Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (71 page)

She felt a drop of cold sweat run down her back, but still she kept the sheets pulled tight. She stared wide-eyed into the darkness and tried not to listen while she strained to hear even more.

She heard a sound under the trailer, where she had never heard a sound before. It was a thumping, dragging, scraping sound, and it seemed very much alive. A dozen hopeful explanations hurried through her mind: a possum or raccoon escaping the wind; a rabbit or ground squirrel that couldn't reach its burrow in time; even a tiny field mouse, its size amplified by the thin, hollow floor. Now the darker explanations began to creep into her mind: the hideous, the deformed, the slithering, the nameless ancient fears that only come out at night. She could feel something under her, staring up at her, feeling along the floor with its cold dead fingers for a crevice or a crack.

The thumping stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the room fell silent, except for the sound of air exiting her lungs in short, trembling gasps.

She heard a high-pitched whine from the direction of the kennels. It was the whimper of one of the younger dogs, probably cowering from the wind—or was it something in the wind? She could imagine the dog pacing back and forth in its kennel, its head slung low and its hackles standing on end from fear. She heard another whine—a lower one this time, from one of the older and more experienced dogs that should have known better. Now the rest of the dogs began to slowly join in a rising lament of whimpering moans and howls.

She sat up on the edge of her bed and listened.

From somewhere deep in the woods she heard a bellowing yelp and then an abrupt silence. In the kennels, every dog fell silent.

She threw off the covers and ran from the bedroom. She flung open the door of the trailer so hard that the spring snapped and the door crashed back against the trailer wall. She flew barefoot past the kennels and toward the trees in the direction of the dog's yelp. The wind beat her like surf, throwing her off balance and tossing her hair in every direction. She came to the edge of the woods and crashed into the brush without hesitating; the leafy branches slapped at her face and arms, and brambles tore at her nightgown, trying to hold her back—but she ran wildly, frantically, trying to reach the echo before the last reverberation faded away.

She broke through the brush into a small clearing; there, on the ground, she saw the body of a beautiful golden dog lying on its side. She staggered up to it and looked down; its eyes were dull and lifeless and there was a dark pool under its head. She squeezed her eyes tight and clenched her fists; she threw back her head and let out a mournful wail, but the sound was instantly swallowed up by the wind. She sank to her knees beside the dog; she lifted its massive head and cradled it in her lap, stroking its soft fur and sobbing.
Who would do this? Why would they take him away from me? Don't they know that I'm alone now—that I have no one else in all the world?

She heard a branch snap and looked up.

She listened and heard nothing more, but she sensed a definite presence. Someone—something—was watching her from the woods. She heard the quiet crunch of leaves and then it abruptly stopped—like someone taking a cautious step closer. She gently laid the dog's head back on the ground and struggled to her feet. She wiped her eyes and face, staring into the trees and listening. She felt her grief slipping away, and fear crawling over her like a creeping vine.

She looked back toward the trailer but saw no sign of it through the dense brush. She tried to remember how long she had been running— how far she was from safety—but in her panic she had lost all sense of time and distance. She took one tentative step toward the trailer and listened—

She heard another crunch from the woods.

Terror flooded over her like a breaching dam and she took off back through the woods, plunging madly through the brush, searching for the light from the kennels and listening for footsteps behind her—but it was all one cacophony of crashing branches and frantic panting and crunching feet. She imagined someone running behind her, matching her stride for stride, slowly gaining, reaching out his fingers, touching the fringes of the soft cotton gown fluttering out behind her—

She broke through the brush and into the clearing. She caught her ankle on a grapevine and almost lost her footing but managed to stay upright. More than anything in the world she wanted to turn and look back, to know and understand the terror that was pursuing her—but she didn't dare. She ran screaming for the trailer, her heart pounding in her throat, unable to feel her legs or the ground under her feet. She ran with everything in her, but the trailer seemed an infinite distance away. She was utterly exhausted; she imagined her strength failing completely, collapsing to the ground, unable to move—the horrible image was enough to keep her going a few more steps.

She reached the open trailer door and scrambled inside, doubled over and panting like a spent mare. She staggered across the living room and through the doorway into the bedroom beyond. She stumbled to the far corner of the room and turned, sliding down and wedging herself tightly against the walls, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and staring back at the doorway, waiting for the pursuer who would never come.

She looked across the room at the floor-length mirror and saw a terrified ten-year-old girl with long black hair and green eyes. The little girl buried her face in her arms and began to cry.

Alena woke up in her bed, sobbing.

17

Nick looked down at Kegan, who was kneeling inside a newly opened grave and probing in the soil with a pointed trowel. “Have you seen Marge lately?” he asked.

“Not this morning.”

“What about yesterday?”

“No, now that you mention it. Why?”

“She said she wanted to confirm these sites, but I haven't seen her around. Ask around, will you? See if anybody's seen her.”

Kegan smiled up at him. “You miss her, don't you?”

“It's hard to describe the feelings I have for her.”

“Don't laugh,” she said. “I've read about things like that: You despise someone so much that you suddenly begin to like them.”

“I just realized something,” Nick said. “I'm in love with you.”

“Dr. Polchak! Dr. Alexander!”

