Page 72 of Wind Called

“What do we do now?” she said, worried gaze fixed on the crushed manzanita bush and its grisly burden. “I mean, I guess we should call the police?”

Judging by the way those words ended on an upward inflection, he had to believe she wasn’t entirely sure that contacting the authorities was the best option.

And Marc knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“What are we supposed to tell them?” he responded, hoping he sounded reasonable as he made the argument. “The guy’s invisible, Bellamy. That’s not the sort of thing we can easily explain away.”

Her mouth pursed, and she gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose so. But what…are you saying we should just leave him here? I don’t know if I can do that.”

Marc wasn’t sure he could, either. Or rather, while he wouldn’t report the man’s death to the authorities, he wouldn’t leave him to be pecked at by vultures, either.

Somehow he had the feeling they’d still find the body, even if it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

“We’ll bury him,” he said, and Bellamy now looked aghast.

“With what? It’s not like either of us packed a shovel.”

No, they hadn’t, and despite the rain from a few days earlier, the ground was hard-packed and dry. On the other hand….

“There are plenty of rocks all over the place,” he said. “We’ll make a cairn.”

She still didn’t appear too thrilled by the suggestion, but because she couldn’t really argue with him on that point — not when there were red rocks and other stones scattered pretty much everywhere you looked — she only nodded. “Okay.”

First, though, they needed to get the body off that manzanita bush. Luckily, Marc always kept a pair of work gloves in his backpack, since you never knew what you might find along the trail.

However, he’d never expected to use those gloves to move a dead body.

Because the guy had been so thin, it wasn’t as difficult as Marc had feared to lift him off the manzanita and lay him on the ground. Bellamy had already headed out to collect rocks, coming back with some likely specimens before ranging a little farther afield to grab some more.

And even though the last thing he wanted was to rifle a dead man’s pockets, he knew he had to check to see if the thief had any I.D. on him. Probably a long shot, since he doubted the guy would want to carry anything that might identify him, but he still needed to check to make sure.

Assuming those things wouldn’t also remain invisible.

No wallet, no driver’s license, not even a library card. In one pocket, Marc found a folded twenty-dollar bill — one that appeared to him clear as day as soon as he removed it from the dead man’s pants — and in another, a small, folded piece of paper.

When he opened it up, he saw it was a ticket for this past Tuesday’s mega-millions drawing.

What in the world was a magical thief doing with a lottery ticket? Hoping for a big win so he wouldn’t have to be the Collector’s lackey anymore?

Marc couldn’t begin to guess. Rather than waste time on speculation, he stuffed the ticket in his pants pocket, figuring they could check the numbers later.

“What’s that?” Bellamy asked as she set some more rocks on the ground next to the small pile she’d begun making.

“A lottery ticket,” he replied, and she blinked.

“From our guy?”

He nodded.

A frown touched her brow. “He didn’t seem like the type of person to be interested in material stuff like that.”

No, he didn’t, but people had their odd quirks. Maybe the guy just liked picking up a ticket every time he got gas, or something like that.

Marc shrugged. “True, but it’s definitely a lottery ticket. The only other thing I found was a twenty-dollar bill, so I have a feeling he paid cash for it.”

Which meant there wouldn’t be any kind of paper trail to connect the man to the ticket. He hadn’t signed it, so that made the ticket pretty much open season for anyone who found the thing.

“We can check the numbers when we get back in town,” he said, and Bellamy sent him a wide-eyed stare.

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