The Body Finder (16 page)

She heard the musical ringtone of a cell phone, and even though the sound was far away, she instinctively patted her pocket to feel for hers and realized that she'd left it back in her car. Her mom would be pissed. It probably didn't matter, though, since she doubted she would have gotten reception out here anyway.

She climbed up, and over, a rotting log that was lying in her way. Her hand touched the slippery film on top of it as she maneuvered it, and when she was on the other side she wiped her hand against her jeans to rub away the slick sensation. She thought of Grady, trying to cram his greasy tongue down her throat last night, and she nearly gagged.

It was the first time she'd thought about what had happened to her, so close to this very spot, since she'd left her house that morning. It had been a nice reprieve, not to be consumed by the instant replays that had run over and over in her head, keeping her awake all night long.

But she let herself think of Jay. And of the kiss. And suddenly the damp chill that had been clinging to her evaporated in a wave of heat that started in her belly and spread like an uncontained blaze, flushing her from cheek to toe.

She realized that she was smiling now, and she had to force it away, not wanting anyone to see her as she searched in vain for the missing girl, grinning like the village idiot.

The cell phone was still ringing in the distance.

Violet looked around, trying to figure out which direction it was coming from, and realized just how easy it would be to get lost out here. All alone, in the dead of night.

Violet couldn't help but hope that was what had really happened. And that today, with the light on their side, they would find Mackenzie Sherwin, cold and hungover, confused and grateful to be rescued.

She heard another voice calling out for Mackenzie, and she looked around her.

She could no longer see the woman with the too-red hair, the team member that she'd been assigned to keep within visual range. She'd lost track of herself, and of where she was supposed to be searching, and she realized that she'd been moving without thinking, like a sleepwalker.

The sound of the phone grew slightly stronger, and she realized that she'd been following it. Searching for the source.
Drawn
to it…against her own will.

She could see another team's members, not too far away, and realized that even though she was breaking the rules by wandering off on her own, she still wasn't lost. It wasn't like she was out here on her own. This morning, the forest was swarming with dozens, maybe hundreds, of people. She wasn't alone.

She heard it again, only slightly louder, and she wondered why it was still ringing.

An ear-piercing bellow broke through her concentrated silence, and Violet jumped. She felt foolish when she realized that it was just another searcher, moving between the trees to the right of her, calling out the missing girl's name. She silently chided herself for being so skittish.

That was when she realized
why
she was so skittish…so jumpy.

It was the cell phone.

But it wasn't really a cell phone at all.

The sound that she'd been following, the sound she'd been drawn to, the very one that had pulled her away from her own search team as she wandered closer and closer to it…it was never a cell phone.

It was the sound of bells.

The spectral sound of Brooke's bells.

Far away, muffled, obscured over the distance…but growing clearer…stronger.

Her heart pounded violently, and her feet suddenly felt like they were mired in quicksand that was slowly sucking and pulling her down. She was afraid to struggle, afraid to move or even breathe, for fear of being dragged beneath the surface forever.

A thought flashed through her head that maybe
she
had never been moving closer to the sound at all, but rather
he
was out here and moving closer to her. She wasn't sure whether that was good news or bad. This was a man she'd been hunting. A man she'd been determined to find. A killer who needed to be stopped.

But why would he be out here? Now, of all times? Was he part of an assigned rescue team, searching through the forest and pretending
not
to know the fate of this poor girl? Or of all the others before her?

And, now, he was out here
with
her?

She suddenly felt trapped, and she wished that her father were here. Or her uncle Stephen. Or Jay.

And then the sound grew fainter, and Violet knew that could only mean that he was moving away from her. An unexpected panic settled over her as she realized that she could lose him. He could still get away from her, and they would be no closer to ending his reign of terror than they had been yesterday or the day before that. And no closer at all
to finding Mackenzie Sherwin or Hailey McDonald, both of whom were still unaccounted for.

Violet moved then, stumbling in an effort to keep up with the sound of the bells…not wanting to lose his trail. She caught herself before she actually fell and was practically running before she'd fully recovered. She passed through areas being searched by other teams and felt a little like she was trespassing on their assigned coordinates, but that didn't slow her down. Thankfully no one seemed to notice her as she rushed past them.

She barely watched where she was going, concentrating only on following the sound of bells that was resonating, louder and louder, as she drew closer to the man carrying it. She didn't bother planning what she would do when she found him, when she could see into his face and
feel
the imprints he wore like a tainted uniform woven from his monstrous deeds.

She was more afraid of
not
finding him. Terrified that she would lose him inside the vast, crowded, overgrown woodlands.

She didn't even see the man in front of her until she had run smack-dab into him. The impact knocked the wind out of her in a breath-stealing
whoosh
as she collided against his rock-solid chest. He caught her with one strong arm before she could fall backward from the force of the collision.

She was too stunned to be immediately embarrassed.

“Whoa! Are you okay?” he asked, not releasing his grip right away, probably afraid she was too klutzy to stand on her own two feet. He looked down at her with genuine concern.
“Do you need some help?”

Violet didn't recover quickly, and she looked up at him in confusion, still processing what had just happened. “I…uh, I…I guess I'm okay,” she stuttered, wondering at the buzzing sensation in her head. Had she actually hurt herself when she'd so gracelessly run into this man?

He let go of her cautiously, watching her for any sign that she might not be ready to stand on her own.

“Er, thanks.” She started to feel the lagging humiliation wash over her.

She took an unsteady step back and saw that, beneath his orange vest, he was wearing the standard-issue uniform of the Buckley Police Department. He was one of her uncle Stephen's officers.

