by Rita Herron
The Burning Girls
A completely gripping crime thriller packed with heart-pounding twists
Rita Herron
Books by Rita Herron
Detective Ellie Reeves
1. The Silent Dolls
2. Wildflower Graves
3. The Burning Girls
Available in audio
The Silent Dolls (available in the UK and the US)
Wildflower Graves (available in the UK and the US)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
Chapter 160
Chapter 161
Hear More from Rita
Books by Rita Herron
Wildflower Graves
The Silent Dolls
A Letter from Rita
Acknowledgments
To my mother, who taught me to appreciate all things Southern. May she rest in peace.
Prologue
Thirty years ago—Teardrop Falls, North Georgia
Her father would kill her if they found out what had happened.
Isabella had to run away. Save herself. Save them from the shame.
Fear and nausea clawed at her as she threw some clothes in her backpack. She snatched the cash she kept in the shoebox and stuffed it inside the bag, then grabbed her toothbrush and hairbrush and… oh, God, what else did she need?
Panic caused her heart to pound. Summer break had just started. She’d been so excited about starting college last year and returning in the fall. She was the first in her family to do so. But now…
She couldn’t go back. And she couldn’t stay at home. Where could she go? How would she get by?
A noise outside. She looked through the window and spotted headlights down at the holler.
The picture of her mother and her in their matching Christmas pajamas taunted her, and tears stung her eyes. She’d yelled at her mom that she was too old for such silly nonsense. “You’ll always be my little girl,” her mother had said.
The love in her mother’s voice had gotten to her, and she’d caved, putting on the reindeer hat and pjs, even though she’d been frowning in the picture.
Her mother would be devastated when she left…
She’d be even more devastated if she learned the truth.
Eyes clouding over, she jammed the picture in her backpack, then grabbed her pink jacket and tugged it on. Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she eased open the window and crawled through it. Grabbing hold of the nearest tree branch, she climbed down, just as she had so many times in high school when she’d snuck out to see her friends.
She would miss them, too.
But she had to go.
Tree bark scraped her palms, but she bit back a cry, maneuvered down and dropped to the ground. Nausea twisted her stomach, but she swallowed it. Poised like a cat, she turned and peered through the darkness. Trees rustled in the wind.
Brush parted as something—or someone—pushed through it.
Terror seized her, and she glanced at the street and her yard. Deciding it was safer to cut through the woods, that maybe she could make it to the bus stop in town, she darted around the side of
the house and sprinted into the thicket of pines and cypresses backing the property.
Not far from Moody Hollow, where vacationers hiked up to the waterfalls, she might even be able to hitch a ride.
Her feet skidded over pine straw and she stumbled over a tree stump, but she raced through the brush, grateful she’d run track last year. Just as she veered onto the trail that would take her to the falls, she heard the sound of footsteps crunching, closing in on her. Suddenly someone jumped from behind a boulder and grabbed her.
She kicked and screamed and tried to bite, but something jammed in her neck, and then she felt her body go numb. Unable to move or fight, she hung limp and terrified as the man dragged her deeper into the forest.
1
Winding Rock
The bones of the body were charred so badly they looked like ashes.
Detective Ellie Reeves had never seen anything like it. Her own family’s house had burned down a few weeks ago, blazing away her childhood room and all her memories. Her parents were starting to sift through the ashes now and rebuild their lives.
But this… this person had died a miserable, painful death.
And the stones… a circle of them stood around the body like a monument. So different from the rocks that had skidded down the hill into the ravine and lay in a natural pile.
These stones resembled giant arrowheads and had been driven into the ground with their tips pointing toward the sky. Her pulse jumped. She was sure she had seen something like this before, but she couldn’t quite place where.
She turned to scan the area, looking for clues to tell the story. Something to identify the body.
There was no ID in sight. No wallet, purse, jacket or backpack. The clothing was scorched, light-gray fibers had caught on a patch of briars.
Pulling her bandana over her nose to stifle the stench, Ellie leaned closer, noting a chain hanging loosely around the brittle ankle bones. Scattered by the water’s edge, she spotted tiny pearls from a necklace. A lone black shoe dangled from a thorn bush, the kind of shoe a woman might wear to an office or to dinner, not to hike in the rocky terrain of the Appalachian Mountains.
“It’s a woman,” Ellie mumbled, half to herself, half to Cord McClain, a ranger who worked Search and Rescue in Bluff County. As a teen, she’d had a crush on the brooding tough guy. Years ago, after a harrowing rescue mission, they’d slept together. Afterwards, he’d been distant and she’d been trying to prove herself as a cop, so romance was not in the picture. Although occasionally she glimpsed a spark of interest in his eyes, and felt it, too.
