Page 3 of The Graveyard Girls

There the leafless trees looked gnarled and lifeless. And she’d heard about the hillbillies, moonshiners and meth labs in the remote areas.

“Detective?” her boss asked. “You understand?”

That he thought the police might be incompetent. “Yeah, on it.”

She turned to wake Cord but he was lying on his back staring at her with an odd expression in his smoky brown eyes.

He was still harboring secrets from her. Secrets he kept buried deep inside.

No matter that they’d spent the last few months together, he still didn’t trust her. That stung and made her want to shake him and promise that he could trust her with anything.

But she had to be patient.

He tunneled his fingers through his sleep-tousled shaggy dark hair. “You caught a case?”

His voice was thick and gruff and so damn sexy she wanted to curl back into his arms and ignore the call. But she couldn’t do that so she nodded instead. “Body found near Brambletown. Boss wants us up there now. You know the area?”

Cord’s face paled. “Yeah.”

Shoulders tensing, he swung his long legs over the side of the bed and stood. She stared at the back of his T-shirt knowing he had scars underneath that he refused to show her in the daylight. But she felt them at night in the dark when she ran her fingers across his chest and his broad back.

“What’s wrong, Cord? Do you know something about that town?”

His expression turned hooded. “Just that it’s had its share of trouble.”

But he seemed bothered by the mention of it. “I wish you’d talk to me,” she said as she pushed away the covers.

“Let it go, El,” he growled. “We need to get to work.”

Dammit. He’d shut her down like he always did when she tried to get him to open up.

But he was right. Work called and she needed to focus.

THREE

Green Gardens Cemetery

Twenty minutes later, Ellie parked at the graveyard where local police were already on the scene. She darted a glance toward Cord, who’d lapsed into one of his brooding silences.

Odd that the graveyard was called Green Gardens when nothing about the land here was green. She knew the history of the area. Brambletown was named after the numerous Bramble family members who’d occupied the semi-remote area for decades.

Gray storm clouds had rolled in, hovering over the desolate, parched terrain, making the area look even more eerie. The little white church on the hill still sat, obviously vacant, paint peeling, trees dead, the faint sound of praise hymns lingering like a ghostly cry from the heavens mourning the dead.

Yet someone had recently created a memorial for those lost due to the fire and now tourists and residents had come to either honor or gawk at the stone markers in front of the church on the hill.

Distaste soured her mouth. Morbid curiosity seekers, Ellie thought. Some people even collected murderabilia, a hobby shedidn’t quite understand. She saw enough horror in her work not to want to have the evidence at home in a glass case to display as if honoring the demented killers’ tools of the trade.

She quickly scanned the area. “Is the land still toxic?” she asked Cord.

Cord shook his head. “Toxins are thought to be farther north and the area has been cordoned off and warnings posted. The cemetery has been tested and proven safe. Although people have reported still seeing steam oozing from the ground at times from the heat below.”

Ellie breathed out in relief and climbed from her Jeep.

Cord followed, their doors closing and echoing in the silence created by the lack of wildlife; forest creatures no longer lived on the land. There had been controversy about how the toxins had been handled and people were up in arms for the government to do something. But change took time and the government bigwigs didn’t see this run-down town as a priority.

The local sheriff’s car was parked by the edge of the graveyard, but as they walked toward the cemetery, Ellie noticed the sheriff and a couple of his officers were actually pacing a deserted section of woods bordering the graveyard. An area with dry grass, dead weeds and rotting, downed trees.

An officer met them at the edge of the woods and identified himself as one of the deputies. Ellie made the introductions, and he led them toward the cordoned-off scene. “Who found the body?”