Alone (A Bone Secrets Novel) (16 page)

Tori regarded him, her eyes wide and her gaze distant, as they stood in the light rain.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She blinked and the moment was gone. “Nothing. Just…” She didn’t finish.

He brushed a raindrop off her cheek. “It’s not raining hard, but it’s that type of dense misting rain that absolutely soaks everything.”

She nodded in agreement, still quiet. Her gaze held his, but her walls had risen. A second before, she’d looked like the Tori of their youth. Wide-eyed and curious about the world. Now she was Dr. Peres. Quiet, observing, and impenetrable.

He liked this serious woman, but he missed the inquisitive girl of the past. He had a hunch the old Tori was below the prickly surface. The surface others like Mason Callahan saw and caused them to make snap judgments.

Was it his fault she had such walls?

He no longer saw her physical changes over the last two decades; now he felt her essence and it was a familiar place. His body and mind remembered it. He leaned closer, his focus on her lips, catching the scent of her hair stirred up by the soft rain. Her pupils dilated slightly. She inhaled abruptly, turned away, and stepped back inside the building.

Okay
…

He followed her inside, wishing she’d held still for five seconds longer, and saw she was striding toward her lab. “Hey! Hang on a minute.” Tori stopped and turned to face him. If he’d thought she had walls up before, she now had brick walls with steel supports guarding her thoughts. The stop sign she projected halted him in his tracks. Her chest heaved slightly, her lips clamped together, her eyes searching his.

Seth didn’t know what to say to her.

I was about to kiss her outside.

And she ran away.

“I’m sorry,” he started lamely. “I didn’t mean—”

“Forget it.”

“No, I don’t think you underst—”

“I don’t understand? You think I’m confused because the man I fell in love with almost two decades ago has shown up on my doorstep and wants to pick up where we left off? What’s not to understand about that?”

She had a point.

“You are under my skin, Seth. I know that. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to blindly trust you again and offer my heart up on a platter for you to do with as you please. I’ve made mistakes. Big ones. One named Seth and one named Rory. Those weren’t slap-a-Band-Aid-on-it mistakes. Those were long-years-of-soul-searching mistakes. Do you think I’m going to jump in for round two with you on a whim?”

She put her hand on her lab door and shoved. The door swung in and stopped with a
thunk
as it slammed into something.

“Ouch!”

“Oh, Christ.” Tori peeked into the room. “What are you doing in here?”

Over her shoulder, Seth could see part of a man who stood on the other side of the door. He moved and Tori managed to push the door the rest of the way open. A tall blond stranger in a wet peacoat met Seth’s gaze. The man’s green eyes were instantly suspicious and guarded.

“Anita said you were down here. She said the fire alarms had gone off?” The stranger didn’t drop Seth’s eye contact, but the question was obviously for Tori.

“Yes, we’re still checking around.” She glanced back at Seth, her brows narrowing.

“Rory, this is Dr. Rutledge. He’s considering Dr. Campbell’s position.”

Rory? Her ex?

“Ah. Dr. Campbell has always been a favorite of mine. Those are some big shoes to fill.” The man held his hand out to Seth, the majority of his suspicion gone in his gaze. Seth shook his hand.

Did his name not ring a bell with her ex? Or had she never mentioned him?

An odd sense of disappointment swept over him. When he’d ended it with Tori, she must have written him out of her life story. Could he blame her? What’d he expect? To be shared as part of her history as the one who got away? More likely he was the one who’d ripped out and stomped on her heart. He wouldn’t share that story with anyone, either.

The three of them stood there for an awkward second, not speaking, just looking from one to another.

Seth forced out some words. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s any sign of a fire or smoke from this room.”

Tori jerked slightly as if pulled out of a trance and gazed around the room. “Um. No. It looks—wait a minute.” She strode past Rory and stopped at some boxes on one of her metal tables. “What the hell?”

Seth didn’t like her angry tone. He moved beside her. “What’s wrong?”

