Page 7

Back in the corridor, a buckled water fountain was barely clinging to the wall beside the doorway to the head matron’s office.

The nameplate on the door was long gone.

My first search of that office had yielded nothing but mouse droppings and one detail that still needled me: wedged between a rusty filing cabinet and the crumbling remains of a potted plant, I'd found a heavy ceramic mug.

Decades of coffee had stained its interior tobacco-brown, but what caught my eye was the perfect pink crescent on its rim, a lipstick print frozen in time.

Something about that splash of vanity in a place built on suffering felt wrong, like finding a party dress in a morgue.

I'd bagged the cup with images of a breakthrough in the case, but Whitney had crushed that hope with a single cutting laugh. "Forty-year-old lipstick? That's your exciting find?"

The lab had run the tests, which didn’t yield any DNA evidence. Another dead end in a maze of them.

I entered the massive dining hall where dozens of kids would have been forced to eat what they were told, when they were told.

My footsteps echoed across warped floorboards, disturbing a flock of pigeons nesting in the rafters.

They erupted from the shadows overhead, and Onyx's bark crashed against the walls like cannon fire.

The birds sliced through shafts of dusty sunlight, and their frantic wings cast bat-like shadows across the floor.

I grabbed the nearest table, hoisting it legs-up onto my shoulders. “Onyx, heel.”

Carrying the table, I trotted back out to the blazing sunshine.

As I crossed the forty yards to the crumbling fountain, questions circled my mind like those damn pigeons.

Why here? Of all the places to hide a body on this land, and even the miles and miles of virgin bushland around this area, why choose this spot?

The person who buried the body here must have known about the other shallow graves we'd found scattered across the grounds.

This burial site wasn't random, nothing here ever was.

Had this been the victim's favorite place, back when the stone angel still looked heavenly with clean wings and uncracked eyes?

The questions kept coming. The answers kept hiding.

I settled the table over the pit, creating a makeshift shelter for the remains. Onyx took up a graveside vigil, stretched out in the dirt with her massive head hovering over the edge of the pit like a guardian, although her gaze kept sweeping to me.

I clicked my fingers. "Almost forgot about you, girl, didn't I?"

The words were barely out of my mouth before her ears perked up at the rustle of the treat bag on my hip. My fierce police dog transformed into an overeager puppy, and her soulful eyes locked on my hand as I fished out a strip of dried chicken that I’d baked for her.

I ruffled the fur between her ears, feeling her warmth against my palm. "You did good today, Onyx."

The treat vanished with the delicacy of a shark attack, nearly taking my fingers with it.

Some battles I chose not to fight, and teaching Onyx table manners with treats had been one of them.

The irony of my K9's only disciplinary failure being food etiquette wasn't lost on me . . . I’d inhaled enough meals at the end of bone-crushing days to understand why she does it.

With the body secured under the table, I pulled my phone from my pocket and thumbed my brother Parker's number, but the call went straight to voicemail. Damn it.

"Hey, bro, got something smoking hot for one of your cases. Call me ASAP." My message was cryptic enough to get a callback.

Onyx snapped to attention with a low growl building in her throat. The crunch of tires on gravel carried across the grounds, piercing through the massive building between us and the parking area.

"Steady, girl. It should be Whitney."

An eternity passed before my triplet brother rounded the overgrown corner of the building, wrapped head-to-toe in white hazmat gear like some apocalyptic ghost. In one hand was his toolbox.

In the other was his duffle bag, which was identical to the ones Mom and Dad had given to all three of us brothers for our twenty-first birthdays.

Whitney was the only one who still used his.

“Over here,” I hollered .

As he changed direction toward me, he swept his gaze to the field of graves at the back perimeter of the property.

“How long has the body been exposed?” He cut straight to coroner mode as he set both bags down well clear of the pit.

“Twenty minutes, if that.”

He sighed as he snapped on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves over his suit’s built-in ones. “You get Parker?”

“Negative. Went straight to voicemail.”

He groaned and flipped his face shield down. “How did you find this body?”

“Onyx picked up the scent. We were over there.” I nodded toward the back of the property where dozens of tiny flags fluttered like paper ghosts, each marking where we'd unearthed another skeleton.

He knelt beside the grave, his suit crinkling as he ducked below the table to peer into the pit.

