Page 61 of Reaper and Ruin

“You could be X-Ray?” Levi suggested, shaking his booted foot free of the gluggy mud we sloshed through.

X wasn’t impressed. “I think we need to workshop this more.”

We reached the edge of the site, and I grimaced.

It was even worse in the daylight than it had been the night we’d been here. And after a few days of multiple dead bodies baking in the sun, it smelled twice as bad. The flies that buzzed now weren’t the imaginary kind, and I covered my mouth and nose with my arm, taking in the carnage.

Seven bodies. Maybe eight. All women, except for the few we’d tossed in here the other night.

Twisted. Stripped. Broken

Levi swallowed hard. “Jesus. I forgot how bad it was. The darkness hid a lot of this.”

X crouched beside the nearest body, his tone unusually sober. “They didn’t just kill them. Theyenjoyedit.” He glanced back at me. “I know we have some issues, but this…” He shook his head. “This is fucked up.”

But my attention was etched on Levi, my gut churning.

I didn’t want to find Nyah’s body here.

And I didn’t want to find a claw-shaped calling card carved into her skin.

Levi’s gaze ran over the bodies. He moved around them, coughing at the stench, but getting in close anywhere he could, searching for a sign his friend had done this.

But there was nothing. These women were covered in marks from ropes, cuts from knives, holes from bullets, bruises from who knew what.

But nothing that resembled Lynx’s mark.

“They aren’t his kills,” I said quietly to Levi. “And none of them are Nyah.”

Like he’d needed someone to confirm it, even though he could see it with his own two eyes, his shoulders hunched in.

I put a heavy, reassuring hand on his shoulder, letting it rest there, just telling him I was here.

“I feel like a fucking asshole for even thinking it might have been him, you know? He’s supposed to be my friend.” He shook his head. “Fuck, what does that say about me?”

“It says you’ve learned to be smart enough not to just blindly trust people. You did that once before, remember? You trusted your old prez, were loyal to a fault, and did everything he asked of you without question. And look where it got you? Six years behind bars.” I squeezed his shoulder harder. “Don’t beat yourself up because the real world taught you not to be so trusting.”

He nodded slowly. “This place is fucking miserable.”

He wasn’t wrong. “We need to ID those bodies. Find out who they were. Why they were targets. Work out what the fuck they have to do with us.” I pulled out my phone and started taking photos. I almost hated that we couldn’t call the cops, but we had just as many kills buried out here as whoever had dumped these bodies.

These women weren’t going to get a burial.

The least we could do was find out if they had families. Maybe try to get a message to them that would give them some closure. I scrubbed a hand over my face. Fucking hell, this sucked so much.

Levi grimaced and turned away, clearly feeling the same way.

It was one thing to take a life when they were the scum of the earth.

But these women weren’t that. They were probably someone’s wife. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s mother.

“Well, well. Seems like someone else decided to take a walk through hell this morning.” Trigger’s voice cut through the buzz of flies.

Behind him, Ace and Torch stepped into view.

Trigger didn’t smile. There was a gun holstered at his hip, his hand hovering over it. “What the fuck are you doing here? This is our site.”

I stepped forward, giving him the benefit of the doubt. “Same as you, apparently. Cleaning up a mess we didn’t make.”