Deadly Promises (24 page)

“Where?” she asked.

“You always this suspicious?”

“Joe taught me to gamble, so yes.”

“O’Hare Airport.” He removed the jokers and shuffled the deck. When he was finished he let her cut the cards.

“What are we betting?” she asked. “I don’t keep cash around ever since the break-in. Oh, wait.” She popped up and disappeared into the back of the camper. He heard her shuffling around, and then she returned with four rolls of quarters. “Laundry money,” she said, dropping the rolls on the tables.

Gage dug a twenty-dollar bill out of his bag and traded it for two of the rolls.

He dealt. She picked up her cards, and a wicked smile spread across her face, as if he’d just given her a pair of aces. But he saw straight through her bluff.

He checked his cards. He’d play five or six hands with her. Ten, tops. He glanced across the table. Her tongue swept over her upper lip as she contemplated her cards.

Gage’s gut tightened. This was a bad idea. He should be doing recon right now, not playing poker with his CO’s niece.

He looked at Kelsey. He looked at his cards. And he knew, with certainty, that this wasn’t going to be his lucky night.

Six

The bones were buried in a shallow grave about thirty yards west of the highway. It wasn’t ground-penetrating radar or a metal detector or any other gadget that led to their discovery, but rather the eagle-eyed gaze of a seventy-two-year-old anthropologist.

“Nature doesn’t like straight lines,” Dr. Robles had said, after calling Kelsey over to have a look at the rectangular pile of rocks. They hardly stood out against the stony creek bed but Robles was right—on close inspection the arrangement looked man-made.

After it became clear what he’d found, Robles returned to the shade of the caves, taking most of the students with him. A few stragglers loitered behind, clearly more interested in recent bones than ancient ones.

Kelsey shut out all distractions now as she worked within the string boundaries she’d staked out around the site. After thoroughly photographing the area, she’d removed dozens of rocks, examining each for any sign of trace evidence before laying it aside. After just the first layer she’d begun to find scraps of rotten clothing and human bones: an ulna, a radius, several metacarpals. When the full arm took shape, she stood up and photographed it from multiple angles before moving on to the thoracic cage.

The sun blazed down. The minutes crawled by. She was at the digging stage now, and with every scoop of her trowel and swipe of her brush her sense of alarm grew. A leather belt. A scrap of rope. The tattered remnants of a pair of blue jeans.

A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up, expecting to see Aaron. Instead it was Gage, who’d spent the better part of the day on the hillside, watching God only knew what through his binoculars.

Kelsey returned her attention to the form emerging from the dirt. She carefully dusted a humerus with her boar’s hair brush, knowing that any marks left behind by a metal tool could be mistaken later for signs of violence.

“Still no sheriff,” she muttered.

“A deputy’s on his way,” Gage said. “Sattler just called the phone at the dig site.”

Kelsey gritted her teeth. It was late afternoon. She could have used the sheriff’s help this morning.

Gage knelt beside her, respecting the string boundary she’d erected around the grave. He watched her for a moment.

“You all right?” he asked in a low voice.

“Fine.”

“You’re shaking.”

“Adrenaline,” she said. “It always happens to me.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“Not unless you want to be subpoenaed to testify at a murder trial.”

Gage glanced down at the remains as she brushed away another clump of dirt. It was the rope. Seeing this man’s wrists still trapped in their bindings made her feel… not anger, exactly, but a consuming sense of injustice.

Gage put a hand on her shoulder. “You need some water?”

“I just need to concentrate.” She glanced up. His blue eyes were filled with compassion, and she realized she was being brusque.

She sat back on her haunches and sighed. “I’m fine, thank you.”

He leaned over and kissed her. Just a soft brush of his lips against hers.

A few seconds ticked by before she could speak.

“What was that for?”

“I don’t know.” His hand dropped away. “You looked sad.”

For a moment, they stared at each other. Then he stood up, and she realized there was a car coming. She got to her feet and recovered her composure as a sheriff’s cruiser pulled off the road. The deputy parked and got out, then retrieved something from the backseat.

To her acute disappointment, it wasn’t a cadaver dog.

“Dr. Quinn?”

Both Kelsey and Gage turned around to see Aaron trekking across the creek bed. Everything about her field assistant, from his tone of voice to his expression, telegraphed disapproval, and Kelsey knew he’d seen the kiss.

She snapped off her surgical gloves and stuffed them in her pocket. “What is it, Aaron?”

“We’ve got a problem. Dylan is missing.”

“He’s on the escarpment, photographing the petroglyphs.” She looked around for her water bottle. Where had she left it?

