Unraveling the Past

Layne snorted. “He has too much control to snap. Besides, she’s just messing with him.”

But Evan was completely serious. Nervous. God, had she ever been that young? That earnest?

“How can you tell?” he asked.

“Let me explain it to you, grasshopper. Once, many moons ago, I was a teenage girl myself. Plus I raised my younger sisters who, at one time or another, were also teenage girls.” And thank the dear Lord those years were over. “Believe me, that scream wasn’t real.”

It was a cry for help, though. One she doubted Chief Ross Taylor would heed.

Not her problem, she assured herself. She’d raised her sisters, had taken care of her family. She’d done her time.

“Captain?” Taylor’s voice came through her radio as clearly as if he stood beside her.

“See?” she said to Evan as she unhooked the radio. She lifted it and clicked the talk button. “Yes, Chief?”

“Turn them loose.”

Her jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

“The kids. Give them a warning and let them go.”

“And here I thought we were going by the precept of the law being black and white.”

“Let. Them. Loose. Have Campbell escort anyone you suspect of drinking home. They are not to drive. Am I clear on that, Captain?”

“Crystal,” she managed to say. As if either she or Evan would let some kid—or anyone else—get behind the wheel after they’d been drinking. “Anything else? Sir.”

“I want Campbell to walk each child to their doors and make sure they are remanded into the custody of their parents. As soon as you’ve given him his orders, get back out here with me. Bring some flares, a blanket and a camera.”

Flares? A blanket and camera? She could feel Evan watching her curiously. She flicked the radio’s button. “Uh, Chief, I’m not sure what you think you and I are going to do with a blanket and a camera—”

He growled. The man literally growled at her. “Get out here. Now.”

Yet one more item to add to his growing list of faults. No sense of humor.

When the radio remained silent for three heartbeats, she clipped it back to her belt. “You heard him,” she told Evan. “We have our orders.”

She helped Evan transfer the girls into his car, the brunette still sniffling. Poor Evan. Layne didn’t envy his job, dealing with four teens and their parents.

But she did thank God—and Chief Taylor—she didn’t have to do it.

She returned to her cruiser for a blanket, flares and the camera she kept in the trunk. Looping the camera’s strap around her neck, she tucked the blanket under her arm, turned on her flashlight and headed back into the woods.

Whatever had happened must be big for “there’s right and there’s wrong” Chief Taylor to let those kids go with a warning. Or maybe Evan had it right. Maybe spending so much time in a town so small it didn’t even have a Starbucks, combined with his niece’s wild ways and running a department of officers who didn’t want him there, had finally gotten to Taylor and he’d cracked. At least enough to dislodge that stick he had up his ass.

Or maybe he decided to listen to her good sense on this one.

And that was as likely as Layne handing in her badge to follow in her father’s footsteps. Or, even more impossible, her mother’s.

Okay, maybe there had been plenty of times when she’d thought Chief Gorham should’ve been less…flexible…with the law. It was a danger having kids partying and then getting behind the wheel of whatever car mommy and daddy had bought for them.

So, no, she couldn’t honestly say she didn’t back Chief Taylor. She just wouldn’t. Say it, that was. To him or anyone else. Not when she should be the one calling the shots, not some hotshot detective from Boston.

Twigs and dead leaves crunched under her boots as she approached the spot where she’d left the chief and his niece. Still a good fifty yards away, she heard them before she saw the glow of the chief’s flashlight.

“—found it in the first place,” the girl was saying, her words not quite as slurred as they’d been earlier.

“For the last time, you’re not getting a reward,” Taylor said gruffly. Impatiently. “Drop it.”

“You suck,” the girl snapped but underneath the bite in her tone, Layne heard the threat of tears. And wouldn’t it be interesting to see how Taylor handled an angry, drunk, weeping teenager?

But he didn’t handle it. He didn’t make any response at all. No attempt to either reprimand or soothe the girl. He continued searching the ground by the end of a fallen tree as if his niece hadn’t even spoken. As if she wasn’t even there.

No chance of this guy winning Uncle of the Year.

He must’ve heard Layne’s approach because he turned, the light from his flashlight skimming over her before he lowered it. “We have a situation.”

“I gathered.” She stepped over a rock and handed him the flares. “What’s up?”

He aimed his flashlight so the beam hit the ground at the end of the log. Illuminating a dirt-encrusted skull.

Layne’s eyes widened. “Yes, I’d say that is definitely a situation.” And not what she’d expected. Not in Mystic Point.

She knelt next to the skull, discerned it was human and, as far as she could tell in the dark, very real. Chills broke out on her forearms. “How’d you even see it?”

“Jess stumbled upon it looking for her phone.”

“Which he’s holding hostage,” the girl—Jess—said, slouched on the far end of the log.

Taylor didn’t even glance her way. “Not the time, Jessica.”

Layne pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll contact the state forensics lab…have them send a team out here.”

“Already have one on the way. I’ve also contacted all available officers. We’ll get some lights out here and start a search for the rest of the remains.”

“I’m not staying while you hunt for more bones.” Jess wrapped her arms around her legs, her entire body shaking. “I want to go.”

“We will,” Taylor said. “Soon.”

“I’m cold,” Jess whined in a tone guaranteed to make dogs howl. “And I don’t feel good.”

Taylor’s jaw moved, as if he was grinding his teeth to powder. “Then I guess you shouldn’t have been drinking.” But he took the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Surprise, surprise. Maybe he wasn’t a heartless cyborg after all.

Jess shrugged him off, the blanket sliding to the ground. “I want to go home.” Her voice cracked on the last word, her eyes shimmered with tears she tried to blink back. “Could you tell him to let me go home?” she asked Layne. “Please?”

Layne couldn’t help it, though Jess had no one else to blame for the vomit on her clothes, the dirt in her hair, the drying blood on her knees—Layne’s heart went out to the kid. She seemed so…lost.

Layne remembered that feeling entirely too well.