Recently they’d been thrown together investigating murders on the trail, and she’d hurt him by questioning his involvement in the crimes. One day she hoped to repair the damage. She had no idea if that could ever happen, though.
A squawking bird drew her attention back to the case, and questions rattled through her head. What exactly had happened here? Was the woman out here alone? Had she been meeting someone for a romantic rendezvous?
Ranger Cord McClain wiped sweat from his forehead. The heat was oppressive, magnified ten times by the brush fire that had rippled through the woods earlier in the day.
The third in the last few days. Trouble was they didn’t know if the fires were accidental or if they’d been intentionally set. So far, they had no clear evidence and, with the recent drought, a campfire or a match accidentally dropped could have set the dry brush ablaze.
A frown tugged at Cord’s chiseled face as he shined his flashlight across the blackened ground. “She could have been hiking but got caught out here and didn’t see the fire until it was on her. But what do you make of those stones? It looks like someone arranged them that way.”
“Which means this was no accident,” replied Ellie. “According to folklore, standing stones represent social circles where people gathered to mourn the dead.”
“How do you know all that?” Cord asked.
“My dad used to fill me with stories when we went camping,” Ellie said. “After that, I checked out books on the area and read about the folklore.”
Cord’s voice was gruff. “Bodies are burned during cremation to symbolize that we are nothing, that we’ll be turned to ashes after death.”
Ellie shivered, his comment reminding her of Cord’s troubled past. As a foster kid, he’d grown up above a funeral home. Worse, his foster father had defiled the bodies he was supposed to take care of. That dark time still haunted his eyes and had made him a suspect in the last case she’d worked, where the killer had buried the bodies in a ritualistic pattern. He was cleared, but their relationship was far from repaired.
She pulled at her T-shirt, desperate for relief from the heat and the suffocating air.
Instead, a breeze stirred the sickening scent of burned flesh and bone, and her stomach roiled.
Reining in her repulsion, she scanned the area again. It was odd for females to hike alone, but it happened. God knows she’d gone off into the wilds of the mountains by herself when she’d needed space and time alone to think.
“Looks like she was by herself,” she said. “But why? The news and park service have issued warnings for people to stay away until we get a handle on these brush fires.” With the steep cliffs, wild animals, and endless miles of forest, hiking alone was dangerous at any time. But especially now. The fires were robbing the precious land of its beautiful greenery, killing forest animals and destroying the natural order on the Appalachian Trail.
As the fires raged, the local prayer group known as the Porch Sitters met daily, sending pleas up to the heavens for much-needed rain and the safety of the firefighters and park rangers who protected the land. They also prayed for the adventure seekers who tackled the treacherous 2,200-mile trail that started in Georgia and stretched all the way to Maine.
But until today, the fires hadn’t taken a life.
Voices echoed, and she glanced up to see the medical examiner, Dr. Laney Whitefeather, pushing through the mass of pines and oaks, the crime scene investigators close behind.
“God,” Laney said as soon as she spotted the burned body.
The CSI team paused, expressions pained as they absorbed the gruesome image.
Laney recovered first. “Who found her?” she asked.
“Firefighters,” Cord responded. “They were trying to extinguish the blaze and called it in.” He gestured toward a tall, broad-shouldered man in a firefighter’s uniform combing the area.
“That the arson investigator?”
Cord nodded. “A newbie to Bluff County Fire Department. Name’s Max Weatherby. He’s looking for signs it was a campfire that got out of hand, and for the point of origin.”
Ellie nodded. The blaze had cut a path through the woods about six feet wide, destroying the dense weeds and eating at the trees, the dry land prime for spreading it. She studied the spot where the woman’s body lay for indications that the fire began there, but with nothing but ashes and charred debris, the expert would have to make a call on that. But if the fire had been set intentionally, the point of origin could be some distance away. In that case, there would have been smoke, heat and flames shooting into the sky, so why hadn’t the woman seen it and gotten out of there? Because she’d been killed first? The stones pointed to that theory.
Ellie rubbed her chin. “Who reported the fire?”
Cord shrugged. “Another ranger.”
“I guess you can’t tell cause of death or time yet?” Ellie said to the ME.
Laney rolled her eyes. “You know I can’t. I’ll have to request an expert forensic anthropologist on this one. Bones aren’t my specialty. With the body being burned so severely, we’ll have to rely on PMCT for identification and to determine what caused death.”
“PMCT?” Cord asked.
“Postmortem computed tomography,” Ellie explained.
“Exactly,” Laney confirmed. “It’s complicated, but analyzes toxicology, looks for traumatic fractures, surgical dissection of foreign bodies and state of carbon
ization.”
