerated him of any negligence. The surgeon who’d worked for seven hours to repair the damage to his lung from the attacker’s bullet, declaring that he ought to be a dead man.
But louder than all of them was the one low, sexy voice that agreed with him. The voice of Nina Jacobson.
My best friend is gone. She could be dead, and it’s all your fault. You were supposed to protect her.
He rubbed his chin and tried to banish her words from his brain. He needed to put the self-recrimination and regret behind him. Whether or not Marcie James’s death was his fault wasn’t the issue now.
Identifying whoever was buried in this shallow hole was. For a few moments, he got caught up in examining the scene. This was the first time he’d seen it. The kids had erected the canopy, so the area underneath was dark.
But Wyatt could imagine what had happened. The road crew that was breaking ground for the controversial new state route that cut across this corner of Jonah Becker’s land had brought in its bulldozer. It had dug into this rise and unearthed the bones.
The discovery of the bodies—combined with the fact that the ME couldn’t make a definitive identification of the age, sex or time of death of any of the victims—had reopened a lot of old wounds in Comanche Creek.
Marcie James’s kidnapping and disappearance two years before had been the latest of several such incidents in the small community in recent years.
About three years prior to Marcie’s disappearance, an antiques broker who had been accused of stealing Native American artifacts from Jonah Becker’s land had disappeared, along with several important pieces. Everyone thought Mason Lattimer had skipped town with enough stolen treasure to set him up for life. But none of the pieces had ever surfaced.
Then, less than a year after Lattimer’s disappearance, a Native American activist leader named Ray Phillips had vanished into thin air after a confrontation with Comanche Creek’s city council and an argument with Jonah Becker.
One odd character vanishing was a curiosity. A second disappearance was noteworthy. But a third in five years?
That the third person was an innocent young woman scheduled to testify in a land-deal fraud case connected to a prominent local landowner cemented the connection between each of the bodies and that landowner—Jonah Becker.
It had taken less than twenty-four hours to rekindle the fires of suspicion, attacks and counterattacks in the small community of Comanche Creek. The warring factions that had settled into an uneasy truce—the Comanche community, the wealthy Caucasian element and activist groups on both sides—were suddenly back at each other’s throats.
Wyatt straightened and took a deep breath as he surveyed his surroundings. The moisture in the air rendered it heavy and unsatisfying. He unwrapped a peppermint and popped it into his mouth. The sharp cooling sensation slid down his throat, and its tingle refreshed the air he sucked into his lungs.
Jonah Becker and his son Trace had both protested the state’s acquisition of this corner of their property for a newly funded road, although the state of Texas had paid them. From what Wyatt could see of the area, the fact that they wanted to keep it despite the generous compensation was suspicious on its face.
To him, the land was barren and depressing. Anemic gray limestone outcroppings loomed overhead. The worn path that served as a road was covered with more limestone, crushed by cow and horse hooves into fine gravel, which sounded like glass crunching underfoot. Scrub mesquite and weeds were just beginning to put on new growth for spring.
Wyatt knew that in daylight he’d see the new blooms of native wildflowers, but a splash of blue and yellow here and there couldn’t begin to compete with all that gray.
He pushed air out between his teeth, thinking longingly of his renovated loft near downtown Austin. The houseplants his sister had brought him for his balcony were much more to his liking than this scrub brush.
Just as he started to crouch down to take a look at the area Nina Jacobson had been photographing, he heard something. He froze, listening. Was it rain dripping off the trees? Or a night creature scurrying by?
Then the crunch of limestone from behind and to the left of him reached his ears.
In one swift motion he drew his Sig Sauer and whirled.
Chapter Two
“Whoa, cowboy,” a low amused voice said.
Wyatt carefully relaxed his trigger finger.
Nina Jacobson. Son of a…
He blew out breath in a long hiss and holstered his gun. “I told you to get out of here.”
“No. You told me to—and I quote—‘get them out of here.’” She lifted her chin and stared at him defiantly. “I did that. For now.”
He set his jaw. “Great. So we’ve established that you can follow directions. Good to know. Follow this one. You get out of here. Now.”
She shrugged. “No can do. No transportation.”
His gaze snapped to the empty road where the SUVs had been parked. Then back to her. First her face, then her left shoulder, which was weighed down by a heavy metal case, and on down to her right hand, where it rested on the telescoping handle of a small black weekend bag.
Oh, hell. He raised his gaze to meet hers.
Her eyes widened, and like before, he was grimly pleased that he could so easily intimidate her. He knew the effect of his glare. He’d seen it in the faces of suspects, subordinates and, occasionally, friends.
“Then you better start walking,” he muttered, turning and propping his boot up on the fallen tree trunk again.
“Not a chance, cowboy. I’m staying with my site. I need to get some more pictures.” Her hand moved from the bag’s handle to the camera around her neck.
