As she stood beneath a tepid spray of water to wash off the dirt and dust of the day, she tried not to think about the handsome cowboy who had asked her out to a barn dance.
Instead she focused on all the reasons she’d chosen to be unlikeable over the course of the years. She’d learned early in her career that being a petite red-haired woman with big green eyes made people doubt her abilities.
She’d had to work twice as hard, twice as long as men in her field to gain the recognition and respect of the people she worked with and for.
She didn’t like to be distracted from her work, and a hot, handsome cowboy would definitely be a major distraction. She had no desire for a relationship, so there was no point in being nice or dating. Her snarky attitude kept people at bay and that was the way she liked it.
She got out of the shower, dried off and then pulled a lightweight purple cotton nightshirt over her head. She grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and a new bag of cheese puffs from her stash of food and then settled on the bed.
She reached beneath the bed and tugged out a plastic bag filled with tabloids. She grabbed one of the slick magazines and opened it to begin to read.
This was how she lived, vicariously through the colorful pictures and outlandish articles about people she didn’t know, people she would never meet. It was safe and uncomplicated.
It was just after noon the next day when Devon drew Patience’s attention to the tent door. He stepped outside and she followed him, a slight breeze providing welcome relief from the stifling heat inside the tent.
Devon pointed to where a horse trailer had pulled up to a nearby small corral. “I heard from Adam Benson that a new horse was being delivered today. It’s a wild horse that hasn’t seen much human contact.”
“I didn’t know that you and the ranch foreman were so friendly,” she replied.
“He’s a nice man. I’ve had dinner with him a couple of times at the café in town.”
Patience turned her attention back to the corral. Unlike her, Devon often made nice with the locals when they were working a case.
She recognized Forest as one of the men who got out of the truck that had backed up the trailer to the corral gate. He moved from the front of the truck to the back of the trailer with an unusual grace for a big man and opened the door.
A huge black horse exploded out backward and then bucked and kicked across the corral’s arena to the opposite side of the enclosure.
The truck pulled away and Forest closed the corral gate and then rested a foot on the lower rung of the wooden fence and watched the horse.
“The men say he’s a horse whisperer,” Devon said.
“What does that mean?” she asked, wondering why she cared a bit about what others might say about Forest Stevens.
“It means he has a special touch, that he can communicate with wild horses and work with them to learn to trust human beings. From what I understand, it’s a true gift.”
“Interesting,” she replied and stepped back into the entrance of the tent to get back to work. What was definitely interesting and irritating had been Forest invading her dreams the night before.
Patience almost never dreamed, but when she did, it was either about the case she was working on or a story she’d read in one of her tabloids before going to sleep. She definitely didn’t dream about big, hot cowboys with brilliant blue eyes and warm smiles...until last night.
She’d dreamed they’d been at a barn dance, which in and of itself had been odd since she’d never been to such an event in her entire life. Still, they’d been in a barn and there had been music and laughter and he’d held her tight in his big, strong arms as they danced across a hay-strewn floor.
He’d been warm and so intimately close and had smelled of sunshine and wind and fragrant cologne. She’d wanted the dance to never end and then she’d awakened, appalled by what her brain had conjured up for a night fantasy.
She stepped back to the tent doorway and snapped her attention back to the scene before her, where Forest had stepped just inside the corral gate. He looked confident, yet at ease as the horse pawed the ground and eyed him in suspicion.
“Well, I’d love to stand around and watch Forest whisper, but we have work to do. Besides, I’m expecting Chief Bowie to show up sometime soon. I spoke to him this morning and told him we have enough information to indicate that the first victim we’ve put together from the top of the pit was definitely murdered.” Of course the first skeleton they’d pulled from the pit was the last victim of the killer.
Devon nodded and together they returned to the tent and the tedious work at hand. It wasn’t long after they’d taken a break for lunch when Chief of Police Dillon Bowie arrived at the entrance of the tent.
Bowie was an attractive man, but he wore the burden of this crime scene in the weary lines of his face and the grim press of his lips.
He paused at the entrance, as if waiting for permission to enter. “You said you have some information for me?”
She motioned him into the tent and to the steel table where a complete human skeleton rested. “We assumed that the people in the pit were probably murder victims. This would have been the last victim of whatever happened here, as we’re working from the top of the pit down.”
Chief Bowie nodded and stared at the table. “So, what can you tell me about it?”
“Not it, him—the skeleton is that of a young male.”
“How young?”
“Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen or so. Thankfully, the teeth are intact in the skull, which helped me with the age issue. I took X-rays and dental impressions so that you could use them to check with dentists, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like he’d had any dental work done.”
Patience paused to take a breath and then picked up the skull, ignoring the faint distaste that crossed Bowie’s features. “This young man was definitely murdered.” She turned the skull over to display a long straight crack in the center. “I would guess either a very sharp axe or a meat cleaver, or something like that was used to kill him. I’m leaning toward the meat cleaver due to the narrowness of the injury. It was clean and deep and probably killed him instantly.”
She set the skull back on the table. She pointed to another steel table. “As you can see, we’re about halfway through putting together the bones to this victim...also male and with the same kind of wound to the back of the skull—and that’s all I can give you so far.”
Dillon gestured her outside of the hot tent. “Have you been able to discern how long the bones have been there?”
“As you know when we first arrived on scene, we analyzed soil samples and any insect life present, and of course, the condition of the bones, and my guess would be twelve to sixteen years,” she replied. “I’m sorry I can’t narrow the time line any better.”
His frown deepened. “That means everyone on this ranch and the neighboring ranches are potential suspects.”
“I thought you’d already reached that conclusion.”
He released a sigh. “I had, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
“To make your job more complicated, I don’t think these people were all killed at the exact same time. The soil samples indicate the first body was buried twelve to fifteen years ago, but the way the bodies were stacked up, I would guess that they were probably killed over the course of a year or so. It wasn’t a mass killing that took place all at one time, but rather a serial kind of event. I’ll have better clarity about that when we finally get to the bottom of the stack of bones.”
He