“She caught the scent and bolted straight here like she was possessed. That nose of hers is worth more than our paychecks combined.”

“Not exactly a high bar,” he muttered.

I couldn’t argue. None of us brothers had joined law enforcement for the money, but times like these reminded me why we'd chosen it anyway. It proved that not all bodies remained buried forever.

Whitney pulled a palm-sized LED flashlight from his toolbox and swept it across the contents of the pit. I caught his sharp intake of breath even through the face shield.

"This isn't like the others."

"Told you."

Whitney worked methodically, like always. First the photos, dozens of them, documenting every angle before anything was disturbed. Then, he stepped down into the pit, placing his boots carefully on either side of the tarp-wrapped body, just as I had done earlier.

The sun beat down like a blowtorch and sweat trickled down my neck. I had no idea how Whitney could even think straight in that full-body suit.

"Get some gloves on.” He nodded at his kit. “And give me a hand."

Pulling the gloves on my sweaty hands was a test in patience and I broke two pairs before I got them on in one piece.

I knelt beside the pit, and following Whitney’s lead, I carefully tugged back the edge of the silver tarp.

The material crackled like old skin beneath our gloves as we pulled it away from the head of the body.

“Detective Jaxson Foster, can you take the photos for me?” he said in a steady voice into his wrist-mounted recorder, keeping his tone all professional.

I photographed his process as he recorded his findings.

"Decomposition suggests two to six weeks in the ground. Female victim. I'd place her in her mid-fifties to early sixties."

I whistled low. "Her age could mean that she was actually an orphan who lived here when the place was still operating."

"Let's stick to the evidence, Detective Foster." Whitney's scowl was visible even behind his face shield.

I rolled my eyes. Overlooking us, Onyx whined softly from her position at the edge of the pit. Her tongue dangled from the side of her mouth, her whole body moving as she panted. She wouldn’t shift into shade, though. Onyx was eternally loyal.

"The body is wrapped in a silver tarp, which is still intact." Whitney carefully pulled back a corner, revealing the woman's neck and shoulders. "The body is a woman, and she is positioned facing upright. She has long blonde hair which was positioned to drape over her shoulders."

As I watched him methodically collect samples with probes and seal each one in a sterile tube, I fought to keep my questions locked behind my teeth.

Whitney peeled back the next section of tarp to reveal the woman’s upper chest. His light caught something, and a moan rumbled from his throat.

“What?” I asked, frustrated by his lack of communication.

I leaned further over the pit, dirt crumbling under my hands.

He pulled the tarp back further, revealing a splash of dark red against silver.

"Dried roses. She was buried with a bunch of roses on her torso." He sat back on his heels, and even through the hazmat mask, I could see his professional detachment crack. "Someone took their time with this one. "

"The person who buried her cared about her. Don’t you think?" The words slipped out before I could stop them.

"The facts are that red roses were placed over her crossed hands. Nothing more can be established." Whitney's tone could have frosted glass.

Cantankerous bastard.

As he lifted the stalks, dried petals crumbled off and fell like dark snow into the rotting white blouse the woman had been wearing when she was buried.

I kept snapping photos, trying to contain the electricity humming through my veins and keep my questions in check.

"I need to get this body back to the morgue." Whitney shook his head. "Call Parker. Check his ETA."

I backed away from the pit, pulling out my phone while Onyx pressed against my leg. As I scratched behind her ears, I jabbed Parker's name on the screen.

"Jaxson." Parker's familiar drawl came through. "I'm kind of in the middle of?—"

"I found a body at Angelsong,” I blurted. “A fresh one. It’s an adult female, wrapped in a tarp."

I studied the woman's face, wondering what secrets she knew that got her killed.

"What the fuck." A crash echoed through the phone, followed by shouting.

“Whitney’s here with me. He says the body’s been in the ground just a few weeks, months at the most.”

“Jesus.” More voices erupted in the background, urgent and sharp.

"What's going on there?" I asked.

“A Border Force plane dropped off radar after a Mayday.”

My throat went dry. “Shit, who was on the plane?”

“Tory.”

"Christ. Has her plane gone down?"

Whitney looked up, sealing another specimen bag. Soil and decomposition stained his latex gloves nearly black. His jaw worked beneath his mask, but he didn’t talk .