Page 22 of Deadly Revenge

Her dad eyed the banker. “Why’d you even come then? I’m going. I want to see what’s got their attention.”

The others agreed albeit Todd still grumbled. She fell in behind her dad as they trekked through the woods toward the barking dogs, the light from their headlamps bouncing across the rough terrain. There was no air stirring, and her long-sleeve shirt soon clung to her back. Jenna wiped sweat from her face with her sleeve.

The dogs were farther than they sounded, and their strange barking sent chills down her back in spite of the heat. Thunder was the first to come into view. He sat on his haunches, baying at ... Jenna couldn’t see anything other than a pile of brush. And that shouldn’t make the dog howl like that.

He wasn’t the only dog acting weird. Gordon’s dog was doing the same thing.

Her dad scratched his head. “Why would someone cut a bunch of brush and pile it here?”

The hairs on the back of Jenna’s neck rose. There was only one reason she could think of. “Don’t get any closer until I can check it out,” she said.

Sam brushed past her. “I’ll check it out.”

Before she could stop him, he grabbed a branch and pulled it back, bringing several others with it. Suddenly he dropped it. “Not good,” he muttered.

Jenna stepped around him and shined her flashlight at the pile of branches. She blinked and looked again. A shoe with a leg attached to it lay at an odd angle. Brush covered the rest of the body.

“Don’t touch anything.” She pulled out her phone and dialed Alex’s number.

The chief deputy answered on the second ring. “What’s wrong?”

“We have another body,” Jenna said calmly, though she felt anything but calm. “Judging from the leg I can see, it looks like a male.”

“Where are you?”

She gave her the directions to the log road. “Let me know when you get here, and I’ll send someone out to bring you in.”

“Do you think the death was from an accident?”

Jenna turned toward the pile of brush, her headlamp illuminating the green leaves. “No.”

13

Max flipped over in the hard hotel bed again and punched his pillow. It’d probably been a mistake to return to Pearl Springs from Nashville last night, but normally he didn’t have trouble sleeping when he was away from his own bed. The problem was more than likely due to a certain Russell County deputy.

Not that she was the reason he drove back from Nashville after leaving the castle nut with the TBI forensic tech.Yeah, right.He told Alex when they talked that he’d returned so he wouldn’t have to get up so early.

At least driving back had given him thinking time on the Carter case. From what Martin and Holliday said, Carter had made a lot of people mad in his tenure as mayor. Or at least at the beginning of it.

He dismissed the problems stemming from taxes and regulations—Max doubted anyone affected would hold a grudge for twenty years over a zoning issue. But the dam and reservoir were a different matter. People had lost land that had been in their families for generations.

And then there was the Slater accident—Joe Slater had served on the city council the same time Carter was mayor. That gaveMax another reason to focus on Russell County and Pearl Springs for the person responsible for the threats against Carter.

Max flipped over on his other side again. He’d almost drifted off to sleep when his phone jerked him awake. He grabbed it and stared at the screen. Alex? “Anderson,” he answered.

“Just got a call from Jenna. She’s found a body, and since you’re here, I thought you might want to ride to the crime scene.”

A body? He shook his head to clear it. “Could it be the Nelson guy I told you about?”

“Don’t know. Apparently the body is covered by brush. Jenna is waiting for us to arrive before moving anything,” she said. “Nathan’s picking me up in ten minutes if you want to ride with us.”

“Text me your address.”

Seconds later he heard a message come in on his phone.

“Oh,” Alex said. “Wear high-top boots if you have them. The body is in the woods, and we might encounter copperheads and rattlesnakes.”

“Gotcha.”

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