Page 51 of The Lost Bones
The shadowy figure knocked on the front door, which opened a sliver before being pulled wide. The figure slipped inside and the town car drove away.
“We can definitely just go in now, don’t you think?” Mackenzie asked, unbuckling her seat belt.
But then another car arrived.
“Wait. Let’s see what happens,” Nick suggested.
In the next twenty minutes, fifteen more cars swarmed up to the house, dropping off people whose faces Mackenzie and Nick couldn’t make out in the dark.
“Guess my hallucination was correct.” Mackenzie couldn’t stop herself from rubbing it in.
“Look.” Nick pointed through the windshield.
She peered through the binoculars. Someone had stepped out of yet another car. He was on his phone, and the glow from the screen illuminated his face long enough for Mackenzie to recognize him. “Isn’t that Mayor Rathbone’s chief of staff?”
“Shit,” Nick hissed.
“I feel like we’ve just walked into something we shouldn’t have.”
He tapped the wheel to some random tune. “We’ve had seventeen cars drop off seventeen people. Are they having a meeting?”
“Could be. I don’t know. We’ll have to go in and ask.” She was about to open the car door when her phone rang. It was Peterson. “Hello?”
“Detective Price.” Peterson’s voice was laced with unease, and there was a drone of mutterings and movements around him. “You need to come to the quarry.”
Her stomach folded in on itself. “Why?”
“We found Debbie.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
It was a sticky night. One of those nights when the air swelled with moisture, becoming soupy and viscous. But it just wouldn’t rain. Even the blackness around them felt dense and thick. The beams from the headlights illuminated the way ahead, but all Mackenzie saw was the abyss in front of her. It was so close, within reach of her fingertips. Like no matter which path she continued to go down, all roads led to there. It didn’t chase her. It wasn’t a predator. It was an inevitability. Nick was silent next to her. But she could feel the worry radiating from him. His hands fidgeted on the wheel. No voice came out of her either. Nothing went on inside her brain. All she could focus on was the feeling of being smothered.
Three women have been hurt in your name.
Three women had beenmurderedin her name.
Austin, Brett and his two children, and now Noor. One more innocent person whose life had been torn apart. One more innocent person who would have to learn to re-stitch the fragments of their life around a giant gaping hole left by the loss of someone they loved.
Nick finally came to a stop. She realized they had reached the quarry. Ahead of her were three squad cars, their red and blue lights illuminating the area. Uniforms were spread around, some of them standing in groups, peering down into the giant hole in the ground. Artificial lighting had been installed, the beams all pointing to where the body must be.
“Detectives.” Peterson nodded, coming up to them as soon as they exited the car.
“Who found the body?” Nick asked. “I thought we’d covered this area.”
“Patrol did. We searched here yesterday.”
“At least we know when it was dumped,” Nick said.
Mackenzie’s feet carried her closer to the edge, dreading what was waiting for her. She gazed down. Debbie was sprawled against the slabs of jagged rock. Unnaturally contorted. She was wearing the black dress she was last seen in. Her blonde hair gleamed in the lights. She looked like a doll on stage under a spotlight.
“It looks like the killer rolled the body down the quarry, but it got stuck on the way,” Peterson said. “We’re waiting for the techs to arrive to take pictures before we bring her back up.”
Mackenzie paced, biting the pad of her thumb as the crime-scene unit arrived behind the coroner’s van. Her limbs felt shaky. Nervousness bubbled inside her. What message was she going to find this time?
“The quarry.” Nick came up to her, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Last time the body was left in that barn, which was also one of our cases.”
“The quarry was your case, though. I wasn’t here at the time.”
