Page 11 of Never Stay Gone
“This going to be a problem?”
Dakota swung his gaze back to Shane, pinning him with a hard stare. Shane stared back, his chin lifting slightly, enough to reveal how he swallowed, how his Adam’s apple bobbed and fluttered. Slowly—eventually—Shane shook his head.
Heath looked from Shane to Dakota and then back to his chief deputy. “I’m going to head out to the highway,” he said. “Wait for the El Paso techs to arrive and guide them in.” He flicked a hard glare Dakota’s way, then clapped Shane on the back. “Holler if you need me.”
Chapter Five
Dakota.
Shane had thought he’d never see Dakota again. Not after he vanished. After heleft.
He remembered that night, his guts twisting inside him as he parked in front of the abandoned trailer outside the ranch Dakota’s parents had worked on. The door was open, flapping in the wind. The old truck his dad drove, more rust than vehicle, was long gone, the tire tracks from where it used to park every day for two years blown away on the wind.
How was this possible? How was Dakota back in Rustler, now, taking charge of the investigation? A Texas Ranger? How hadthathappened? The Dakota he knew liked football and ranching, and occasionally some of their English assignments. He’d never thought about law enforcement.
Shane flinched. Showed how much he knew about Dakota.
His eyes slid across the bullpen to where Dakota was working. Heath had escorted the El Paso team to the grave site, lingered by Shane’s elbow for a half hour, asked him once if he was okay, and then split. “Got a whole county to take care of,” he’d said, heading back to his parked truck. “Keep me updated.”
Last Shane had heard, Heath was responding to a dozen head of cattle that had wandered onto 118. A few high school boys had stopped to help him and the ranch hands try to herd them back to their pasture.
Really, Dakota should be the one updating Heath. Dakota was the one with the orders fromthe governorto take charge of the investigation.
What the hell had happened in thirteen years?
Shane watched Dakota pace behind Heath’s desk, frowning as he listened to whoever was on the phone. His right hand rested casually on his weapon, fingers loose but curled, ready to draw. He paused a moment, weight balanced on his dominant leg like he was ready to drop into a shooting stance at any moment. He was coiled. Spring-loaded.
Shane’s hands wrapped around each other on top of his desk. A blank report waited on his computer monitor. He was supposed to be typing up the crime scene recovery process, which could also be called the endless, interminable day he’d spent hyperaware of Dakota, of every muscle twitch, body stretch, forehead furrow, and twist of his lips. Shane hadn’t been able to focus on anything other than Dakota.
Dakota’s gaze went from burning holes in the floorboards to burning holes through the backs of Shane’s eyeballs. Shane jerked and looked away. Stared at his computer. His cheeks flushed, molten lava rushing through him, yanking on his belly button and trying to pull him down.
Stop it. Dakota doesn’t give a shit about being back, obviously. Neither should you.
As thrown as Shane had been when Dakota appeared, Dakota had been the exact opposite, it seemed. Cool. Collected. Professional. He never even let on to the team from El Paso that he knew Shane, much less seemed bothered by seeing him again. Though he and Dakota had orbited each other on opposite sides of the grave, never going near one another. Maybe that meant something.
And maybe the way Dakota looked at him like he was a stranger, like Shane meant nothing at all to him, meant more.
Focus, damn it. Just because Dakota was suddenly there, and he—inexplicably—was a Texas Ranger, and somehow he was working directly with Governor Riggs, didn’t mean what was true yesterday wasn’t still true today. Thirteen years of silence said so.
“Recovery of Human Remains,” he typed. “Suspected Homicide—Multiple Victims (six).”
“That was El Paso.” Dakota’s deep voice came rumbling over Shane’s shoulder, and Shane jumped, banging his bad knee on the underside of the desk and swallowing a curse. Damn it, his kneecap felt like a gong, like he’d just tried to shatter the bone from inside the joint. He twisted, looking up at Dakota.
Dakota stared at him with all the emotion of a man four hours into his DMV wait. “They hope to have IDs on the rest tomorrow, but we might be lookin’ at longer for the three skeletal remains. They’re gonna try to pull somethin’ from dental records, but that can be hit-or-miss. They’re gonna go ahead and get authorization to pull DNA from the bones.”
Shane nodded, as if he, too, were experienced at identifying decayed bodies pulled from hidden graves.
He wasn’t.
Three of the bodies they’d recovered had been intact—or, at least, intactenoughthat the forensic team from El Paso said they should be able to confirm their identities through fingerprints.
In Texas, everyone who had a driver’s license or a state ID had to put at least one fingerprint on file in the system. But recovering the victims’ prints could be challenging, the forensic tech had cautioned. Jessica Klein, the freshest corpse, wouldn’t be difficult. She was still all there, minus that coyote-chewed foot. But the other bodies had been dumped before her, some of them months—or years—before, and decay had already partially or totally putrefied their remains.
One of the techs had told Shane about how he might be able to peel off the skin from one of the corpse’s fingers, then roll it over his own hand like a glove, then run the print like he was taking his own. He’d smiled like he was telling Shane something cool. Shane had stared at him.
How long the grave had been there, how long the murderer had been dumping bodies in his spider hole in the ground, was anyone’s guess so far. El Paso would be able to tell them that, too, Shane supposed.
“The pathologist is startin’ tonight. By mornin’ we should have at least a preliminary cause of death on most, if not all, of ’em. I know I saw CP on Jessica, and with the bruises around her neck, my guess is we’re lookin’ at manual strangulation. That should leave decent forensics behind. Those didn’t look like ligature marks to me. If we’re lucky, we can get a thumbprint from the sick son of a bitch off her throat.”
