Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell (8 page)

By this time
Frank had walked to the alleyway and positioned himself where he could watch Julie and Tracy in the backyard spa. But the adrenaline was already beginning to race through him. It took another twenty minutes before the two women finally decided to crawl out of the water to go inside.

When they moved to the sliding glass door, Frank took a pair of gloves from his back pocket and slapped them on. He undid the latch on the gate to move in closer all the while keeping his eyes on the back door. He crept closer, so close that he could pick up bits and pieces of their ongoing convo.

Tracy came back outside to pick up her jeans which she’d left draped on the chair. That made her the last one inside. Frank listened for the lock to flick into place. The women were so deep in conversation that Tracy hadn’t bothered to flip the catch on the sliding glass door.

Frank shook his head, grinning. Some nights it wasn’t even a challenge. It didn’t appear Julie or Tracy had caught the evening news. Nor did either of the women seem overly concerned about Seattle’s latest serial killer.

He had to wait another fifteen minutes before he saw the lights go out in Julie’s bedroom. She would be first, he decided. It took another ten minutes for Tracy’s bedroom to go dark.

From that point, Frank inched open the unlocked patio door and walked into blackness. Since his eyes had already adjusted to the dark while in a holding pattern outside, he set his bag down on the floor, unzipped it. He removed the penlight dangling from his neck and stuffed it down inside the bag. He took off his running shoes and socks first. His shirt came off next, then his jeans. Once he’d stripped down to skin, he reached for his larger flashlight. Searching his bag, he gathered up the pre-cut nylon ropes he’d brought, pulled out his mask and grabbed the seven-inch knife.

With the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson he’d stolen last winter, he had his hands full. But not for long. He slipped the fabric of the mask over his head, adjusted the eyeholes so he could see, and headed down the hall to the bedrooms.

He reached Julie’s room first and turned the knob. Once he saw her begin to stir, he rushed over to the side of the bed to cover her mouth with his hand.

“Hello, Julie. Shhh, now don’t worry,” he whispered in her ear. “I won’t hurt you as long as you do what I say, okay? Nod if you understand me.”

Julie blinked at the brown eyes behind the mask. Realization dawned that he was naked and that meant he was here for only one thing.

Julie nodded.

He crawled on top of the bed so he could roll Julie over onto her stomach. He put the nine-mil down while he began to bind her hands and feet with the nylon rope. Once that was done, he went to the dresser, took a pair of her panties out, balled them up, and stuffed them into her mouth.

“Stay right there, sweetheart. I’ll be back in a flash. Don’t you move now, hear?”

He picked up the pistol from the bed and went next door to Tracy’s room knowing Julie would do exactly what he told her to do.

When he stepped into Tracy’s personal space he found her snoring softly. As he tried to straddle her though to tie her hands, it proved to be more difficult. Tracy’s arm came up swinging. The punch she threw at him barely missed his nose. It pissed him off. He flipped her over on her stomach, jerked her hair and pulled backward. “Listen to me, bitch. You do that again and I’ll make you pay. Do you understand?” Frank yelled as he tugged harder on her hair, making her head bob up and down in response.

“Get off me you stupid jerk!” Tracy screamed. With that, she came out of her daze doing her best to buck and fight back as best she could with her entire body.

Fuck this, Frank decided. He turned her over onto her back—picked up the gun and used it to bash her in the face—hard. Blood sprayed his hands, which infuriated him. When Tracy fell back, he grappled with her hands, secured them as tightly as he could. When she kicked out with her legs, he whacked her across one knee, then the other, hard enough that he heard bone crack.

He took another length of rope, wrapped it around her throat. With everything he had, he pulled tighter until she stopped struggling. He flipped her to her stomach. Unbridled rage had him entering her from the rear.

He’d told the bitch she would pay.

And Frank De Palo always kept his word.

Vivid images came
to Josh in sleep. Deep red for all the blood. The black and brown gore was almost too much to bear. He saw tissue and flesh separating from bone as the man kept up a brutal attack with precision blows to the face and skull.