“That was after lunch. No one’s seen him since two.”

“Where’s Jeannie?” Gage asked. “Maybe they’re taking a little break at the mine shaft.”

Kelsey looked at Gage, surprised how clued in he was.

“Yes, ask Jeannie,” Kelsey said. “She probably knows.”

“She’s the one who told me he’s missing,” Aaron said. “Apparently they had an argument, and no one’s seen or heard from him in two hours.”

“I have.” This from Rohit, who’d just walked over from the other side of the creek bed. “I saw him back at camp. He asked me to go get a beer with him, said he was knocking off early today.”

“He’s supposed to be working the ossuary,” Aaron complained.

“
This
is why we have a sign-out sheet.” Kelsey checked her watch, annoyed. It was nearly four and Sattler’s deputy was just now arriving. He trudged toward them with a sour look on his face and a metal detector in his hand.

She turned to Aaron. “See if you can reach him by sat phone. If he’s in town, maybe his cell is working. In the meantime, I’ve got to get these bones out of the ground before nightfall.”

Aaron walked off in a huff, but Kelsey didn’t much care. She didn’t have time to track down truant grad students. The forecast called for rain tonight, which meant the clock was ticking on this excavation.

“If you’re good here—”

“I am,” she told Gage.

“In that case, I’ll help the deputy. Maybe we can locate a shell casing.”

“Start here first.” Kelsey glanced around, looking for any unnatural rock patterns. “I think there’s another grave.”

“You’re saying we’ve got two victims?”

She stared down at the remains protruding from the soil. “At least.”

“How do you know?”

She lifted her gaze to his. “Because this one isn’t missing a femur.”

G
AGE STOOD IN
Kelsey’s camper and practiced the SEAL art of making himself invisible. He didn’t contribute to the debate. Not because he lacked an opinion, but because no matter what Kelsey and Robles concluded Gage had already decided on a battle plan.

“I don’t see how much more secure it could be,” Kelsey was saying. “We’ve got a sheriff’s deputy patrolling the area and a”—she turned to Gage and seemed to bite her tongue on the word “SEAL”—“an armed law enforcement officer right here in camp.”

Robles nodded. “And their presence is appreciated. But I can no longer overlook the situation. Our dig is located near a dangerous highway. Two fresh graves are ample evidence—”

“Those crimes occurred months ago.” Kelsey turned to the stove and stirred the soup she was making. “And what about the students? Some of them are conducting research for their dissertations. They paid good money to attend this field school, and we haven’t finished what we came here to do.”

Robles shot Gage a look that seemed to say, “Help me out here.” When Gage didn’t throw him a lifeline the old man stood up from the table.

“Dissertations don’t matter in the scheme of things, Dr. Quinn.” He picked up his gray fishing hat and arranged it on his head. “Given the way you spend most of your professional time, I would think you’d know that by now.”

Kelsey stood silently, her expression a mixture of frustration and acceptance. She knew she’d lost.

“When the students arrive in the morning we’ll start packing. I want all the equipment loaded by ten.” Robles nodded at Gage. “Good night, sir. I thank you for keeping an eye on my field supervisor this evening.”

The incensed look on Kelsey’s face as he left the camper was comical, but Gage didn’t dare laugh. He kept his expression carefully neutral as she slammed around the kitchen.

“This is bullshit,” she muttered. “If I were a man, this wouldn’t even be up for discussion.”

“Yeah, but you’re not a man,” Gage felt compelled to point out. “And he’s right. This isn’t a safe place to be right now. Ultimately, Robles is responsible for everyone here, and you can’t expect him to take risks with their safety.”

“
I’m
responsible for my safety.” Kelsey waved her wooden spoon at him. “I’ve got my own private security detail. How much safer could I get? And I still haven’t finished my work here.”

Gage pulled two soup bowls from the crate where she kept her dishes. He was starving, and he was pretty sure she was in no mood to wait on him. “You were too busy getting mad to listen. Robles didn’t say anything about
you
leaving. He was talking about the field school.”

Kelsey rested a hand on her hip and watched him ladle soup. “You’re saying I should continue helping Sattler?”

He put the bowls on the table and sat down. “Eat,” he ordered. “And no, I’m not saying you
should
do anything. But I know you’re going to. I know you’re invested in this thing, and you’re not going to leave until you’ve finished. I plan to stick around until that happens.”

She watched him warily, then joined him at the table. “You’ll really stay?”

