“Joshua, what did you do or say to
someone in the Bureau to get you
shunted over here?”

Joshua felt his cheeks flush. “You don’t want to know,” he told her, meaning every word of it. He had no desire to tell Kyra all the stupid choices he’d made in the last eight months. He was probably lucky that the worst his actions had earned him was this dead-end investigator’s assignment. If this was the answer to that prayer—or whatever it had been—in his car a few days ago, it was a pretty goofy answer. “So fill me in on what we’ve got so far. Nobody at the Bureau seemed to have a lot of information.’

“That’s because there isn’t much yet,” she said. “I can let you have a corner of my office to use for your research.”

“Great,” he said weakly. Maybe this assignment would teach him to improve his attitude. A few weeks of working closely with Kyra would either reform him or send him over the edge.

MILLS & BOON

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LYNN BULOCK

lives in Thousand Oaks, California, with her husband of nearly thirty years. They have two grown sons. When she’s not writing, Lynn stays active in many ministries of her church, including serving as a Stephen Ministry Leader.

Lynn Bulock
To Trust a Friend

And those who know your name put their trust

in you; for you, O Lord, have not forsaken

those who seek you.

—Psalms 9:10

To Joe, always

Soli Deo Gloria

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

PROLOGUE

Would he be eternally condemned for breaking his promise? The Watcher stood in a clump of trees that hid him from the two old people with binoculars and pondered the question. It wasn’t as if it had been a promise to God, but it had been a promise to Mama and she’d asked him to promise before God. He’d kept his promise while she was alive, but she was dead now and he could hardly contain himself.

For six long years he’d been good. He’d gone to work every day, kept to himself, hadn’t strayed into those places that called to him and drew him toward the Bad Things. But Mama had died years ago and the pull of his promise was weakening. The voices had stopped whispering in his ear and were speaking out loud. The little girls had started staring at him again, almost begging him to take action. Before long he wouldn’t be able to control the voices any more. Promise or no promise, he was going to have to start hunting again. Soon.

For a long time just visiting here had been enough. Then, this year’s heavy spring rains had overrun the tiny creek, making it into a regular stream. The whole area had turned into a marshy mess, changing his special place so that he could hardly recognize it.

Nothing was in the right place. Things he’d hidden sat out in the open. His treasures lay strewn about, displayed for anybody to see. That was not a good thing. And now, when he needed to be alone, these two gray-haired old fools were here and they wouldn’t leave. They’d stayed in a twenty-foot-square area for more than an hour now, whispering to each other once in a while, pointing to something up in one of the trees.

Suddenly one of them gasped, making the Watcher jump. He cursed silently as a twig snapped under his feet, but nobody noticed except maybe a bird that flew out of the treetops.

“Helen, don’t move,” the old man said to his companion. “Does your cell phone get any reception out here?”

“Why, Roy? What’s going on?” The old lady’s voice quavered.

“I found something I think the police are going to want to see,” Roy said.

“It’s not…a body, is it?” Helen’s voice shook.

Roy was silent for a minute. “Not exactly. It was a body once, or at least part of one. What it is now is a very small pile of bones. I can’t even tell for sure if they’re human or not.”

Helen sighed with what sounded like relief. “Just bones? Then it’s probably something a dog killed and dragged under here.”

“I don’t think so. Do you have a signal?”

“Just a minute, Roy.” The Watcher could hear the faint short tune of a phone being turned on. “Now it’s on. I don’t get the best reception out here, but it looks like I could make a call.”

“Good. Then dial 911.” Roy’s voice sounded firm.

“That number is for emergencies, Roy. I don’t see what the emergency is here. It’s not like anything is going to move.”

“Just dial 911, Helen. The police are going to want to see this before anybody gets a chance to mess it all up.”

“All right.” While Helen talked to the dispatcher, the Watcher realized that it was time to get out of here. Being here when the police arrived would be a major problem. Then he would be condemned for sure, and much sooner than he wanted to think about.

