Page 22 of The Valiant Knight (The Ravensmire Chronicles #2)

Tony went over and handed Gabby a tissue from his pocket.

“You okay, Honey?” he asked.

She leaned against him.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Finn was watching her, and thinking about what the man said.

He was tired of being alone.

It was time to take a chance. As soon as he could, he was going to make his move. Whether she had three days or three hundred, he didn’t want to wonder what could have been. Maybe he was meant to move fast with her.

It appeared his mind was made up.

For the next twenty minutes, they meticulously kept shoveling with Tony giving them instructions.

When someone’s shovel hit something, they all stopped.

It wasn’t down six feet, and that was alarming for Tony. It meant that it was buried hastily.

“Be careful,” he said, as the ground beneath their feet started to crumble.

Both men jumped, and managed to get out of the hole before whatever was over Ceit gave way.

As he lay on the side of the hole, staring in, Tony began pulling pieces of stone from the hole to uncover what was remaining.

And he didn’t like how the body was handled. She’d deserved so much more peace than this hastily-filled grave.

As he moved around the hole, Tony started taking pictures of the grave, and the remains.

Gabby was curious.

“She’s not in a box,” she said. “I don’t see remnants of any wood whatsoever. Even in the sixteen hundreds, they would have had ways to preserve a burial vessel.”

She was right.

“They did have ways. The box that was built would have had some soot and ash rubbed into it, and that would keep the wood from rotting.”

He swept away some of the dirt with a fine bristle brush, and what he saw didn’t make him happy.

Not.

At.

All.

“She looks like she was put in here and covered with stones.”

Oh, boy.

“Uh, that’s never good,” Gabby said. She knew that Tony wasn’t going to be happy.

He was big on sanctity of the final resting place.

“No wonder the poor woman was haunting the place. She was tossed into a hole haphazardly, and covered in stones before buried. She’s lucky she got the stone to mark it. Someone did her dirty.”

Yes, yes, they did.

All around them, the trees came alive, and that’s when they heard it.

The wind began whipping up, and there was laughter in the trees.

Male.

Laughter.

It sent shivers across their bodies, and made the hair on the back of their necks stand up.

That was ominous.

Around the grave, it got chilly, and they could see their breath.

For Finn, he got that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’d heard that laughter before.

It was just two hours ago when he’d pulled Gabby from the water. On his way down to get her, that was the voice he heard.

“What was that?” Finn asked, turning in a circle. It was so creepy that he’d actually put his hand on his gun.

For protection.

“I have no idea,” Graham said. “But I didn’t like it.”

Shit.

That was creepy as hell.

From where he stood, Tony didn’t like it. He was a believer in science, but he knew from being at Elizabeth’s when they had a spook show up, Trey, that there could be things that science just couldn’t explain.

“I say we wrap this up. That sounded malevolent. That’s never a good thing in my world.”

And it wasn’t.

While he was skeptical, they all heard that voice, and there was no one else out there.

So they got to work.

Tony got into the hole, and he carefully made sure he didn’t stand on the bones. One-by-one, he handed them to Gabby, who placed them in a body bag that she’d rolled out for them to carry Ceit.

She did it with the utmost respect, and the whole time, she felt like someone was right next to her, looking over her shoulder.

“What can you tell us about her, Doctor?” Finn asked, and it made the man laugh.

That he hadn’t been expecting.

“What’s funny?”

He explained.

“I am on a lot of crime scenes, and I just had a flashback. Do you ask your coroner about the TOD and COD before he gets the body back to the morgue to work on it?”

He shrugged.

“Well, yeah. Of course, I do. It’s the first thing you have to ask. We all do it.”

Yep.

Well, that explained a lot. Apparently, a cop was a cop was a cop, no matter where you went.

“What I can tell you is that she definitely had massive trauma. The bones, on the bottom side of them, there is shattering and splintering.”

Graham had no idea what he was saying. He was the only one there who didn’t do this kind of a thing for a living.

“What’s that mean?”

Gabby explained since Tony was hyper-focused on the bones. At that moment, he was in examination mode.

“She jumped, or that’s what rumors and history say. He’s telling you in his bone language that she landed flat on her back. All of the damage is to the backside of the bones.”

Oh, well, that made sense.

When Tony picked up her skull, he paused. He saw something, but he wanted a second opinion before he said anything to anyone else.

That meant calling his bestie. It looked like Chris was going to be hearing from him. He’d told him to call and update him, but this was a conversation they needed to have.