“Someone went through these.”

Three boxes were strewn across the table. All their lids off. The yellowed color of bone visible in each one. Several bones were loose on the table.

“God damn it!” Tori picked up the loose pieces. “Someone’s mixed them together.”

“Aren’t they coded?” Seth asked.

She nodded. “But a lot of the numbers had faded to nothing over the years. I’d touched up some of them but not all.”

Seth peered in a box. Two pelvises. That obviously wasn’t right. He lifted them both out, feeling Tori’s watchful gaze on his movements. “I can read the numbers on both of these. Why would someone try to mix them up?”

A cold chill passed through him and he turned to stare at Rory. The man had his hands in his pockets and was staring at
the bones in obvious distaste. He moved his gaze to meet Seth’s. Comprehension dawned in the man’s eyes.

“Jesus! Don’t look at me. I’d stepped in here a few seconds before she whacked me with the door.”

“He didn’t do this.” Tori defended her ex. She snorted. “Rory doesn’t care for bones.”

“They give me the creeps.”

How in the hell had Tori ended up with someone like this?

“And you married an anthropologist?” he asked Rory.

The man shrugged. “She didn’t bring her work home with her very often.” Another light of comprehension crossed his face. “I see she’s mentioned me.” His lips twisted wryly and he looked at Tori. “Tell any good stories?”

“I don’t tell stories,” she stated quietly. “Why are you here, Rory?”

Rory looked at Seth, plainly unhappy that there was a witness to his discussion with his ex-wife. “Can we talk somewhere?”

Tori glanced at the pelvises in Seth’s hands. “I can’t now. I need to get these back in order. And we need to figure out who did this.” She met Seth’s gaze. “I told you I saw someone going out the back door. Do you think this is what he was doing?”

“Someone broke into your lab? How can they get past Anita?” Rory asked.

“Good point,” added Seth. “Are there cameras anywhere?”

Tori shook her head. “I need to do an inventory right away.” She carefully dug through one of the boxes, muttering under her breath.

Seth studied the coding on his two pieces and placed one in the correct box. Tori dug through the box his second pelvis belonged in.

“Damn it. Two left femurs.” She stared at the bones in her hands. “I can read the code on this one.” She squinted at the other. “This one’s too fuzzy.”

“We’ll get it straightened out. Do you need help?” Seth set the pelvis in her box, and Tori’s gaze followed his hands.

“Wait a minute.” She quickly scanned the box and then moved to another one, gaze searching. “Look in that box over there. Is there a skull?”

Seth looked and shook his head.

All the skulls were missing.

Tori swore and rubbed at her forehead. “Damn it. Someone doesn’t want them identified.”

Mason could tell Dr. Peres was steaming mad about the break-in. Those brown eyes of hers shot daggers in every direction she looked. She didn’t rant and rave, but held it in. Her ramrod-straight posture and tight jaw told him how deeply the mess affected her. Seth’s words about the bone doctor rang in his head, as she described what was missing.

Takes a bit of digging to get to know her.

Mason admired the anthropologist. She knew her shit and didn’t complain about hard work. He’d been to more than one scene where the woman was deep in the dirt for hours to find answers for him and for the families. He studied her face as she explained about the teeth on the skull she was 99 percent certain was Lorenzo Cavallo’s missing sister. The Bone Lady cared. She gave a rip about a woman who’d been dead for decades. That was something he didn’t see every day. Her frustration with the missing bones was plain in her speech.

“I’d like to strangle someone,” Dr. Peres said frankly. “There’s never been a break-in here, but today they steal my
bones? What really pisses me off is that I hadn’t done the full exam on some of the missing pieces. I have photos and X-rays, thank God. But I didn’t get to spend the in-depth time with them that I like to.”

“You can tell a lot from the X-rays, right?” Ray Lusco asked.

She nodded. “Age, breaks, ancestry, health. A number of things. But nothing is better than having the actual bones in my hands.”