ONE

Just once, Kyra thought, it would be nice to be treated like a lady. In old movies and books, heroes were always holding up their hands and saying, “Please, there are ladies present” when people got out of hand. She wondered if anybody would ever treat her that way. Maybe this wish was a little over the top—because Kyra Elliott didn’t see herself as the ladylike type—but being treated like something other than one of the boys would be good.

It wasn’t as if she looked like one of the boys. She wore her dark auburn hair long, sometimes restraining the waves while she worked, but still in a feminine style. Her clothes were not terribly girlie and were often covered by a lab coat or evidence coveralls, but no one would have mistaken her for anything but a woman.

Still, there was something about her that always seemed to make the men she worked with treat her as if she was just one of the crew. Sometimes there were advantages to that, she decided as she watched her colleagues from the lab continue their mild harassment of a Maryland state trooper. At least they were honest and open around her. They didn’t try to hide their shenanigans, either.

While Bill and Terry pointed out all the more spectacular things about the contents of the body bag that the young man had brought in, Kyra stood nearby. The trooper, who must have been all of twenty-two, tried not to lose it in front of the two older, more seasoned men. He wasn’t doing all that well, turning a pale shade of green under his tanned skin and short blond hair. After a few minutes Kyra knew it was time to step in.

“Come on, guys, knock it off,” she finally said. “Don’t let them get to you,” Kyra told the young officer. “They only give you a hard time because all of this bothers them, too.”

“Come on, Doc, we were only having a little fun,” Terry grumbled. The older of the two technicians, he should have known better. The trooper probably wasn’t much older than the son Kyra had seen in pictures on Terry’s desk.

“Well, save it for a more appropriate time,” she told them, watching relief wash over the trooper’s face. “Right now we need to get a report from this man so that he can be on his way.” She looked pointedly at Bill, who nodded curtly and picked up one of their handheld computer units to check everything in. Kyra stood nearby without comment until she was sure that the lab workers were back on track doing their job properly, then she stepped away to continue her paperwork. Even the advances of modern technology hadn’t eliminated all of the forms and irritations of her job. While a lot could be done on computers, there were still papers the state crime lab insisted on using.

“You’re still not used to them,” Allie said quietly, looking over to the technicians. Kyra’s assistant was so astute that she often forgot that Allie was about the same age as the young trooper. In the two months Kyra had been on this job she’d proved invaluable.

Kyra sighed softly. “You’re right. Things were a lot different at the university. It was quiet there, and everybody was respectful of the work we did.”

“Do you regret coming over here?” Allie peered over the top of her gold wire glasses, which slipped down the soft bridge of her nose.

“Not really. I know this is where I belong. The criminal consulting work we did in my department there was what made me come alive.” When the state of Maryland approached her with an offer to lead a forensic anthropology group in their newly expanded state crime lab, Kyra had few doubts about taking the job. And the ease of her transition from the university had only reinforced her feeling that the change was part of God’s plan for her life right now. But there were still a few times like today when she missed the quieter atmosphere in academic research. She had to admit, it wasn’t always peaceful at the university; lab workers seemed to know who was the most squeamish and capitalized on that for fun there, too. But it hadn’t happened as often or as rowdily.

Sighing again, Kyra watched her team members take the trooper’s report and shake his hand in a friendly manner. She knew that Terry and Bill meant well; they had just been at their jobs so long that death didn’t bother them very much anymore. It surprised them when outsiders were disturbed by the environment in the labs, and they tended to harp on that feeling. How could she find a way to change their way of reacting without calling them to task too hard? Both of her lab techs were basically good people and Kyra wanted to bring that out in them.

Before she could puzzle that through any further, Allie touched her arm lightly, making Kyra jump. “Sorry, Dr. Elliott. I didn’t mean to startle you. But you’ve got a call on line one and it sounds urgent.”

Kyra nodded and went searching for the phone. Fortunately, the handset had actually been set in its cradle on the corner of a countertop instead of being put down someplace under a pile of papers.

“Kyra Elliott.” She made another mental note to talk to Allie about calling her by her formal title. Unless there were higher-ups from the crime labs present, Kyra thought titles were pretty stuffy.