“I said I would.” He scooped up a bite of beef stew. It tasted incredible, and he knew he’d never be able to look at the MRE version with quite the same gusto.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I’ve got some rules, though.”

“I knew it.”

“We’re moving you into town, starting tonight. You can get a room at the lodge. And you’re only going to work during daylight hours. And no driving alone. You can pack after dinner.”

He held her gaze as anger flashed in her eyes. This woman didn’t like taking orders. Too damn bad. He wanted her in town, in an actual building, behind an actual door, not camped out in this piece of shit RV.

Gage needed a break from this place, too. If he had to spend another night in that sleeping bag that smelled like her, all the while knowing she was curled up, soft and warm in that bed just a few feet away, he was going to start howling at the moon.

Gage considered himself a disciplined man, but he didn’t have nearly the willpower he needed to spend another night alone in Kelsey Quinn’s sleeping bag. He’d already slipped up once today by kissing her at the creek bed. It had been pure impulse, a gut reaction to something he’d seen in her eyes. It had also been a mistake.

“What?” Gage asked, as she gave him a peevish look.

“I’m just thinking it’s no wonder you’re a lieutenant. You’re very comfortable giving orders. Reminds me of Joe.”

Gage watched her get up and take a pair of beers from the minifridge. He realized he knew very little about her background besides the fact that she was his CO’s niece.

As she sat down, he twisted the caps off both beers and slid one to her. “I take it you’re from San Diego?” he asked.

“Not originally, why?”

“You said you were close to Joe, so I just assumed.”

“We moved down from Seattle when I was nine. After my dad died.” She eyed him over the rim of her beer and seemed to read his mind. “Car accident,” she added.

Shit. “That must have been…” He shook his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, it’s okay.” She turned her bottle on the table. She didn’t look upset to be talking about it, just… resigned, as if the pain had been processed a long time ago. “It was my birthday. He’d driven up to Bellingham to pick up my present.” She glanced up at him and rolled her eyes. “It was a puppy. I’d been begging my parents for months. My dad found a litter of Weimaraner puppies for sale, so he was on his way to get one when a logging truck hit him.”

Gage didn’t say anything. But as he looked at her he knew he’d been wrong. The pain was still very real, she’d just learned to mask it.

“That must have been rough,” he said, knowing exactly how inadequate that sounded.

“We got through it. But I’ve always felt guilty, you know? Like I caused it.” She looked up at him and her expression was thoughtful. “Do you ever wonder how your life might be different if you could go back and change just one thing?”

Gage stared at her. It was like she’d reached out and slapped him. Had Joe told her about Adam Mays? Or was his paranoid imagination screwing with him again?

“Sorry. Too much information, right?” She gave him a phony smile. “When you asked about San Diego, you probably wanted to talk about the Padres, huh?”

The sat phone rang and she jumped up to answer it, saving him from a response. It was the DNA woman, Mia, and Gage distracted himself by listening in on their conversation.

“That’s right, two,” Kelsey said. “We discovered the second grave late this afternoon, but I didn’t want to start in case we got rain tonight… Yes… Uh-huh. It’s been disturbed by animals.” She moved to the window. “Say that again? It’s raining here and my reception’s bad.”

Gage watched her talk to her friend. She rested her hand on her hip and tipped her head to the side, as if considering something. She wore shorts again tonight, and he couldn’t stop looking at her legs. That first day, he’d thought they were skinny, but now he knew there was nothing skinny about her. She had the perfect body—all long, slender limbs and squeezable curves.

She caught him staring and he looked away.

“Gage found it, using a metal detector. It was near some spent shell casings. When we excavate tomorrow, I won’t be surprised if we find a slug mixed in with the bones.” She turned her back on him and parted the blinds to peer out the window. “Oh. Yeah, he’s… he’s new on the dig.”

Gage let his gaze roam around her camper as she exchanged shop talk with Mia. Her computer was stowed in the corner, atop a pile of files. Towers of books lined the walls. The sleeping bag he’d used last night had been rolled up neatly and tossed beside a stack of archaeology journals. Gage sighed. This had never happened before. Most of the women he dated tended toward the vapid, cheerleader type, groupies who hung around Coronado for the express purpose of picking up SEALs.

Kelsey was about the least vapid woman he’d ever met, and she in no way resembled a cheerleader. Gage would be willing to bet she’d spent all of high school with her nose in a book.

He looked at her legs again. For the first time in his life he’d fallen in lust with a nerd.

“I’m getting that advice from all sides now,” Kelsey told her friend. “I’m moving tonight. I’m sure I’ll be safe and sound at the lodge, so you can quit worrying.”