“I’m not a baby!”
Kat let them argue about it and kept riding, Toby keeping pace with the horse in front of him. They splashed across the stream, crossing to the other side onto the path that started up the opposite bank. They rode upward through the Ponderosa pines and firs, the horses straining, Kat’s heart hammering.
Beau was probably right. Some poor dying or recently dead animal had probably lured the birds of prey that were hovering aloft. Certainly whatever they’d discovered wasn’t an eighteen-year-old girl. No way. And yet the uneasy feeling that had been with her all day increased, and dread along with curiosity propelled her forward. A fly buzzed past her head. As she swatted at it, she caught the first whiff of a distinctive odor. Whatever the buzzards had found was already dead.
Not necessarily human.
She set her jaw.
Ever upward the trail wound until the trees gave way to the top of the ridge, a stony outcropping high above the valley. The sky was blue, the sun still visible over the treetops, the heat of the day still simmering.
Another powerful whiff of death and something else. Kat was about to turn in the saddle and warn Morgan when she heard Shiloh’s voice ahead of her.
“Oh, dear God!”
Kat’s stomach dropped.
Shiloh’s mount snorted and shied. “Morgan!” Shiloh cried. “Go back!” And she was off her horse.
Kat squinted ahead to see if they had found Addie, but her gaze landed on the body of a woman about Kat’s own age. Stark naked, she lay spread-eagle upon the rough stones. Her face was turned to the heavens. Her skin was rotting away, and the stench of death was heavy in the air.
Based on the level of decay, this corpse had been here for more than twenty-four hours. It was not Addie, though that was small relief.
“Go back!” Kat yelled to the horse behind her, but it was too late. As she climbed off her bay, she whipped her cell phone from her pocket and heard Morgan’s horrified gasp.
Geez, the poor kid.
Shiloh was standing over the corpse, trying to shield it from Morgan’s view.
Kat’s stomach tightened, and she had to fight a wave of nausea roiling up her esophagus as she stared at the body. The woman’s wrists were wrapped in rusted barbed wire, and she looked as if she’d been lying here for days, if not weeks. Her eyes were gone, and bits of flesh had been torn away, showing bone.
One thing Kat knew for sure: this was not Addison Donovan.
And that other scent . . . gasoline? It looked like the body had been doused in it.
With unsteady fingers, Kat snapped several pictures of the body with her cell, then put in a call to the Sheriff’s Department. The woman seemed familiar, like someone Kat had known, though age and death had altered her features.
Then she saw it. Something about the hair, the line of her jaw, what remained of her lips . . .
“I know her,” Kat said in shock, staring down at the decomposing body of the most notorious of the three missing girls from fifteen years earlier, her ex-earth science lab partner who’d been suspended from Prairie High more than once: Courtney Pearson.
Part Three
Ruth
Chapter 12
I see you everywhere.
Your thick, strong hands with stubby fingers.
Your wooly body, furred with man hair.
And your huge stature . . . giant and grotesque.
Just like the bear of a man packing bags into the back of her car. A solid young man with broad shoulders and thick biceps. Great guns. Built like a truck, just like him, her rapist.
Standing back as he loaded the bags, Ruth Baker couldn’t help but stare.
The clerk—PETE, his name tag read—was aware that she was watching intently. “Don’t worry, ma’am,” he said. “I’m being real careful. I know you got eggs and bananas in there.”
“Right.” She noticed the hands lifting her bags—hands that could palm a football. But they were not the hands of her attacker. Too thin, fingers too long. And his legs, visible below his khaki shorts and long apron, were hairless and tanned.
Pete was probably an athlete, maybe even in high school. Fifteen years ago, this young man was probably still potty training. She could let him off the hook.
Although it had been fifteen years, she still had a vivid memory of the details she had observed of her attacker. Certain images had broken through to her in the first year, sharp and distinct as the jangle of a wind chime, and she’d held them tight, clutched them as ammunition against a future attack.
Wide girth, furry skin, thick hands.
His face had been covered, but that had only made her cling to the scant features she could see. Wide girth, furry skin, thick hands . . . her mantra for years.
In those first terrifying years after the attack, there had been nowhere to turn, no one to share the heavy burden with here in Prairie Creek. She had avoided curious eyes in church and lived in fear of having her shame made public. Eventually she learned that she could hide her sins from her father and the congregation, but she could not stem the panic that flowed whenever she saw a man who fit her attacker’s profile.
All that changed when she went off to community college in Santa Barbara and discovered a rape crisis center just off the main drag of State Street. There she had found people who would listen without judgment, therapists who focused on healing instead of shame. Through her involvement with the center, Ruth had become inspired to study the field of social work and counseling.
She had learned not to condemn men like Pete, though her vigilance remained. As she told her clients, recovery was a process. Of course, she didn’t tell them that hers was still in progress. Every now and then, she had to remind herself that she had studied self-defense techniques and learned to avoid dangerous situations. She had moved on with the knowledge that it was a little silly to keep looking for a man who had sprung on her fifteen years ago. But sometimes threads of memory still snagged in her mind, and she let herself go through the list.
Wide girth, furry skin, thick hands.
She thanked Pete and handed him a few singles, which evoked a huge smile and thanks. As he pushed the cart back toward Menlo’s Grocery, she opened the car door and paused with one hand on the warm roof of the car. The cerulean sky vaulting over the mountains that framed the horizon reminded Ruth of how the weather used to energize her this time of year. Wyoming summers were full of activity from sunrise to long after dark, when starlight splattered the sky and fireflies filled the air. As a kid, she had savored the endless hours of freedom, swimming in lakes, catching fish and flying kites, caring for a friend’s horses, riding bikes into town with a pack of girls to buy ice cream or penny candy from the general store. Those were sweet days, a childhood spent in a bubble of faith and hope.