Page 5 of Silent Bones

He met their approach with a short nod. “Morning.” His voice was rough-edged, low.

Callie dipped her head in greeting. McKenzie, on the other hand, stared at the boat with the resigned air of a man boarding a vessel he didn’t trust.

“Morning, laddie,” McKenzie muttered. “Do we get to know if this thing’s up to code, or are we running on duct tape and local prayers?”

Jake barely flicked a glance his way. “She’s made this run more times than I can count. She’ll hold unless you’ve gained a few extra pounds.”

McKenzie gave him the bird.

Callie climbed aboard without hesitation, settling onto the narrow bench along the side. McKenzie followed, mumbling something under his breath about seasickness and insurance policies. Jake untied the lines and started the engine, the low rumble splitting the morning hush.

Water sprayed as they pulled away from the launch, the shoreline slipping backward, trees fading into the mist.

Callie folded her arms across her chest, eyes fixed on the dark mirror of the water. Somewhere far off, a loon called; a thin, haunting sound that spiraled across the lake and vanished into the cold. She felt her breath fog the air in front of her.

No one spoke for a few minutes. The engine hummed, the boat’s prow cutting clean lines through the mist.

Jake finally broke the silence. “The couple that found them was Eleanor and Robert Mitchell.”

“Geesh. I know them,” Callie said softly. “Eleanor taught at the high school.”

“Yeah, good people,” Jake said. “Apparently they’ve been walking trails around this area every morning for years.”

“Long way to come for a walk.”

“They’ve been racking up miles every day. Never once seen anything like this before. Dog led them in.”

McKenzie exhaled hard. “Poor bastards.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth, his knee bouncing restlessly. “Out for a nice morning with the dog, and they walk into a horror show.”

Jake’s hands flexed slightly on the wheel. Callie caught the movement. Something tight under the surface.

“Jake,” she said carefully, “you okay?”

His jaw twitched. “Yeah.” A beat. “Just thinking.”

Callie didn’t push. But she knew what was under there, last week’s search grid. A missing hiker case. Jake had wanted to widen the perimeter early; Callie had overruled him based on the available witness reports. They’d found the woman two days later, barely alive, just outside Jake’s proposed area.

It had been quiet between them since.

The job wore on them all in different ways. Frequent interaction was beginning to take its toll. She was beginning to think that mixing pleasure and business wasn’t ideal.

The mist thinned as they neared the far eastern shore, where the wilderness deepened into dense, unbroken forest. A thin finger of beach jutted into the lake, barely marked on most maps, Campsite 64.

Jake throttled down as they approached, voice dropping lower. “That’s the spot.”

From the water, Callie could already see the flicker of yellow police tape strung between the trees, the silhouettes of uniformed figures moving through the clearing. A patrol boat bobbed nearby, its lights casting faint, shifting patterns on the surface. The metallic click of forensic cameras drifted faintly across the water.

McKenzie straightened, his earlier humor draining away. “Ah, hell. You’d think by now I would get used to this. Nope.”

Jake brought the boat in slow.

As they pulled alongside the rough landing, little more than a rocky outcrop marked with a worn DEC post, the smell hit Callie like a slap. It was piney, damp, full of the clean cold of the lake, and under it all, a sharp, unmistakable tang of blood.

Far too much blood for a regular crime scene.

She stepped onto the shore, boots crunching softly on pebbles. Dawn light slanted through the trees in pale gold lines, slicing the mist into pieces, and in the hollow under the pines, the campsite sprawled like a battlefield.

Two tents lay in collapsed heaps, their nylon walls slashed open. Coolers overturned, sleeping bags shredded, clothes scattered wide across the ground. A camp stove on its side, its canister dented. Folding chairs splintered. Blood streaked the dirt in long, rust-dark smears.