The person on the other end identified himself as a detective sergeant with the state police, and any hopes Kyra had of an uneventful day catching up on paperwork went right out the window. “We’ve got something out here you have to see,” the man said, a grim set to his voice. “You’ll need a crew.” He gave her directions to a spot Kyra knew to be the overgrown edges of a state park where recent floods had made things inaccessible for a couple of weeks. Now the water had receded, replaced by late-spring sunshine. The commander’s tone told her that whatever the waters had stirred up, it wouldn’t be a good thing.

An hour later Kyra stood in a secluded spot halfway between the state lab in Pikesville and the Pennsylvania border looking at a swampy patch of ground. “Some bird-watchers reported this, if you can believe that,” the detective sergeant told her, shaking his head. His salt-and-pepper hair marked him as someone who’d been in the job awhile, he’d probably seen this sort of thing before. “I’m hoping that we can have a day or two before the media gets hold of the news, at least. That, or maybe I’m wrong and what I’m seeing aren’t human bones.”

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Kyra said, her heart sinking. “What we’re looking at is most likely human remains.”

“I guess we could always hope that we’re real lucky and maybe this is just an Indian burial site, or some forgotten Civil War grave.”

Kyra sighed, squatting to examine the scene without touching anything with her gloved hands. “I’m afraid not. This appears to be something much more recent.” What she didn’t tell the detective was what she’d seen that made her the most distressed. Unless she was seeing things the wrong way, the size of the bones led her to think that whoever had been left here had not been an adult. And to make matters even worse, there appeared to be more than one set of bones. Kyra found herself praying silently as she began to direct her team in their work. It might be days before this was all sorted out, and she would need all the help she could get.

Kyra’s heart sank as she gingerly got closer to the ground to examine what was in front of her without contaminating the scene. She’d only been on the job as the state crime lab’s chief forensic anthropologist for a few months, and before this her work had been relatively low-key. She rested her gloved fingers on the ground, contemplating the fact that this discovery would change all that in a hurry.

Sighing, she straightened up slowly, careful not to brush against anything. The white coveralls she wore over her street clothes would keep her from leaving too much trace evidence, but she always liked to err on the side of caution. Kyra hadn’t gotten to her position in the state crime lab by being careless.

“Let me get my photo crew in here. When they’re done, we’ll start taking things out slowly.”

“How slowly?” The detective looked up, scanning the sky. “It’s not that late in the day. I was hoping we might get this finished before dark.”

Kyra sighed again. “You mean dark today?” She watched the man as his eyebrows rose in consternation.

“It’s going to take you that long?”

“At least two days, probably. That’s if everything goes smoothly, which never happens. And it’s going to be slow, painstaking work.”

“Great. Now tell me how we keep this from being a media feeding frenzy by the end of tomorrow.”

Kyra shrugged. “My job is just to do this right. I can’t help you with the media. You’ll have to deal with them all by yourself.”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t arrest you.” The uniformed officer glared at Joshua Richards, who tried to focus through the haze before his eyes. “Your license doesn’t match the name you’ve already given me and your story makes no sense.”

“Call the number I gave you. The person who answers will back me up.” Josh’s head throbbed and his right shoulder was going to ache for days. When had he gotten to the point where just doing his job hurt this much? Thirty-five was too young to think of himself as middle-aged, wasn’t it? Tonight he wasn’t so sure.

The officer’s answering laugh was short, dismissive. “Convenient. Probably a buddy on a cell phone. I bet you’ve got a deal…when he gets in trouble you’d do the same for him, right?”

“It’s not like that. Call the number. It’s my unit chief in the bureau.”

“Sure. And he’ll say…”

“She. Special Agent Gorman is a she.”

“Even better. She’ll say that Joshua Richards…if that’s your real name…”

“It’s my real name,” Josh said through clenched teeth, trying not to let his temper get the better of him again. He still couldn’t believe that he’d been so out of it that when the officer first asked for his name, he’d blurted out a last name that he hadn’t used since he was eleven. What kind of Freudian slip was that?