“It’s definitely a woman. I’ll say she was about eighteen when she gave birth and died.”

Finn got it.

“The bones, huh?”

He nodded.

“She wasn’t fully developed. The shape of her pelvis says woman, and the calcification inside the bones tell me that she was a child herself. She hadn’t had time to develop beyond those teen years.”

Gabby sighed.

“Life expectancy was low in the sixteen hundreds. They started marrying off girls early.”

Yeah, they did.

When the last of the bones was put away, they heard something again, and all three of them turned to scan the area to see what it was.

“Shit,” Gabby said, as Finn moved in front of her to protect her. “Did you see that?” she asked.

He hadn’t, but he’d heard something.

“It sounded like the same laughter before. It was definitely a man,” he admitted.

On that, she agreed.

“I’ve heard that voice before.”

Tony and Graham moved closer, and they scanned the trees. They didn’t hear or see anything, but it was clear that the other two had.

“What is it?” Tony asked.

Gabby explained.

“When I fell through the ice, I felt like I was being pulled down. I heard a voice. I couldn’t understand the words, but I heard something. It was that voice.”

Yeah, that wasn’t creepy at all.

Graham stared at Finn, expecting him to say something, but he didn’t. He was curious if it was the same voice he’d heard.

“Let’s get this done,” Tony suggested.

Well, no one was going to argue that.

When the winds died down, the two men began shoveling dirt into the hole as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Tony was kneeling next to the bag of bones, and the whole time, he was staring at the skull.

The look on his face was a familiar one. He was trying to figure something out.

“What is it?” Gabby asked.

He should wait to confirm with Chris, but it was really bothering him.

“Look at the facial trauma,” he said. “We know for a fact that she fell onto her back. Bones don’t lie.”

Gabby had worked for the FBI long enough to know what was tripping him up.

If she landed on her back, why was the front of her skull damaged too?

Tony was leaning toward a new hypothesis.

Something had hit Ceit in the face. She couldn’t have fallen backward and forward simultaneously.

Gravity was gravity.

The laws of physics didn’t change.

“So you think she wasn’t jumping?” she asked. “And instead something else happened?”

He nodded his head.

“I’ll call Chris for confirmation, but I think she was hit in the face.”

Yeah, she’d nailed that.

“Can you be sure, Doctor?” she asked.

Tony nodded.

“Let me show you,” he said, standing up. As for the other two men, he might as well show them too. “It’s show-and-tell time!”

The men looked over when he said that.

“What exactly does that mean?” Graham asked, completely confused.

Tony offered no explanation.

“Just watch,” he stated.

Looking around, he found a branch that was thick enough to match the wounds that had been inflicted on Ceit’s face.

Then, he set the scene.

“So, she’s standing in the tower,” he said, as the two men watched him. “She is watching out the window.”

Graham clued him in.

“Gryphen and Ian found a note that said she used to stand up there and watch for Duncan to return. Maybe she was waiting for him.”

That could be too.

Tony pointed at Gabby.

“She’s going to play Ceit.”

So far, they were good and were following his train of thought.

Gabby stood there as Tony began walking them through his show-and-tell.

“Okay, so the lady of the castle is standing there, and she’s caught off guard by something behind her. She turns, and BAM ! She takes a hit to the face.”

He swung the branch, and while he was going to pull it, Finn was right there, catching it with his hand.

“ NO , Doctor,” he said testily.

At the look on the cop’s face, Tony laughed.

“I wasn’t going to hit Gabs. She’s my lab bestie. Just watch.”

He repositioned and swung again. Gabby stopped it with her hand, right in front of her face where the trauma was to the skull.

Then, she backed up a few steps, and fell backward, landing on her back.

“She took a shot to her face, and fell OUT the window,” he said. “That explains the dual trauma on her bones. She wasn’t committing suicide. She was murdered.”

The second he said it, the woods came alive, and that’s when they heard it.

Someone began crying.

And now they knew why Ceit wasn’t resting peacefully. Her story wasn’t done. Someone had stolen her life.

Finn pulled Gabby up, and placed her beside him. His arm was protectively over her shoulders as he kept her locked to his side.

Then, the male laughter kicked up, and the birds took to flight from the trees all around them.

“I think that we should take that as our sign that it’s time to get out of here,” Tony said, freaked out. “Get the bag, and let’s haul ass,” he said.

The men didn’t ask questions, and they did exactly what he suggested.