Blood Ties Read Online Free Page B

wasn’t the first scavenger to find her.”
    Hollis didn’t like the silence that fell between them, so she filled it with what amounted to thinking aloud. It was becoming something of a habit with her during investigations. Because, after all, with telepaths always underfoot, what the hell… .
    Besides, she wondered if he’d agree with her conclusion.
    “This body was left—what—a good fifty yards off the nearest trail?”
    “About that.”
    “Place like this, nobody’s likely to be riding or hiking. The trees and underbrush would hide anything left here from the air even now, without full summer foliage.”
    “Once it greens up, the kudzu would just about ensure anything left here would be hidden from two feet away. In any direction.”
    Hollis nodded. “This is a fairly level spot, but the slope is steep above and below it. Not all that easy to get to. Between the terrain and the wildlife, the chances of discovery are virtually nil. Or would have been, if we hadn’t been led so far off the beaten paths. So…”
    “So, unlike the other body, this one was not intended to be found.” DeMarco considered for a moment. “I wonder which is the most significant—that he was meant to be found or that she wasn’t.”
    That angle hadn’t occurred to Hollis. Still thinking out loud, she said, “The killer—assuming it was the same killer, of course—couldn’t have assumed we’d search this far out after finding the other body.” She frowned. “I don’t like two assumptions in one sentence.”
    “One’s a negative,” DeMarco pointed out.
    “Does that matter?”
    “Maybe. It’s not a wrong assumption, I’d say. In fact, the location of the other body should have guaranteed police focus would have been away from this area. And even with our expanded search, it’s well outside the grid. There’d be no reason to imagine any of us would have found this body.”
    “If the killer knows police procedure, sure. If it’s the same killer.” She paused, then said, “Are you suggesting the guy on the trail could have been intended as a distraction, to prevent anybody from finding her? Because it seems to me she was a lot less likely to be found if we hadn’t been here in the first place, combing the area looking for evidence in another crime.”
    “Maybe our killer is very paranoid. Or maybe he couldn’t risk even the chance that we might find this body.”
    “Because he has a connection to her? Because she wasn’t a random stranger to him?”
    “Could be.”
    “Then why not just do a better job of disposing of the body? He could have buried her.” Hollis didn’t know why she was arguing with DeMarco; his possibilities made as much sense as her own did.
    “Not out here. Too much granite to end up with anything but a uselessly shallow grave. And where there isn’t granite, the roots of these trees would make digging by hand difficult and time-consuming if not impossible.”
    “There are easier places to dig.”
    “Granted. But maybe he was short on time. Maybe he had to get rid of the body in a hurry.”
    “Okay. But—” Hollis felt it before she saw any sign of it. Tension, so sudden and powerful that it was like a live current in the air. Then DeMarco turned his head, looking at her, almost looking through her, and she saw his eyes change in a heartbeat, his pupils dilating as if he had been thrust without warning into pitch-black darkness.
    For the first time in months, she was able to see his aura radiating outward at least eight or ten inches from his body, and it was unlike any she’d ever seen before, distinctly unlike his normal reddish-orange high-energy aura: In this moment his aura was a deep indigo shot through with violet and silvery streaks.
    She barely had time to grasp all that before she realized he was lunging toward her. Even as he knocked her off her feet and carried her to the ground, she felt something tug at the shoulder of her jacket and heard the distinct, weirdly