“Sure. Whatever. Anyway, she’ll say you’re a great guy and you were just doing your civic duty here, cleaning up the streets even though you just happened to be loaded to the gills.”

Joshua fought the urge to wince; it would only make his head and shoulder hurt worse. And if he caused himself more pain he’d lose even more control. That would probably convince this officer that he really was as impaired by alcohol as the man seemed to think Josh was. Explaining the truth would be far more difficult. The man in uniform looked as if he was just experienced enough not to accept the truth; that most of the reek of liquor on Josh was splashed on his clothes, not from drinking the stuff.

Still, in his undercover role on this investigation he couldn’t have totally avoided a drink at the bar. He would have been more conspicuous without one than with something in front of him. So he’d had a little bit to drink, as little as possible. Still, he didn’t normally drink by choice, and the alcohol coupled with a shortage of sleep and the nagging disappointment he felt with life made for a dangerous combination.

So instead of staying low profile undercover he’d gotten himself into a fight. Not only had he lost, but his stupidity could cost the bureau five months of hard work, and put his job in jeopardy. As he mulled this over, the officer in charge was making a call on his phone. From what Josh could hear the man had finally taken him seriously and called Ms. Gorman. The discussion was short and to the point. When the officer finished, his expression looked thoughtful.

“Okay, so maybe you were telling the truth. At least that was convincing enough that I won’t arrest you. But if that was really your boss I don’t envy you the day you’re going to have tomorrow.” The man’s grim smile made Josh’s head throb even harder.

He drove home carefully, using little-traveled roads and side streets even after he’d bought coffee and something to eat to counteract the alcohol in his system. Pam Gorman was going to skin him alive in the office tomorrow, and he probably deserved every bit of what she gave him. His life was spiraling downward as he watched.

What did he do now? For a brief, flashing moment the cool, dark sanctuary of a church in Illinois flashed through his mind. The place had been far from welcoming; at least it seemed cold and remote in the memories he’d carried around for nearly a quarter century. Kneeling there in a back pew was the last time Josh remembered praying.

“What do You want me to do?” he asked out loud into the darkness. He got no clear sense of an answer. Still, what he’d said was like a prayer. Maybe it even was a prayer. All Josh knew for sure is that he needed to talk to somebody. Here in the dark in his car talking to God sounded about as reasonable as anything else.

“I need help. For the first time in my life I feel like I can’t make it on my own and I don’t know where to go.” Josh ran out of words at that point, and it was starting to feel strange to talk out loud in the car to someone he wasn’t sure existed. Still, it gave him an odd sense of peace and he went home wondering what would happen next.

Four days after the phone call that took her out to the park, Kyra was back in her lab. Piecing together what the team had found in the flood-damaged park might take weeks. The bones were still being gently cleaned and treated, every possible hint of evidence being gleaned from them and from the scene before she would start the arduous task of trying to figure out what had happened. It could take another two or three weeks from that point just to be able to give a reasonable estimate of who the people they’d found had been. And even then, identification would be sketchy. Nothing that could have identified any particular individual easily had turned up at the site. No purses, wallets or other identification came out of the mud; only a few scraps of mostly rotted clothing. Time and the elements had been on the side of whoever had concealed these deaths.

I could really use some help here, Lord, Kyra prayed silently as she looked at the puzzle in front of her. Already she felt a responsibility to find the answers to who these people had been in life, where they belonged. Part of that was simple: they were children of God who hadn’t deserved to be left dead or nearly dead out in a deserted field someplace. But now she would have to find out if they had enough evidence to discover if the three partial skulls they’d found belonged to the only victims. Please, she prayed, show me the way to give glory to You and dignity to these children. It was going to take an incredible amount of effort and more work than she was capable of doing alone.

As Kyra bent over the stainless-steel lab table to examine the first few pieces of bone released to her, she was aware of someone standing behind her. “Allie?” she asked softly, not wanting to take her eyes off the task at hand.

