Buried (A Bone Secrets Novel 03) (5 page)

“Am I safe now?” He eyed her wide lips. Now she was a movie queen packing a weapon. His stomach tightened. In a good way. In a fucking awesome way.

“Maybe.” Her fantastic eyes narrowed at him. “What exactly do you want from me?”

Twenty-four hours in my bed. No. Forty-eight hours.

Where the hell did that come from?
He shook the thought out of his head.

“Just to talk.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve heard that before.” More suspicion darkened those green gems.

“No, seriously. I just want to—”

“I’m teasing.” Her lips quirked, and she stepped back to allow him into her home.

Michael blew out a breath. He was seriously off-kilter. “Don’t make me dance, princess,” he muttered and stepped into the royal lair.

Jamie took a deep breath as the reporter moved past into her air-conditioned home. The scent of slightly sun-toasted male touched her nose, and her senses lit up. She gestured toward her kitchen, and he nodded, stepped into the cheery room, and then positioned himself against her counter in front of her microwave, arms crossing his chest, his dark green gaze on her.

She frowned. He was in her spot.

Her kitchen immediately felt smaller. Michael Brody wasn’t a big, bulky guy. He was lean but tall with wide shoulders that seemed to take up too much space. Waves of cool composure rolled off him, and frustration tightened her spine. She was being intimidated in her own kitchen. Her chin jerked up.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

He shook his head, and she reached for her Diet Coke can, condensation running down its sides. She took a nervous sip and felt an icy drop land on her chest and start to roll beneath her tank. His gaze locked on the drop, tracing its path.

Jamie brushed at her chest, and Michael’s gaze returned to hers. She glared and he blinked innocently.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

His chest expanded and his face closed off as he spoke. She listened in horror at the events of the morning, her drink forgotten.

“One child’s body is missing?” she whispered.
All those bones. Buried all these years.
Her eyes smarted.

Michael nodded grimly. “They didn’t find my brother…well, there isn’t a preliminary age match to my brother, and there should be one more…child’s remains.”

Jamie closed her eyes. What was he going through? No closure for his family.

“It’s been so long—”

“Where is Chris?” Michael stopped her apology.

Jamie bit her lip. The last thing Chris would want was the media hounding him again. “I don’t think he’ll want to talk to the media.”

Michael unfolded his arms and leaned toward her. “I’m not here as the media. I’m here as a brother who’s got a lot of questions.”

Jamie shook her head. “Chris doesn’t remember much from back then. He had a pretty bad brain injury, and the doctors believe he blocked everything. He’s never had any memory return.”

“So he says.”

Jamie slammed her can on the counter. “Get out.”

Michael rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Fuck. Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just need to hear it from him.”

Seeing red, Jamie pointed at the door. “That way.”

He locked gazes with her, and Jamie’s stomach did a slow warm turn. Michael Brody exuded a hell of a lot of testosterone that was hammering away at her hormones. She squared her shoulders. “I’m sorry about your brother. I’m certain it’s just a matter of time before they find his body.”

Michael’s face blanked, and her heart contracted. She hadn’t meant to speak like a bitch. The words had sounded better in her head.

He pushed away from the counter and brushed past her, avoiding her eyes and leaving that sunshine scent in his wake again. “Nice meeting you, Ms. Jacobs. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again soon.”

Jamie caught her breath and turned to follow, but he was already out her door and halfway down the walk. She stopped in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and watched Michael
climb into a black Range Rover at the curb. His tires came just short of squealing as he pulled away.

Jamie exhaled and leaned against the frame.

Well. That went real smooth
.

Michael pulled to a stop at the end of Jamie’s street, out of sight of her home, and hit a button on his cell to call his invaluable source at the phone company.

“Grace? Brody here. That address I gave you earlier? Any calls go out in the last few seconds?”

He scowled at his cell as he scribbled a number on the back of a napkin. “Where the fuck is that number from?” His writing slowed at her answer. “Really? Who’d want to live out there?”

No wonder he couldn’t find Chris Jacobs. He was hiding out in one of the remotest parts of the state.

“Thanks. You’re a doll. Dig up everything you can on this number for me, okay? I need to know just where I’m going. And I owe you a big one, Grace. Drinks are on me next time.”

Michael felt adrenaline dump into his veins. Time for a trip.

