So I’m just going to sit and wait to regain consciousness. Plunk my ass down on …
A body. I’m standing on a body, a long-dead corpse stuffed into the hole, that “skull” not actually bone but desiccated flesh with hair still clinging to it. Long dark hair. There are earrings in the leathery flaps that would be ears. Small diamond studs.
A lover bought me diamond studs once. The first guy I dated after my attack. No, not dated. Slept with. Because even three years after the beating and Blaine, all I could manage was succumbing to the physical drive to take a lover. He’d bought me diamond studs for Christmas, and I’d ended it then. Left those studs on the bedside table and slipped out in the night, never to return.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Shock. I’m in shock. Or asleep. I prefer asleep.
Dalton calls, as if from a mile away, his voice growing sharper each time he says my name.
I need to respond. Reassure him. Even if this isn’t real, I must reassure him.
I look up. He’s wriggled into that crevice so far I can see his whole face now, eyes anxiously fixed on me.
“It’s okay,” he says. “We’ll get you out.”
“I’m fine.”
“We’ll—”
“Eric? I’m a homicide detective. I’m fine. It was just a surprise. You tried to warn me. Thank you.”
There’s a too-calm note to my voice. Definitely shock. I reach up to rub my face briskly, and I catch the stink of the long-dead on my fingers. I fling my hands down.
Deep breaths.
Don’t let him see you taking deep breaths.
“So we have another victim,” I say, in that too-calm voice, and this is what’s really panicking me. Not the fact I’m standing on a body, but what that body signifies. Someone who did not get out of Nicole’s hole alive.
“We don’t know that,” Dalton says. “He could have fallen. Done the same thing you did, and if he wasn’t with a partner—”
“It’s a she.”
“Fine. She fell. It happens, and it’s a tragedy, but people disappear out here. Hikers, campers, spelunkers—”
“She’s not dressed for that. She’s wearing a sweater and jeans.”
He makes that growling sound—I’m annoying him with my logic. This is not the time for that shit.
I try to wiggle my ass down to take a better look at the body.
“Don’t—” Dalton begins.
“Homicide detective, remember. Not going to mess up my own crime scene. Except for the fact I am inadvertently standing on the body.” I curse and try to shift my feet, which only makes things worse, bones crackling under my boots, the sound making me freeze as I am all too aware I’m crunching a victim, adding insult to injury.
Speaking of injury …
Yes, let’s focus on that. What did she die of?
It’s impossible to even guess, given my angle and the way the body is wedged. I move as carefully as I can to one side, wincing as the corpse shifts with the movement. As it does, though, I see a hand. A brown-skinned hand still wearing a gold wristwatch.
I see that hand … while seeing both light-skinned hands of the poor woman I’m standing on.
“Eric?” I call.
When he doesn’t answer, I look up, and he’s not there, and I’m thrown into my nightmare, where he’s at the top of the hole and then he’s gone and—
“Eric!”
“Here!” His voice booms, and he scrabbles against rock. “I’m right here. Will’s back, and I’m getting the rope from him. Just hold on.”
“There’s another one.”
Pause. “What?”
“There’s another body. I’m standing on two victims.”
*
We’re back in Rockton. We barely made it to the edge of town before Dalton was off his horse, waving the reins at the poor resident who happened to be walking past. She takes them, looking bewildered, and Anders says, “Just lead him behind us.” Dalton’s making a beeline for Val’s. He gets about twenty paces and stops. Wheels. Snaps, “Butler?” and resumes walking.
“That’s my cue,” I say as I slide from Cricket. Anders reaches for the reins. As he takes them, he whispers, “He’s just freaked out.”
“I know,” I say, and jog to follow Dalton.
By the time I get there, Dalton is already striding into Val’s living room, having not bothered to knock, telling her we brought back two bodies and get the goddamned council on the phone now.
Val’s gaze shoots my way, as if begging me to tell her this is some terrible joke. But the fact that I’m standing beside Dalton answers that question.
She looks as if she’s going to be sick. Physically sick. For once, she does not argue when we demand to speak to the council.
Ten minutes later, Phil is on the speaker. He tells Dalton that, yes, he realizes it’s urgent, but Dalton needs to have Val call ahead and set up an appointment time.
“Yeah, fuck that,” Dalton says and launches into an expletive-peppered description of what we’ve found. “We need a doctor,” he says. “We have two goddamned bodies and no one qualified to examine them.”
Phil sighs. “If we haven’t found a doctor in four months, we certainly can’t do it in the next—”