Innocence Road

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Chapter One

Most of all she regretted the drink.

Sour tequila clogged her throat as she stumbled through the desert. The rocks were sharp under her feet, but she kept going, moving through the darkness with her cell phone gripped in her hand.

Something sliced her thigh, and she tripped to the ground. An agave? She scrambled up, clutching the phone like a lifeline. She checked the screen. Still no signal.

Somewhere behind her, an engine groaned. He was getting closer. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw twin white beams bobbing in the distance.

She ran through the blackness, knowing that at any second she could fall off a cliff. How could it be so dark out here? She kept going, ignoring the cramp in her side as her lungs started to burn. Spears of yucca stabbed at her, but she ignored those, too. She had to hide, to make herself invisible. If she could just flatten herself into the ground.

She thought of Jordan’s worried face. Are you sure?

I’m fine. Really.

Headlights found her, and the world lit up white. Panic took hold, and her breath came in shallow gasps. No escape now. Still she plowed through the brush until her heart wanted to burst.

Then the roar filled her ears. Right on top of her, nowhere left to run. She hunched her shoulders and braced for impact, but the truck veered wide and skidded to a stop.

Everything went still. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

A spotlight hit her face. She blinked at the brightness as fear sucked the air from her lungs. She couldn’t see him-only the blinding beam and the glint off the gun barrel.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” His voice was low and tight. But calm.

Jordan was right. He really was crazy.

“Please,” she squeaked. “I’m sorry.”

No response. Just a soft click as he cocked the gun.

Chapter Two

The day Leanne Everhart’s life changed forever, she’d been cleaning out the garage.

Not that you could tell. After an hour of heaving paint cans and rearranging junk, she had barely cleared space enough to walk, much less set up a home gym. She was surveying her lack of progress when the call came, and she jumped into her truck without even bothering to lock up. Five minutes later, she pulled off the highway and rolled to a stop behind a patrol car.

Will Akers, twenty-four. Six weeks on the job. Relief filled his young face as she slid from her Chevy and slammed the door. The rookie walked over. His boots were dusty and his desert brown uniform fit snugly over the Kevlar vest.

He gave a crisp nod. “Ma’am.”

She managed not to flinch. “What happened?”

“I was getting coffee at around oh ten hundred-”

“Where?”

“The Texaco.” He glanced over his shoulder at the dinged white Volkswagen parked ahead of him on the shoulder. “This lady runs in. Said she saw my car and starts telling me how she found this girl. So I called it in and followed her out here.”

A woman got out of the VW. Tall, thin. Curly brown hair twisted up in a knot. She fisted a hand on her hip and shot them a hostile look.

Leanne glanced at Will. “Where exactly?”

“Over there. Right by that bridge.”

Leanne turned toward the parched patch of desert, empty for miles except for this narrow highway and a lonely stretch of train tracks. The routes paralleled each other to the east side of town before diverging at the water tower.

A wind whipped up, and Leanne pulled the sides of her flannel shirt together. In jeans and worn sneakers, she was dressed for swatting cobwebs and hosing down rat crap. With her hair yanked back in a messy ponytail, she hardly looked like a senior detective.

Will was watching her now, probably thinking the same thing.

“It’s Patty Paulson,” she told him.

“What?”

“The lady. That’s Patty Paulson. She’s an Angel.”

He looked blank.

“The Desert Angels,” she said. “You know, with the jugs of water.”

Leanne glanced at the railroad tracks as dread filled her stomach. Then she studied Will’s face. Beads of sweat slid from his temples, and the armpits of his uniform were soaked through, despite the cold.

“You call Izzy?” she asked.

“I haven’t-”

“Call her,” she said, giving him something easy. “And tape off this perimeter. We need fifty yards in every direction. I’ve got extra tape in my truck, if you need it.”

She set off through the scraggly plants. Her shirt snagged on an ocotillo, and she yanked it free. As she neared the train tracks, her gut tightened. The “bridge” Will had mentioned was really just a few feet of tracks spanning a rocky culvert that today-like most days-was dry as a bone.