Chris erased his phone message and sat in the evening light, his brain spinning. He’d always known the call would come. Now that it had, it was almost anticlimactic. He’d lived this moment a thousand times, dreamed it even more. The call had come and gone, and the world still went on, not stopping like it should.

A large weight lifted from his chest. No more waiting. Time to put the wheels in motion.

He breathed the sweet air deeply and listened to the silence. Only the normal, nearly inaudible sounds of nature reached his ears. The breeze rustled the tall grass around his cabin. No vehicle sounds, no human noise. As it should be.

For ten years he’d speculated every time his cell rang. Would this be the call? Would he be ready when it came? Maybe it’d never come. He’d had his plans in place for several years now. Checked and double-checked every few weeks. He’d thought them through and through, hoping to find a way to avoid them altogether. But there was no way out. He’d known if the call ever came he would have no choice but to act.

An image of the Ghostman flitted across his memories, and he mentally crushed it down. The Ghostman stood for failure; Chris wasn’t going to fail. The Ghostman had haunted his dreams for a long time.
Not dreams, nightmares. Nightmares of torture and pain.

He turned to his laptop and typed the usual words into the search engines. Nothing. How had the phone call come before the computer warning? He shifted in his seat, brow wrinkling in mild surprise. Anyone with a little skill could find whatever he needed. Anyone with a lot of skill could manipulate that information to do as he pleased. Like him. Computers hummed under his fingers, their languages as second nature to him as English. Or Spanish. He had alerts on many phrases and names, but none had been tripped in the last twenty-four hours. Tomorrow would be different. The story would be everywhere. The cursor blinked. Taunting him to run another search. Chris closed the lid.

A quiet cough came from the other end of the bungalow. Chris silently padded down the hall and stopped, pushing open the bedroom door. Brian didn’t move. Chris could see the
outline of his son under the thin covers and hear the soft sounds of the boy’s breathing.

Chris’s heart clenched, and he ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the faint raised seam of bone beneath the skin where it’d never healed correctly. His son would never suffer. He would never experience the horrors that men can inflict on children. He would only know love and peace. It was a familiar mantra. One he’d repeated every day for the short eight years of his son’s life.

Was that about to change?

“I don’t want to do that again.” Detective Ray Lusco shook his head as he stared into his coffee at the diner. “I don’t know if I can face another set of distraught parents like that. Shit. I feel like the bad guy.”

Mason nodded in agreement with his partner. The only thing worse than discussing the death of a child with parents was being the one to deliver the news. And that was what he and Ray had spent the day doing. The parents had been informed of the find yesterday, but conclusive evidence hadn’t emerged until today. Most of them had long ago accepted that their child wasn’t returning, but the parents of nine-year-old David Doubler had always believed their son would walk in the door one day.

They’d talked with several sets of parents in the office of the medical examiner. Weeping and acceptance had been the staples for the day. Until the Doublers. The
Doubters
described the couple better. The parents had brought in tiny dental X-rays of their son’s teeth. Twenty-year-old X-rays that the mother had kept in an envelope in case their son’s body was found one day. David Doubler Sr. had argued with Dr. Campbell’s identification.

Mason shook his head. David Sr. had met his match with the feisty odontologist. Lacey Campbell had calmly placed the films on a viewbox next to the films she’d taken on the skull and proceeded to give the father a calm lesson in reading dental X-rays. Even Mason had seen the match. David Sr. had refused. “Baby teeth all look alike,” he’d argued. “Every kid had silver fillings back then.”

Dr. Campbell had quietly pointed out the distinctive white shapes the silver created on the boy’s first permanent molars. David Sr. had shaken his head. It wasn’t good enough for him. The chief medical examiner had stepped into the room at that moment. Dr. James Campbell could tell his daughter was about to pull out her hair in frustration.

“Maybe this would help,” the gray-haired ME had said and held out a plastic baggie to the parents. “You recognize this? It was found with the remains of this child, about where his neck would have been.”

Mrs. Doubler had stared at the silver strands in the baggie and promptly burst into tears. Mason had swallowed hard. He’d known the shape of the pendant on the chain. His son had worn one for years after being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes.

Ray took a sip of his coffee. “Thank God, that was the last one.”

Mason said nothing. Ray was wrong. There had to be another body. One boy was missing, and Mason had already met his parents.

Dr. Brody was a tough woman. She knew her son wasn’t coming back, but Mason wasn’t certain about the senator. The senator had a look of denial that matched Mr. Doubler’s.