It didn’t matter because even in sleep, Josh knew the woman was already dead. She’d been strangled by a piece of white nylon cord the killer had brought with him. Then to be on the safe side, he’d used the gun.

A voice inside his head kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. So much that Josh’s head pounded with a steady roar. From another room Josh could make out the violence just beginning to ramp up there.

Through the fog of sleep Josh could see the deadly brown eyes of a madman—make out the rage in them as fury pumped through each slash of the knife—as easily as gasoline flowed through a hose. Because of that it didn’t take long for the other bedroom to become just as bloody as the first, just as bad as the one he’d witnessed as if he’d been right there.

Josh could almost feel each blow as the defenseless, tied-up woman lay beaten to a pulp. He’d switched weapons. Again. From somewhere the killer had picked up a softball bat. The aluminum had done its damage. Her skull appeared crushed while her assailant kept up the brutal pace shattering bone after bone throughout her body.

Even in slumber, Josh shuddered. He could smell the iron as the woman’s blood spilled and spattered the walls. He recognized the odor of death, the wrath of a truly evil man.

The scene was so intense that Kiya had to leap into his line of vision as a warning, much like she had done months earlier when she’d showed him his current path. That had been after he’d gone through the cleansing ritual at The Painted Crow. In his mind he went back to that night when the wolf had shown him the faces and smells of evil.

But Kiya had missed the mark.

This was so much worse than Josh had seen that night. Because what he’d seen then in his vision hadn’t seemed real. But with so much carnage now, so much blood to deal with, so many broken bones…

“The bones…the bones will tell,” mumbled Josh, over and over again as he slept.

Skye watched Josh’s
fitful movements, let them play out until he settled. She curled into him, wrapped her arms as best she could around his body. For some time he lay there shaking, trembling. Powerful dreams, she knew, could do that—and more—if you let them.

Every now and again, the nightmares from when she was twelve still wanted to creep in and take hold. Even though that feeling of helplessness had lessened, she could relate to Josh’s torment.

She would try to walk him through it tomorrow. But as she tried to close her eyes, she couldn’t help but wonder what his words had meant. Questions started humming through her head as sleep eluded her.

How could bones tell a gamer anything, even if he was ten percent wolf? Were he and Kiya onto some scent that only they could detect? And more importantly, why had she been excluded from the hunt? After everything she’d done, after everything she’d endured, why had the bonding between Kiya and Josh been stronger between the two of them than it ever had been with her?

Because for her, over the last couple of weeks, her visions had completely dried up. Instead, Josh was now the one who seemed troubled by images he couldn’t stop from coming. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. For the first time since she was thirteen, there were no voices inside her head keeping her up nights, no vivid colors bombarding her brain.

After all, Kiya was
her
spirit guide. So why had Skye suddenly been left out of it all? On some level, it hurt to be left out. On another, she could sleep without fears or disturbing images coming to her at all hours. That had to be the major bonus.

Maybe it was this shared life she now had with Josh. Maybe it was someone looking out for her. There were a hundred maybes, she decided as she tried to close her eyes and blank her mind, let sleep overtake her thoughts.

But no matter what spin she put on all of it, it still bothered her. So much that she wasn’t sure how long she could handle the feeling of being left out.

The ringing phone
beside the bed pulled Josh out of images he couldn’t shake. Even as he rolled to his side to grab for the noisy device, he knew who was on the other end and why they were calling. 

Skye stirred beside him and grumbled, “It’s only seven-forty.”

Josh wasn’t quite coherent when he fumbled the pickup and snapped, “Hello.”

“How soon can you and Skye get to Ballard?”

Josh blinked at Harry Drummond’s all business-like voice. He sucked in a breath, ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Give me the address.”

In his ear, he heard Harry rattle off a location he already knew was in Ballard. It didn’t surprise him when Harry added the warning, “And if I were you, I wouldn’t eat breakfast first.”

Josh had known it wasn’t all a dream. But hearing Harry’s warning had him turning to Skye. “Harry has a double murder. Two women this time, same house.”

More awake now, she pushed her hair from her face. “You tossed and turned all night, Josh. Does that have anything to do with the fact we’re crawling out of bed to go to another crime scene?”