Leanne scanned the area, noting the marks in the dirt left by Will’s department-issue all-terrain boots. Bits of trash fluttered in the breeze-scraps of plastic that to the untrained eye might look like flowers or butterflies. She paused at a set of tire marks. Deep impressions, wide wheelbase. Pulling out her phone, she snapped a photo before carefully approaching the culvert.

The dark rectangle of shade was a stark contrast to the sunbaked earth. Leanne crouched and took a moment to let her eyes adjust. The smell hit her, rank and pungent, and she was transported back to a sterile autopsy suite with a cohort of green-faced cadets about to lose their breakfast on the tile floor.

Flies buzzed around her head. Clamping a hand over her nose and mouth, Leanne waited for the form to emerge from the shadows.

She noticed the shoulder first-a round protrusion. Then the neck, the chin. As the image came together, Leanne’s breath whooshed out.

She was small. Almost childlike.

Leanne scooted closer, startling a beetle that scuttled behind a rock. She searched the ground for more insects. Blinking into the shadows, she made out the bare, splayed legs, the thin arm bent backward at an impossible angle. She forced herself to look at the face-a distorted mask that had once been a person. The side of the skull was crushed, and shards of bone peeked through strands of dark hair. The place where the nose should have been was all torn up, probably from scavengers.

Fighting nausea, Leanne shifted focus to the body, clothed in only a T-shirt that had once been white but was now a dusty gray. She tried to make out the wording across the front, but the fabric was ripped.

Like the arm, the hand was bent at a weird angle, and the skin of the wrist had been gnawed on by something.

Leanne stood up. Shuddering, she glanced at the sky, where a pair of buzzards circled. Back at the highway, Will was rolling out yellow crime scene tape as Patty Paulson looked on and the occasional big-rig truck blew past without slowing.

Leanne looked at the body again, studied the maimed face. A faint ringing sound filled her ears. This is you. It’s yours. No going back now.

She realized her phone was chiming. She dug it from her pocket and checked the screen.

“Everhart.”

“You there yet?” the chief asked.

“I’m here.” She turned north, so their conversation would be lost on the wind.

“What do we got?”

She took a deep breath. “Young female. Teens to twenties, I’d say.”

“Dehydration?”

“No.”

Jim McBride muttered a curse. “How long?”

“No idea.” She glanced at the buzzards. “A day? Maybe two?”

“Call Isabella,” he told her. “Do it direct, no radio.”

“We did.”

“Get her to photograph everything.”

“Roger that.” Something blue glinted from an ocotillo branch. Leanne stepped closer to take a look. “There are some tire marks here. I’d like to get a CSI down from county to make a cast.”

No response.

Leanne knelt beside the branch. A scrap of blue duct tape was caught on the spines. She glanced around, wishing she had some evidence markers. She stood and waved at Will, but he was busy cordoning off the scene with the yellow spool.

“Chief?”

“It’ll take hours to get them there,” McBride told her. “There’s a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler near Alpine. Everyone’s busy.”

“Well, you’ll see when you get here. I think-”

“Have Isabella get a photo,” he said. “And I want you and Akers to do a grid search. I’ll send Cooper and Rodriguez out, too. Comb the entire area. Get everything, even if it looks like garbage. Collect whatever you can, and we’ll go from there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any press yet?”

“Press? No.” The town of Madrone wasn’t exactly a sizzling-hot media market. “Nobody but us and the witness who called it in, Patty Paulson.”

“Christ.”

Leanne didn’t comment. The Desert Angels were a thorn in the chief’s side for multiple reasons, including that the organization had been founded by his sister-in-law.

“Sir, about the tire marks, I really think-”

“Not happening. We don’t have time to wait on county. The ME’s people are almost there. Collect what you can and then clear the scene.”

Leanne gritted her teeth. Without help from the county crime lab, they had only a part-time CSI who moonlighted as a nature photographer. Izzy was good, but she could only handle so much, and this was a major crime scene.

“Okay, I just texted Cooper, and he’s on his way,” McBride said. “You guys get that grid search done and get back here. We’re having a shit morning, and it’s about to get worse, so don’t talk to reporters. About anything, understood?”

“I got it.”

“No press whatsoever.”

“I understand.”

The ringing was back in her ears, only louder now. This is what you wanted.

“I’m making you the lead on this, Everhart. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This one’s all you.”

End of Excerpt