Prologue
TWO MONTHS AGO
Ash Dominguez had worked in the crime lab for thirteen years, quickly moving through the ranks from lab tech to senior analyst to assistant director. He looked a lot younger than thirty-five, but he figured that would help when he hit middle age. He loved his job, even though he got into the field for all the wrong reasons.
Yep, he fell in love with forensics because of a television show.
But right now, as he stared into the grave that held the skeletal remains of four people, he froze.
He hadn’t expected this reaction. He’d investigated countless crime scenes; he’d processed evidence from thousands of homicides and accidents. He could usually joke around because dark humor soothed the soul.
But this tangled mess … he was surprisingly depressed.
Ash wasn’t a forensic anthropologist, but he knew enough from his training to recognize one male and three female skeletons in the solitary grave. They’d been buried together, one on top of the other, the bones a tangled mess as first decomposition did its job, then the storm had disturbed their resting place.
Ten days ago, when he’d been called out to rural Kendall County to investigate a rancher’s claim that he’d found six possibly human bones, Ash had been excited. They were indeed human, and they had been washed downstream in a seasonal creek that had flooded in the late summer storm. Dozens of rivers and creeks had overflowed their banks, but there were two primary breaches where erosion, animal burrows, and the torrential downpour had created flash floods, including one that was nearly half a mile wide.
The bones that had traveled in the floodwaters were small and light, and Ash brought in a team from the university to help track the path they took. He’d been so excited to create a computer model of the likely burial spots, finding additional bones along the path with the assistance of the university’s anthropology department, and then when a team called in that they found the gravesite, right on the edge of his boundary, he nearly jumped for joy.
He wasn’t joyful now.
“What do we do?” Melanie Lee was a grad student with degrees in biology and anthropology and working toward a PhD in forensic anthropology. She was leading the university search team, and Ash knew he wouldn’t have been able to do this without her.
Like him, Melanie had been driven into this business because of a television show. They’d joked about it, but now it was no laughing matter as he squatted on the edge of the grave and stared.
Four bodies. The grave was deep, but it had been breached from the side, as the waters cut into the soil. The trapped air or disturbed soil or some other factor he would need a geologist to figure out had made the soil looser than that which was nearby, and the water flowed through the grave, taking bones and evidence with it. Now that the water was gone, the bones were partly buried again, as the silt and twigs and debris settled into the earth.
If there was any forensic evidence left by the killer, it was likely gone or contaminated. But these people deserved better. He didn’t know who they were, saints or sinners, but no one deserved to be buried in a mass, unmarked grave. And even though he didn’t yet know how they died, it was clear someone had intentionally buried them here, in the middle of nowhere.
“Ash?” Mel asked quietly. “You okay?”
He nodded, though he wasn’t. “This is a crime scene—I don’t know if they were killed here or dumped here.”
“So we call the sheriff, right?”
They were just over the Kerr County border, which created multiple jurisdictions—where the first bones were found and where the bodies were buried. It was a Kerr County case, but because it was a small county of less than fifty thousand residents, they used the San Antonio crime lab as needed. Ash didn’t know most of the law enforcement officials here. He wanted to call in the big guns from the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.
He also wanted to call in the FBI. He might need their resources to identify these bodies. To give these people justice.
“This is our crime scene,” he said, his voice stronger than he felt. “Create a one-hundred-foot perimeter and no one comes in without my say-so.” Kerr County didn’t have a medical examiner, so that would give him better control of the forensics and investigation. “I’m calling the ME and asking him to send in Julie Peters to help extract the bones. And I’ll need your help with this.”
“With what?”
“You may not have your PhD yet, but you have more experience than anyone in my division in forensic anthropology. We need to preserve as much evidence as possible and put together each skeleton, catalog every bone and what is still missing. Maybe we’ll be lucky and find a cause of death.”
“Ash.”
He glanced at Mel, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking into the grave. He followed her gaze. She was staring at the skull closest to them. Visual inspection told him it was from a male.
It took him a second, then he saw what she saw. The distinctive hole in the back of the skull. He wouldn’t be able to confirm cause of death yet, not without an autopsy.
But he knew what happened to these people. They were executed.
Chapter One
MONDAY
FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid signed the file on a multi-jurisdictional case she’d just finished and routed it to the US Attorney who would be handling the prosecution. Done. While Lucy loved being in the field, she relished completing an investigation and handing a solid case over to the courts. She certainly had no complaints about the mundane paperwork involved. After back-to-back complex and dangerous investigations, she was happy to be home before seven every night and had settled into a comfortable routine with her husband and stepson, Jesse. She’d even taken a three-day weekend to fly to Colorado with Sean to celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary. Their friend, and Lucy’s colleague, Nate Dunning had stayed with Jesse so Sean and Lucy could have some alone time.
Now, if only she could get her family to confirm who was coming over Thanksgiving, she’d be able to relax. Months ago, she’d asked if everyone would come to San Antonio for Thanksgiving to avoid traveling with Jesse. He’d been through so much this last year that she wanted a relaxing family meal at home. But no one wanted to commit. Carina and Nick she understood—her sister was pregnant and traveling with a toddler would be difficult and exhausting, but at least they said they would think about it. If Carina was feeling up to it, she wanted to come. But they would be deciding last minute. No one else had a good excuse.
She tried not to be down about it, but she missed her brothers and sisters. She sent one last email out to her clan and said she wanted answers by the weekend. Harsh, maybe, but necessary when Thanksgiving was only ten days away. Almost as soon as she hit send, her cell phone rang.
“Patrick!” she exclaimed. She hadn’t talked to her brother—the youngest of the clan until she came along ten years after him—in weeks and hadn’t seen him since she went through a hostage rescue training program in DC back in May.
“You sound good,” he said.
“I am. Sean and I were able to get away for our anniversary.”
“So I heard. Terrific. And Jesse’s doing well?”
“Adjusting better than I could have hoped.”