Page 27 of Sinful Reality

“You really don’t.” I set the container on the counter and move to the fridge to take out a bottle of water. “Besides, she’s one of a kind, and she’s all mine. Touch her, and I’ll break your fuckin’ legs.”

ARCHER

Idon’t know if the changing weather is meant to be a good omen—or a portentous warning—but snow turns to drenching rain overnight, and that rain transforms the ground to mud long before our medical examiners have a chance to even mention the pop-up gazebo they keep in the back of their van.

But Fletch and I wrestle with it now, extending the legs and clipping the pins into place. We expand the top, pinching fingers and grumbling about the fucking elements, and all the while, I keep Minka in sight as she and Aubree prepare for a dig.

Shovels. Picks. They sort their brushes and pans. Evidence bags are stacked according to size and probability of necessity, and buckets are added next.

A man could be forgiven for expecting the medical examiner’s office to use specialist tools on the job. The expensive apparatus no regular John or Jane Doe might own.

But that’s not my experience, as Minka pulls a soup ladle out of the bucket.

An actual soup ladle, like in every person’s kitchen drawer, second from the top. She adds a sponge—the kind we scrub dishes with—and a saw, the kind every dad hasin his garage.

“You’re staring.” Fletch sets his gazebo leg in the mud and stomps a peg into the hole at the bottom to keep it in place. Already, his jeans are muddy, his shoulders are soaked, and despite the hat he pulled on before getting out of the car, rain still dribbles onto his cheeks and off the sharp edge of his jaw. “Why are you watching her so closely?”

“Because she’s getting sick.” I drag my bottom lip between my teeth, tilting my head to the side, and narrowing my eyes when she shivers under her OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER jacket, three sizes too big for her trim body. “Her eyes are still glassy, even after eleven hours straight. She slept like shit, rolling around and mumbling in her sleep, even though the infusion usually knocks her out. She’s cold, even under the jacket, and she thinks I haven’t noticed the way her cheeks are sunken today.” I grab a peg from my back pocket and slide it into the foot of the gazebo. “She’s gonna crash soon, and I don’t know if her body is waiting for closure on the New York case, or if she’ll drop before, which could potentially be way worse.”

“Dropping could be a good thing.” He pins the last leg—three to my one—and stands tall, setting his hands on his hips. “Put her to bed, feed her cold and flu meds, and force her to sleep for a week. By the time she wakes, maybe the New York thing will be resolved.”

I scoff. “Your naivete is showing. If she gets sick before she has closure, she’ll work herself to death anyway. She won’t take meds willingly, and shoving them down her throat is,technically, illegal. Something about violence in the home or something…”

He chuckles. “It’s only deemed illegal via a courtroom, so if it doesn’t make it all the way to trial…”

“You’re setting me up to fail.” Shaking my head, I peel my eyes from Minka and around to my partner. “She’ll gut me long before a judge sees the docket. You ready for this?” I glance toward the markers in the mud. The spot Theodore Bukowski bragged about to Tarran McDermott, that Tarran then went on to describe for us in surprising detail. “If she’s in there, we’re heading back up to the prison for a talk with Buke. And if she’s not…”

“Then McDermott either sent us up the river for funsies or he got the directions wrong. Or,” he adds with a smile, “we can’t read his drawing for shit. In which case, we might have to get him out of his cellfor a day and have him bring us out. Which might’ve been his plan all along. He’s got a good long while left on his sentence. A pleasant hike in the woods could be the outing he was hoping for.”

He’s not wrong. Not really. And convicts have talked more shit than this for a chance of a few hours outside the four concrete walls they currently call home. But McDermott went to prisonforhis daughter; screwing with us means screwing with his visitation schedule.

“I don’t think he’s lying. He’s not from Copeland originally, which means he doesn’t know these woods like a native would. For him to describe the turns and markers and all that shit the way he did, means he got really fucking lucky, or he’s telling the truth the way Buke gave it.”

“Alright, Detectives.” Aubree bounces across and stops on my right, a small shovel gripped in her hands, booties wrapped around her shoes, and gloves keeping her safe from whatever we might find beneath the surface. “We’re ready to start. How deep did this guy say she probably is?”

“Five feet and a deer carcass.” Fletch peeks over to the markers again, his honeycomb eyes glittering under the spotlights set up amongst the trees. “He probably figured tossing a deer on top would deter anyone who thought to dig.”

“We’re not stopping till we have answers. Either we’re bringing her out of the ground, or we’re saying for sure she ain’t here.” I study Aubree’s plastic coverings and the pink highlights in her hair, peeking out from under the brim of her hat and the hood of her jacket. “What can we expect to find down there?”

“As in, decomp?” Her blue eyes swing to the markers. “We’ve had two winters and a summer since she went missing. The soil around here is typically acidic, and we’re at the bottom of a pretty big mountain, which brings the added complication of water run-off. Eighteen months? If she’s down there, I’d expect not much more than bones and cloth particles at this point. The deer might’ve slowed things down, since he added insulation from the varying temperatures between seasons. Buthisdecomposition could have counteracted hers, which means we might be in for a whole ass mess. Was the deer literally thrown on top of her? Or was she covered up a bit, then the deer on topof that? Was she placed inside anything before burial? Was she wrapped in anything?”

“Sheets and a shower curtain,” Fletch answers, while my eyes wander back to Minka. My brows pinching tight when her phone rings and her hand whips around to free the device from her back pocket. She stands at the rear of the work van, the doors open, and a bunch of tools and shit splayed out for selection. Her back is to me, but I have a clear view as she brings the phone up, accepts the call, and answers with an easily distinguishable “Hey, Pax.”

“Things go alright last night?” Aubree keeps her voice low, her gaze flickering to her boss, then back to me. “Did he intrude?”

“Yeah, he…” Frowning, I dig my hands into my pockets and stare down at her pixie-like face. “He was on the phone when I walked in. Is this something I need to be worried about?”

“He gives me the heebie-jeebies.” She shivers under her coat, her eyes shadowed under the brim of her hat, but when a sleek black SUV comes to a stop in the rain, the headlights on, although it’s still daytime, she relaxes and releases the tense lock of her jaw. Because her man—my brother—steps out of the back and shuts the door. He scans the scene laid out in front of him; our cruiser, the medical examiner van, the cameras set up on tripods—four of them—to catch every angle of our dig. He carefully examines the area to make certain he’s not stepping into official recordings, then he looks up and meets Aubree’s gaze.

A lift of his chin and her lips curl into a soft grin.

She’s whipped.

“Hey? Emeri?” I pinch the visor of her hat and force her eyes back to us. “Focus on me for a minute. Paxton?”

“Malones arealwaysnagging me to pay attention to them.” And yet, she shuffles her feet and firms her lips into serious lines. “Paxton Gilbert is a man who, I gather, though I’ve obviously never met him, very much appreciates an intelligent woman who is easy on the eye. He knew her from New York and made damn sure to reach out this week, though she’s not officially part of the investigation. He didn’thaveto call her. Hewantedto. Sounds like he found his perfect excuse to reconnect.”

“I heard him on the phone last night.” I peek over my shoulder again and spy Minka sitting on the back lip of the van, her face in one handand the phone pressed to her ear with the other. “Didn’t hit on her. It was all work.”

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