Page 16 of Risky Passion

I clicked my fingers. "Almost forgot about you, girl, didn't I?"

The words were barely out of my mouth before her ears perked up at the rustle of the treat bag on my hip. My fierce police dog transformed into an overeager puppy, and her soulful eyes locked on my hand as I fished out a strip of dried chicken that I’d baked for her.

I ruffled the fur between her ears, feeling her warmth against my palm. "You did good today, Onyx."

The treat vanished with the delicacy of a shark attack, nearly taking my fingers with it. Some battles I chose not to fight, and teaching Onyx table manners with treats had been one of them. The irony of my K9's only disciplinary failure being food etiquette wasn't lost on me . . . I’d inhaled enough meals at the end of bone-crushing days to understand why she does it.

With the body secured under the table, I pulled my phone from my pocket and thumbed my brother Parker's number, but the call went straight to voicemail. Damn it.

"Hey, bro, got something smoking hot for one of your cases. Call me ASAP." My message was cryptic enough to get a callback.

Onyx snapped to attention with a low growl building in her throat. The crunch of tires on gravel carried across the grounds, piercing through the massive building between us and the parking area.

"Steady, girl. It should be Whitney."

An eternity passed before my triplet brother rounded the overgrown corner of the building, wrapped head-to-toe in white hazmat gear like some apocalyptic ghost. In one hand was his toolbox. In the other was his duffle bag, which was identical to the ones Mom and Dad had given to all three of us brothers for our twenty-first birthdays. Whitney was the only one who still used his.

“Over here,” I hollered.

As he changed direction toward me, he swept his gaze to the field of graves at the back perimeter of the property.

“How long has the body been exposed?” He cut straight to coroner mode as he set both bags down well clear of the pit.

“Twenty minutes, if that.”

He sighed as he snapped on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves over his suit’s built-in ones. “You get Parker?”

“Negative. Went straight to voicemail.”

He groaned and flipped his face shield down. “How did you find this body?”

“Onyx picked up the scent. We were over there.” I nodded toward the back of the property where dozens of tiny flags fluttered like paper ghosts, each marking where we'd unearthed another skeleton.

He knelt beside the grave, his suit crinkling as he ducked below the table to peer into the pit.

“She caught the scent and bolted straight here like she was possessed. That nose of hers is worth more than our paychecks combined.”

“Not exactly a high bar,” he muttered.

I couldn’t argue. None of us brothers had joined law enforcement for the money, but times like these reminded me why we'd chosen it anyway. It proved that not all bodies remained buried forever.

Whitney pulled a palm-sized LED flashlight from his toolbox and swept it across the contents of the pit. I caught his sharp intake of breath even through the face shield.

"This isn't like the others."

"Told you."

Whitney worked methodically, like always. First the photos, dozens of them, documenting every angle before anything was disturbed. Then, he stepped down into the pit, placing his boots carefully on either side of the tarp-wrapped body, just as I had done earlier.

The sun beat down like a blowtorch and sweat trickled down my neck. I had no idea how Whitney could even think straight in that full-body suit.

"Get some gloves on.” He nodded at his kit. “And give me a hand."

Pulling the gloves on my sweaty hands was a test in patience and I broke two pairs before I got them on in one piece. I knelt beside the pit,and following Whitney’s lead, I carefully tugged back the edge of the silver tarp. The material crackled like old skin beneath our gloves as we pulled it away from the head of the body.

“Detective Jaxson Foster, can you take the photos for me?” he said in a steady voice into his wrist-mounted recorder, keeping his tone all professional.

I photographed his process as he recorded his findings.

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