She didn't recognize his face, and she silently hoped that
he
didn't recognize
her
, especially since she'd practically run him over.

“Sorry about that,” she offered lamely.

“Don't worry about it. Did you need something?” he asked her. He raised one eyebrow, studying her. “Did you find something?”

Violet had the sudden, inexplicable feeling that she shouldn't tell this man anything, and she wondered a little at why she would feel that way. “No,” she stammered, uncomfortable about lying to a cop. “No, nothing like that. I was just…leaving.”

He looked down at her, and she wondered if he believed her. She wasn't even sure that she'd been moving in the right
direction if she
had
actually been leaving.

She met his gaze, smoothing her face into what she hoped looked like a convincing smile. “Thanks, by the way,” she said, trying to laugh at her own clumsiness. “You know, for catching me.”

He smiled back and reached out to pat her on the shoulder. She felt the vague buzzing again, and she realized that it was coming off him. An imprint, probably…not all that unusual for someone who carried a gun for a living.

“Anytime,” he responded. “Just take it easy. Oh, and keep an eye on where you're going—it can be dangerous out here.”

His warning hadn't really been necessary. Everyone who was out here this morning knew just how dangerous it could be.

But Violet knew, better than anyone else, what the
real
danger in the woods was today.

She thanked him again and moved away as casually as she could, trying to maintain the appearance that she was calmer than she felt, all the while focusing to stay tuned in to the sound of the haunting bells that were still too far away from her. Once she was sure she was out of the officer's sight, she sped up again, paying little notice to where she was stepping.

The sweetly melodic sounds drew her closer…seeming to pull at her from the inside out.

She came upon it quickly, much more quickly than she'd expected, thinking that it was farther away…so distant. But now she was sure he was nearby.

She slowed down, only now noticing that her shoes were muddy and the lower half of her jeans were soaking wet and filthy. She wasn't cold, she wasn't even afraid, but she was shivering, and her teeth were nearly chattering as she shuddered all over. She thought that it must be the anticipation, the adrenaline coursing through her as she approached a killer, still not knowing what she would do when she saw him.

She looked around. The bells were nearly deafening here, louder even than they'd been at Brooke's grave site. A volunteer moved past her, but she knew when she looked at him that he wasn't the source of the echoes.

Violet was sure, beyond any doubt, that she would recognize the killer immediately when she saw him.

She slowly scrutinized the area now, searching for something that no one else knew how to find. She moved in and out of stands of evergreens and stepped around the giant ferns that sprang up from the damp, shadowed forest floor.

She passed other searchers, as voices called out from all directions, but nothing could penetrate the musical chimes of the bells.

She saw the oil-slick echo, like the one that had come off the dead girl in the lake, clinging to him before she saw anything else. It seemed to glow, shimmering over him in slippery ripples that danced over his skin, obscuring the rest of him from her immediate view.

Violet felt as if her airway were squeezing shut, making her feel unexpectedly light-headed.

It was him.

Brooke's bells…the oily sheen from the body in the lake…both
attached
to him. And there were other echoes too…
tastes…and smells…and colors
. There were too many for Violet to differentiate one from another, as they created something less innocuous than the staticky white noise created by those who had been laid to rest. Instead he carried them, in all their furor, parading them around like a bonfire that signaled to her.

She almost couldn't believe that she'd never
sensed
him before.

He didn't see her, and amid the chaos of the search, with all the activity in the area, she stood out no more than any one of the hundreds of volunteers in the woods this morning. She drew back, only a little, to watch him, unnoticed from behind the wide trunk of a tree.

His back was to her, and she could see that, beneath the imprints of death, he was wearing the same exact vest as the other searchers that milled around the forest. He had joined the search for Mackenzie Sherwin.
But to what end?

He turned sideways, and she glimpsed his face. Violet observed him. Only his behavior was different from the other volunteers. He was there, wearing the conspicuous vest, but he wasn't searching. He wasn't really even moving. He hovered…
waiting…
in the same place.

No one else seemed to notice, because to their eyes, and with their attention on other matters, there was nothing out of the ordinary about him. He wasn't young and he wasn't old. He was neither attractive nor unattractive. His bland
expression looked passive enough. And Violet thought that he could probably live his entire life in anonymity, barely given a second glance. He certainly didn't look like a killer. He blended perfectly.

She waited for anything unusual to happen, noting that he moved slowly, if at all, but never actually left his spot.

It was as if he were standing guard.

And then it hit her. And she saw it so clearly then that she couldn't believe she'd missed it before.

One of the colors, a sparkling, radiant green that he wore like an aura, shining through even the oily sheen that painted him, was also coming up from the ground at his feet. It shimmered brilliantly, hovering over the sediment on which he stood. Coming from the spot he was guarding.

There was a girl down there.

That was why he was here among the searchers, camouflaged like a chameleon in plain sight. To make sure that the girl in the ground was never unearthed.

Violet stumbled backward, nearly tripping over her own feet in an effort to escape him. She covered her mouth with her hand, stifling her own terrified yelp as she caught herself before she fell, and then froze, praying that he hadn't noticed the sound of her clumsy feet crushing the twigs beneath her. Suddenly everything she did seemed too loud to her…each carefully plotted step she took echoed loudly off the trees, each labored breath she took was like an explosion. She tiptoed away, but even that seemed too obvious, and she told herself that she needed to act normal…to behave as though
nothing had happened, and to sneak away unnoticed.

He never even looked up from his position.

Once she was far enough away from him, she looked around for help. It would have been too much to even hope to see her father or her uncle standing nearby. She wished she had her cell phone. She wished she had her pepper spray with her…and she cursed herself for leaving both of them back in her car.