“It’s not your site. It’s my crime scene.”
She didn’t answer. Wyatt felt a cautious triumph. Maybe he’d won. Of course, he knew he was going to have to take her back to town, so she scored props for that. But there was no way she was going to turn his crime scene into a field trip for a bunch of students.
No way. He set his jaw and got ready to tell her to get into his Jeep.
“The ME said he thought there were two bodies.” She spoke softly, but her tone got his attention.
Reluctantly, he slid his gaze her way. “He thought? Does that mean you don’t?”
She stepped over the crime-scene tape and dropped to her haunches at the edge of the hole. He started to stop her, but she’d piqued his curiosity, so he followed her and crouched beside her, sitting back on his heels.
She slid her narrow, powerful flashlight beam over the clods of dirt and debris left by the road crew. After a couple of seconds he picked up on the pattern she was tracing.
Across, up, down and back. Then she move
d the beam back to where she’d started and traced the pattern again.
“What? What are you showing me?” he asked.
“Look closer.”
“If I look any closer, I’ll fall in.”
She laughed, a sexy chuckle that impacted him like a bullet straight to his groin. Surprised at his reaction, he shifted uncomfortably and swallowed hard to keep from groaning aloud.
“See this?” She shone the beam on her starting point and slid the light back and forth, over what looked like a ridge in the dirt. “That’s a human thigh bone.”
Adrenaline shot through him again. “That?” He pulled his own flashlight out of his pocket. “How can you tell?”
“I’m a forensic anthropologist. Bones are my business.”
“What else can you tell about it? Is it male? Female? Child? Adult?”
She shook her head as she fished a brush out of her pocket. She telescoped the handle of the brush and leaned over to run the bristles across the surface of the bone. The dirt covering the bone was a mixture of dust and mud, so brushing at it didn’t accomplish much.
“It’s not a child. But making all those determinations is never quite as easy as the TV shows make it seem. Now look at this.” She swept the beam of light across and up, then back across.
“Another thigh bone?”
“Go to the head of the class, cowboy.” The beam moved again.
“And a third,” he said, tamping down on his excitement—and his dread. One of those bones could be Marcie’s. “Three thigh bones? Everybody has two, so was the ME right? There are two bodies in here?”
“Not so fast. These closest two may be similar in size, but the three femurs are all different,” she said, with the same lilt in her voice that he was trying to keep out of his.
“Three? You’re saying they’re from three different people?” He looked at her, dread mixing with excitement under his breastbone. Three sets of bones. Three people gone missing in the past five years. Was it going to be that easy? “That’s three different thigh bones, laid out like that?”
She met his gaze, her dark eyes snapping. “Yeah. Exactly. Look at that placement. They’re crisscrossed in a star pattern. I suppose it could be chance that they ended up like that.” He shook his head, but she wasn’t looking at him. She had turned back to the bones and was brushing at them again. She gasped.
“What is it?”
“I think this largest bone has a piece of pelvis attached. That could definitively tell us if it’s a male or female.” She leaned a fraction of an inch farther forward and brushed at the far end of the bone. “Damn it,” she muttered.
“What now?”
“The ground’s too wet. I’m going to have to wait to unearth the bones.”
“I guess you can’t just pick them up.”
She laughed shortly. “No. There might be something attached to them—clothes, another bone, a piece of jewelry. No. I have to be very careful to avoid destroying evidence.”
“But you’re absolutely sure the three bones are different.”
She sat back on her haunches and tilted her head to meet his gaze. “Absolutely.”
“Are you thinking…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He needed to know if one of those bones belonged to Marcie James.
Dear Lord, he hoped not.
Nina’s face closed down immediately, and he saw a shudder ripple along her small frame. She needed to know, too. He understood that. But she had a very different reason.
She shook her head. “I can’t say yet.” Her voice had taken on a hard edge—the outward manifestation of an obvious inner struggle between her love for her friend and her professional detachment.
She hissed in frustration as she collapsed the brush handle, wiped the bristles against her jeans-clad thigh and then put the brush in her forensics kit.
“I need to build a platform so I can get to the bones without disturbing the site any more than it already has been.” She informed him. “I can’t rule out the possibility that this is a Native American burial site.”
“Burial site? Are the bones that old?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ll need to clean them and test them to be sure. But the layout of the land around here is consistent with the places the Comanche chose for their sacred burial grounds. I didn’t see the site before excavation started, but the level of rise and the general shape suggest the possibility.”
Wyatt grunted. He’d thought the same thing as soon as he’d gotten his first glimpse of the scene. The thought had gone out of his head once he’d seen the kids milling around.