Nick and Kegan turned. At the tech tent a courier from the FBI crime lab at Quantico was waving at them with a manila envelope.

“That should be our test results,” Kegan said.

“It's about time. Let's take a look.”

Kegan took the envelope from the courier and spread the papers out on a folding table in the shade of the tent. The courier looked at her and asked, “Have you got anything for me to take back?”

“Those,” she said, nodding to three corrugated evidence boxes lined up on a nearby table. Each measured one-by-one-by-three, and each contained an entire set of bones recovered from a grave, as well as soil samples and any artifacts found nearby.

“Anything else?”

“I've got something,” Nick said. He reached into a knapsack and took out two zippered plastic bags, each containing a few strands of hair. “I want a DNA sequence run on both of these—both mitochondrial and Y-line—and tell them I want to know the haplogroup too. Have you got all that?”

“Got it.” The courier took the bags and the first of the evidence boxes and headed for the parking lot.

“Where'd you get those samples?” Kegan asked.

“It's a surprise.”

“Nick, tell me—I should know.”

They were interrupted by another voice: “Nick! I want to talk to you—
right now
!”

They looked up and saw Danny Flanagan charging across the field toward the tent.

“Uh-oh,” Nick said under his breath.

“Nick—what did you do now?”

“I demonstrated problem-solving abilities and exercised personal initiative.”

“What?”

“I dropped by to see Senator Braden yesterday.”

“You
what
?”

“Do me a favor,” he whispered. “Act like it's something you would have done too.”

“Nick,” Danny said, “I was just informed that you paid an unscheduled visit to Senator John Braden yesterday. Is that true?”

“Let me think,” Nick said. “Yesterday was such a long day.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I can't tell you how many times I've been asked that.”

“Who gave you permission to do that?”

“I didn't think I needed permission.”

“I thought I made myself clear yesterday.”

“Is there some FBI regulation that says I shouldn't pursue a possible source of information in the course of an investigation? Kegan, help me out here—is there any reason I shouldn't have interviewed Senator and Mrs. Braden?”

Kegan's mouth dropped open. “You saw
Victoria
Braden? What was she wearing?”

Nick rolled his eyes.

“Exactly what information were you looking for?” Danny demanded.

“We need to identify these bodies,” Nick said. “We could use some help.”

“And you think Braden knows who they are?”

“This is his property—he could have family records. C'mon, Danny, it was a logical assumption.”

“It's
Daniel
—and if you wanted to inquire about the senator's family history then you should have gone through proper channels.”

“What channels?”

“First of all,
me
. I would have cleared it with the Bureau, and they would have made the request through the senator's chief of staff—”

“And by that time we'd all be buried here. You would have told me no or the Bureau would have put it on the back burner or Braden's chief of staff would have shelved it until next month's staff meeting. That's how ‘channels' work, Danny—you should have learned that by now.”

“You were just looking for a shortcut.”

“As I recall, the shortest distance between two points is still a straight line. Besides, I didn't want the information secondhand—I wanted to ask Braden myself.”

“Why?”

“To find out if he was lying.”

Danny looked at Nick in astonishment. “Now you're
suspecting
the senator of something?”

“Of course I am—and you should too. Are we supposed to consider Braden above suspicion just because he's a politician? There's an irony for you.”

Danny glared at Nick. “Have you got any more bright ideas like that?”

“Not yet, but I'll let you know.”

“Well, you'd better. From now on I want these things cleared through me first, understand?”

“I didn't want to bother you with details.”

“I told you yesterday:
I like details
.”

“And I told you that's micromanaging, and you'll drive us all crazy that way—me, anyway.”

“That's a risk I'm willing to take. Is there anything else you two haven't told me? Are there any other developments I should know about?”

Kegan held up the manila envelope. “We got the first anthropological evaluation from Quantico.”

“When did that happen?”

“Just a few minutes ago,” Nick said. “Let's not get paranoid here.”

“What do the reports say?”

“We were just about to go over them.”

“Good—fill me in.”

There were four separate reports, each one labeled with a designator indicating the victim's location in the graveyard and the date of discovery.

“Victim 2-6-18-08,” Kegan read. “This was the first body discovered. Not many surprises here; the victim was male, roughly six feet in height, right-handed.”

“How can you tell that?” Danny asked.

“You tend to favor your strong hand, so the muscles become stronger; that thickens the muscle attachments on the wrist and arm.”

“What about the cause of death?”

“Still undetermined. There were no cut marks on the bones and no sign of ballistic injury. There's a note here that suggests blunt-force trauma to the skull might be indicated, but I'm not sure how they could tell—the skull was smashed flat, remember?” She scanned the rest of the page. “Apparently the assumption is based on the analysis of the second set of bones.” She picked up the second report and began to study it.

“4-6-18-08—also a male, a little shorter in stature and heavier in build. Approximate age at time of death forty to forty-five. Here we go: The cause of death is listed as ‘blunt-force trauma to the head.' The skull was intact on this one; the victim was struck from behind, and the diameter and shape of the fracture suggest a large, smooth weapon was used—maybe an ax handle or a club.”

“Could it have been accidental?”

“It's possible—a tree limb maybe—but it takes a lot of force to crush a skull.” She looked at the next report. “No—it was no accident.”