Blood Ties Read Online Free Page A

sections of most DIY stores.
    Hollis pushed aside that wry realization and continued to study the remains. The bear, she decided, had… pawed… a bit, so it was difficult to even guess in what position she had been when she’d been dumped here. Right now she was more or less faceup, forearms, wrists, and hands mostly beneath her and legs twisted, splayed apart at the thigh area but tangled together around the ankles and feet.
    There was no sign of another plastic tie, but Hollis wondered if the ankles had been bound as the wrists were. Possibly.
    There was also, she realized suddenly, absolutely no sign of any clothing whatsoever. It made her throat tighten to think of a young woman, perhaps already dead or perhaps still alive, in agony and terrified, dumped here in a wilderness of dirt and vines, bound and naked. So unspeakably vulnerable. So very alone.
    It stirred memories Hollis would have given much to forget.
    “Hey.”
    Hollis nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked up and was angrily aware of the crack in her voice when she demanded, “Where the hell did you come from?”
* Chill of Fear
* Touching Evil
    Two
    W EST,” REESE DEMARCO REPLIED matter-of-factly. “I’d finished searching my grid and was heading back when I heard the shots.”
    Of course it would have to be him . Hollis abruptly remembered that DeMarco was, among other things, telepathic, and she made rather a production of rising to her feet and brushing off the knee of her jeans.
    “There was a bear,” she explained briefly. “We scared it off. Diana went to report while I waited here.”
    “Ah.” He looked down at the remains, his coldly handsome face as usual utterly without expression. He was dressed as casually as the rest of the SCU team was today, in jeans and a white shirt underneath a lightweight windbreaker, but the informal attire did nothing to soften the almost military crispness of his stance and movements, that truly visible sense of considerable strength and the training and ability to know how best to use it.
    Hollis had seen that in other ex-military types, but in DeMarco there was something just a little bit… excessive… in his straight posture and almost hypersensitivity to his surroundings. He seemed to her too alert, too ready to explode into action. He made her think of a cocked gun, and she had no idea whether a dangerous hair trigger lurked inside him.
    She couldn’t see his aura unless he allowed her to.
    He wasn’t allowing her to.
    “I gather the bear discovered these remains?”
    She shoved the oddly disjointed thoughts aside. He’s a telepath, remember? Don’t let him into your head . Not that she had any kind of a shield she could use to keep him out if he wanted in. Dammit. “Yeah.”
    “Is that what brought you two so far off the trails?”
    “Not exactly.”
    His gaze shifted, pale blue eyes fixed intently on her face. “You know, we are on the same side, Hollis. You don’t have to be so guarded with me. I’m not trying to read you.”
    She wondered if that meant he wasn’t reading her—or simply didn’t have to try in order to read her. She didn’t have the nerve to ask. “Was I being evasive? Sorry. Diana and I weren’t following the bear, we were following a spirit who led us to this area. Then we found the bear. Which had just found what was left of this body.”
    “That must have been an interesting encounter.”
    “You could say.”
    DeMarco returned his dispassionate attention to the remains. “Probably female, probably on the young side. Blond. Great teeth. Her hands were bound behind her back and there’s no sign of clothing, so highly unlikely this was an accidental death. Most likely a sexual assault, though whether that was the intent from the beginning is impossible to say. That’s as far as my crime-scene and forensic knowledge can take me.”
    “About the same for me. Except that it seems obvious she’s been out here longer than the male victim.”
    “Yes. The bear