“As soon as I can study the bones, I can give you the sex and race. However, to estimate the time of death requires more testing and equipment. Fresh bones will glow when exposed to ultraviolet light. The fluorescence fades from the outside in over time. Still, my opinion right now is that these bones are recent. As soon as I get them cleaned up, I can look at them under my portable UV lamp. Then I’ll take samples for DNA analysis.”
Wyatt’s chest felt tight. There were only a few reasons that DNA would do her any good. “For a positive ID,” he said quietly.
Nina nodded solemnly. “For a positive ID.”
Both of them knew whose DNA they were thinking of.
He stared down at the three ridges. “So, Professor, I guess you need your students and their spotlights to help you get the platform built and extract the bones.”
“That’s right, cowboy.” Her eyes glittered with triumph as she stood and pulled a cell phone out of her pocket.
He stood, too. “Tomorrow.”
“Tonight. You just agreed that I need them.” She flipped the phone open.
“Tomorrow.” He folded his hand over hers, closing the phone. A funny sensation tingled through his fingers. For a second he thought the phone had vibrated.
She looked at their hands, then up at him. “Give me one good reason why not tonight. I told you I need some more pictures, and I do not want anybody disturbing the bones.”
“Because I’ll be overseeing every stick, every bone, every clod of dirt that’s removed, and I need some sleep.”
“Speaking of clods,” she muttered, pulling her hand away from his. “It’s dangerous to delay. This rain could turn into a deluge and bury the bones again. Any disturbance of the site increases the chances for contamination.”
A pair of headlights appeared, coming around the curve beyond a thick stand of evergreens.
Wyatt checked his watch. “That’s Deputy Tolbert. I didn’t realize it was midnight already. That settles it. He’s here to guard the site tonight. He’ll make sure it’s not disturbed. You and I are heading into town.”
“I’ll stay with the deputy.”
“No, you won’t.”
“But the weather—”
“No more rain in the forecast.”
“I need to—”
“I said no.” He didn’t raise his voice, but there went her eyes again, going as wide as saucers.
He gave a small shrug. “You’ll get more done in the daylight.”
He could practically see the steam rising from her ears, but she pressed her lips together and nodded once, briefly. He knew she’d been informed that as the senior Texas Ranger on the task force, he was in charge, even of the civilian members.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Can I at least call my team and let them know what I’ve found and what I’m going to need in the morning?”
“Be my guest,” he said, putting his hand to the small of her back, his gentle but firm pressure urging her away from the crime scene.
They stepped over the yellow tape as Deputy Tolbert’s white pickup rolled to a stop and he jumped out.
“Deputy.” Wyatt held out his hand.
Tolbert ignored Wyatt’s hand and eyed Nina appreciatively.
Wyatt watched him with mild distaste. He’d sized up Shane Tolbert the first time he’d met him, over two years ago. The designer jeans and expensive boots, plus what Wyatt
’s sister called product in his hair, had pegged him as a player back then, and from what Wyatt could see, nothing had changed.
“Nina Jacobson. Gorgeous as ever. I didn’t know you were going to be here.” Tolbert touched the brim of his hat, then glanced sidelong at Wyatt. “Lieutenant Colter.” His voice slid mockingly over Wyatt’s rank.
Wyatt stopped his fists from clenching. Tolbert grated on his nerves, but Reed Hardin had hired him, and the sheriff seemed to be a good judge of character.
Tolbert and Marcie James had dated, although they’d broken up by the time Marcie was tapped to testify. It didn’t stretch Wyatt’s imagination to figure out that Tolbert was one of the people who blamed Wyatt for Marcie James’s death.
“So, Nina,” Tolbert continued, “what did you find? Doc Hallowell thought there might be two bodies in there.”
Wyatt shifted so that he was a half step between Nina and Tolbert. “She’ll be back in the morning with her team to start examining the evidence.” He felt rather than heard Nina take a breath, so he spoke quickly. “We’re heading to town. I’ll be back here by nine in the morning, if not before. You know the drill. Don’t let anyone close except Dr. Jacobson and her team. Call me if anything happens.”
Tolbert’s eyes narrowed. “I do know the drill, Lieutenant. Happy to oblige.”
Wyatt directed Nina toward his Jeep. He’d talk to Sheriff Hardin first thing in the morning about the burr under Tolbert’s saddle. If Shane Tolbert was going to be a problem, Wyatt needed to know.
“I DON’T LIKE leaving the burial site unguarded all night,” Nina said.
Texas Ranger Lieutenant Wyatt Colter took a sharp right onto the main road into Comanche Creek. “The crime scene is guarded. Or did you miss your buddy Deputy Tolbert? He was the one in the black cowboy hat.”
“I don’t trust him.”
Wyatt’s head turned slightly, and she felt his piercing eyes studying her. It took a lot of willpower to meet his gaze. Finally he turned his attention back to the road. “Any particular reason?”
“Other than how mean he was to Marcie when they were dating?”
Classified Cowboy Page 2
