Page 5 of Risky Passion

Onyx’s ears pricked forward, and she shifted onto her forequarters.

"You okay, girl?" I ran my hand over her back.

She responded with another twitch of her nose, sampling the air. She stiffened, and her powerful body tensed.

"What've you got, girl?"

A low growl rumbled in her throat, and I scanned the area, searching for kangaroos or other wildlife that might’ve caught her attention. But as I brushed over her back, the tension in her muscles wasn't playful; it was primal.

She meant business.

"You got a scent, girl?"

Onyx dropped her gaze to the ground and pawed at the freshly dug dirt. Her claws scraped through the loose soil, scattering crumbs onto the exposed skull below.

Damn it. She’s detected another body.

Adrenaline spiked through me as I stepped to her side. "Onyx, show me."

She bolted away with her focus locked on something only she could smell.

I didn't expect her to go far because every grave we'd uncovered to date had been clustered in the same area, but Onyx charged past the flags marking the burial sites, heading toward the crumbling shack at the far edge of the main building. I grabbed the shovel and sprinted after her with my pulse hammering in my ears.

While Onyx bounded effortlessly over the sea of shrubs and weeds, following some scent invisible to me, I stumbled after her, forced to either dodge around or bulldoze through the dense bushes. It was like running through a field of steel wool. The shovel wobbled over my head like a clumsy baton in an endless army drill.

At the back of the building, near a cluster of crumbling remains I couldn’t make out from this distance, Onyx froze.

By the time I caught up, her lip was quivering and drool drippedfrom her muzzle. She stood rigid beside what was left of a fountain, her hackles raised and a low, guttural growl vibrating in her throat.

My pulse spiked. She’d found something.

I laid a hand on her shoulder. “Good girl. Show me.”

She pawed at the ground near the cracked edge of the fountain, scraping her claws at the soil. I frowned. Most of the dirt around the fountain and nearby area was choked with knee-high weeds or dried into cracked, brittle patches from the long drought. Where she was pawing, though, the ground was smooth, and the weeds were conspicuously absent.

I drove the shovel into the ground and the blade sunk easily into the soft earth. This soil wasn’t compacted from forty years of weather and sun beating down on it. If there was a body here. which Onyx was certain there was, then the remains hadn’t been buried as long as those kids.

The stifling heat gnawed at the back of my neck and sweat carved a slow path down my spine as I dug deeper into the earth. The mound of dirt grew steadily around me, while Onyx hovered at the edge of the pit with drool sliding from her jowls like a predator savoring the hunt.

She lived for this moment, or more precisely, the treat at the end for her successful find.

For me, it was the opposite. Each shovelful of dirt unearthed memories I’d tried to bury for the last twenty years. Memories of my sister. Of the endless, aching search for her.

I didn’t want it to end like these poor victims, with a body in a shallow grave, but at least it would end. At least I would finally know, and my brothers and my parents.

But the truth wouldn’t bring peace. It never did. It would rip open wounds we’d spent decades trying to close, dragging us into another spiral of questions, pain, and the gnawing need to make sense of what happened to her.

The shovel hit something solid. Not dirt. Not stone.

I froze. Only two feet down. If this was another body, someone had gotten sloppy with their burial.

Setting the shovel aside, I dropped to my knees and clawed at theearth with my hands. Two scoops of soil revealed a glint of silver beneath the dirt.

Well, hello.

This was new. Every skeleton we’d uncovered on this cursed property so far had been dumped into the ground like garbage, their tiny bodies exposed to the dirt without even a shred of covering.

Whatever, or whoever, was buried here, someone had taken the time to wrap them in a tarp. A small gesture of decency perhaps, or maybe guilt.

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