Blood on Copperhead Trail Read Online Free Page A

Missy’s body, but she’d seen enough of the blood to know that the wounds were relatively fresh. Even taking the cold weather into account, the murder couldn’t have happened much earlier than the night before, and more likely that morning.
    Which meant there might be time left, still, to find the other girls alive.
    “Bolen’s going to go talk to the Adderlys.” Massey returned, looking grim. “He was pretty broken up about it when I gave him the news.”
    “He’s seen the girls grow up. Everyone here did.” She glanced at the grim faces of the detectives and uniformed cops preserving the crime scene as they waited for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation crime-scene unit to arrive. “This place isn’t like big cities. Nobody much has the stomach for whistling through the graveyard here. Not when you know all the bodies.”
    “I’m not from a big city,” he said quietly. “Terrebonne’s not much more than a dot on the Gulf Coast map.”
    “So this is a lateral move for you?” she asked as they started back up the trail, trying to distract herself from what she feared she’d find ahead.
    “No, it’s upward. I was just a deputy investigator on the county sheriff’s squad down there. Here, I’m the top guy.” He didn’t sound as if he felt on top of anything. She slanted a look his way and found him frowning as he gazed up the wooded trail. She followed his gaze but saw nothing strange.
    “What’s wrong?”
    His eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. I thought—” He shook his head. “Probably a squirrel.”
    She caught his arm when he started to move forward, shaking her head when he started to speak. Behind her, she could still hear the faint murmur of voices around the crime scene, but ahead, there was nothing but the cold breeze rattling the lingering dead leaves in the trees.
    “No birdsong.” She let go of his arm.
    “Should there be?”
    She nodded. “Sparrows, wrens, crows, jays—they should be busy in the trees up here.”
    “Something’s spooked them?”
    She nodded, her chest aching with dread. All the old tales she’d heard all her life about haints and witches in the hills seemed childish and benign compared to the reality of what might lie ahead of them on the trail. But she couldn’t turn back.
    If there was a chance Jannie was still alive, time was the enemy.
    “Let’s go,” she said. “We have to chance it.”
    “I’m not going to run into a pissed-off bear out there, am I?”
    She could tell from the tone of his voice that he was trying to distract her from her worries. “It’s not the bears that scare me.”
    “You don’t have to go now. We can wait for a bigger search party.”
    She looked him over, head to foot, gauging his mettle. His gaze met hers steadily, a hint of humor glinting in his eyes as if he knew exactly what she was doing. Physically, there was little doubt he could keep up with her pace on the trail, at least for a while. He looked fit, well built and healthy. And she wasn’t in top form, having lived in the lowlands for several years, not hiking regularly.
    But did he have the internal fortitude to handle life in the hills? Outsiders weren’t always welcomed with open arms, especially by the criminal class he’d be dealing with. Most of the people were good-hearted folks just trying to make a living and love their families, but there were enclaves where life was brutal and cruel. Places where children were commodities, women could be either monsters or chattel and men wallowed in the basest sort of venality.
    She supposed that was true of most places, if you scratched deep enough beneath the surface of civilization, but here in the hills, there were plenty of places nobody cared to go, places where evil could thrive without the disinfectant of sunlight. It took a tough man to uphold the law in these parts.
    It remained to be seen if Doyle Massey was tough enough.
    “You want to wait?” she asked.
    “No.” He gave a nod toward the trail.