Mason glanced at the other two men in the room. Seth Rutledge stood silently, arms across his chest, feet planted firmly, his gaze locked on Dr. Peres’s face as she spoke. Next to him stood the ex. Mason had never met Rory Gibbs. But what he’d learned in the last fifteen minutes told him he hadn’t missed out. Other than a brief greeting and introduction, Mason hadn’t spoken to the man, but he’d watched him carefully. Rory Gibbs couldn’t stand still. He shifted his weight constantly, scanned the room, and eyed Seth Rutledge with annoyance. Dr. Rutledge ignored him.

The man had no focus, Mason decided. And he was a college professor? He was as antsy as a student during a lecture on dirt. What had Victoria Peres seen in the guy? Mason was perturbed by his adult ADHD vibe. In Mason’s experience, men who couldn’t stand or sit still were usually guilty about something.

“You didn’t see anyone around?” Mason directed his question to Rory. Victoria had finished her description of the leg and foot she’d seen darting out the door. Good thing Lusco had been taking careful notes. Mason’s mental notes were on Rory Gibbs.

Rory looked at him. “No. Nothing. Anita gestured me toward the back, saying Victoria was back by her lab. Anita was on the phone, speaking to someone about an alarm that’d just gone off. I know my way around. I’ve been here a lot.”

Mason waited.

“Well, not recently. Not since we divorced.” Rory shot a glance at Victoria.

Mason followed his gaze. Dr. Peres’s face was perfectly blank. Her previous frustration about the break-in carefully shielded along with her feelings about her ex-husband.

“Why were you here today?” Mason asked.

“I wanted to talk to Victoria.”

Mason waited again, watching the college professor adjust his balance and clench his fingers together. He judged Rory Gibbs to be the type of man who didn’t like silence and would fill in the holes.

“I wanted to know more about those girls who died. When I saw their names on the news, I realized two of them had been previous students of mine.”

Mason’s gut started to buzz.
The prof knew two victims?
“These girls were all in high school. You teach at the community college, right?”

Rory nodded. “English. All levels. We get lots of high-school students taking lower-level classes during the summer sessions. Gets it out of the way. Cheaper for the parents and one less class for their load during freshman year.”

“Were the girls in the same class?” Lusco spoke up.

Rory shook his head. “I already looked at my records. I wanted to be certain that I was right when I saw their names. They both took a one-hundred-level English class last summer, but on different days.”

“Did you check for the other girls’ names?”

“I only looked at last summer’s classes, but I didn’t see any other names from the news.”

“Who’d you teach?”

“Brooke Sheardon and Glory McCarthy.”

“Why’d you remember them?” Mason asked. “I’d think that the names and faces would blur together after a while.”

Rory moved his feet. “That’s true. But Glory’s name stuck in my head. It’s an odd one. And I had her in a summer session. We’d joked about her plans for the Fourth of July.”

“And Brooke?”

“I didn’t remember her until I looked at the class roster.”

“Were the girls friends?” Lusco had his pencil speeding along his notepad.

“I have no idea. I don’t remember anything about them except for the Fourth of July conversation.”

“They’re attractive girls,” Mason prodded.

Rory stared at him. “What’s your point?”

“Usually men remember pretty girls.” He held the college professor’s gaze, infusing his comment with a hint of slime.

“What the hell?” Dr. Peres spit the words. “What are you saying, Callahan?”

“I’m just trying to prod his memory a bit. If the girls hung out together through the college, that’d be the first connection we’ve managed to establish. Actually you’re the first connection we’ve found, Professor Gibbs. We haven’t been able to tie them together at all.”

“If they’d been in the same class, I’d say that’s a connection,” Rory argued. “But being in different classes on different days is pretty weak.”

“No, not the class. You. You’re the common denominator.” Mason showed the professor his teeth. “I’m glad we ran into you today.”

Mason swore Gibbs’s face paled two shades.