“Yes, Doctor…I mean, Kyra. I hate to bring you another problem, but you got an e-mail from one of the lieutenants that I think I need to read to you.” Kyra got so much e-mail each day that her assistant did some of the sorting and prioritizing. If she said this one had to be heard right now, it must be fairly urgent.

Allie’s voice sounded small and hesitant, at odds with the young woman’s normally confident demeanor and businesslike gray slacks and pale blue oxford blouse under her white lab coat. Communication from somebody at that rank in the state police did not normally mean good news.

“Just give me the worst of it if you want to,” Kyra said, laying out delicate hand bones and trying to determine whether they all might have come from the same person.

“Okay. Well.” There was a pause as if Allie was scanning the message she held. “What it boils down to is that the state and the federal parks people are arguing over who should be handling this case. The land where everything was found is right on the border of the park where it meets some state property.”

Kyra groaned. “Don’t tell me they’re going to take this away from us now.” The hardest work of recovering the evidence had already been done, and amazingly the media hadn’t caught wind of things yet. Even though she felt a little overwhelmed by the task at hand, she didn’t want to let go of the challenge just yet. Without media attention she could probably get a good week of work in and be much closer to identifying these kids.

There was a little more silence from Allie while papers rustled. “Not exactly. It kind of looks like they want to let you handle the investigation and run it out of the state lab, but give you some help.”

“Oh, great. I’ve had federal government ‘help’ before and it can get mighty tricky. In fact, I can only think of one really helpful federal employee I’ve ever met…” Kyra’s words trailed off as she felt her cheeks flush pink. Thinking about that particular person stirred her up more than working with these bones. She definitely didn’t want to turn around and face Allie right this minute, or even prolong this particular train of thought long enough for her perceptive assistant to ask who she was talking about.

“Well, I hope his name is Joshua Richards, then,” Allie said, causing Kyra to raise her head quickly, banging into the bright light she’d lowered to give herself some aid in seeing distinctions in the bone. “Because that’s who they’re sending to help you.”

What was that old phrase? Kyra asked herself as she rubbed the back of her head where it had struck the stainless-steel lamp. Oh, right. Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it. “No one can tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Kyra muttered under her breath. Maybe next time she would frame her request for help a little more specifically.

She realized that Allie was still standing behind her, waiting for some kind of answer. She tried to calm herself down. “That’s okay, I guess. I know him, anyway, and he’s a good investigator. Or at least he used to be.” There’d been some talk of a personal crisis a while back, before she’d left the university, but Kyra couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. They’d grown close during an investigation a year ago, and then drawn apart just as quickly. “So how quickly should I expect this help, anyway?”

“Soon. It looks like the lieutenant sent you an e-mail instead of a letter because they expect Agent Richards by the end of the week.”

“But it’s already Wednesday,” Kyra said, trying not to let her voice rise any higher toward panic pitch. She needed more than a day or two to prepare mentally to work with Joshua Richards again. He was attractive and disturbing and she didn’t need to deal with either of those things right now.

“Very astute, Dr. Elliott,” a deep voice drawled from the doorway. Kyra bumped her head on the light overhead for the second time in less than ten minutes, which was definitely going to leave her with a sore spot. So much for that day or two to prepare, Kyra thought. Joshua was here now whether she liked it or not.

TWO

Josh looked around the sterile space that passed for Kyra Elliott’s office. “So, you took this job voluntarily?” he asked, trying not to sound skeptical. The whole building was new, but had no charm or personality. Everything was concrete and steel, probably easy to keep clean and contamination-free, but even starker than he remembered Kyra’s university lab being.

“I most certainly did,” she answered, chin stuck out as if asking for an argument. “They were looking for someone to expand their forensic anthropology department and I was drawn to the prospect of doing criminal work full time.”

He turned that over in his mind, trying to make sense of it. Kyra hardly looked old enough to have her doctorate in forensic science, much less be a sought-after expert in her field. Sure, he’d used her skills when he’d needed some off-beat knowledge for the FBI more than once. And he probably owed her a great deal for helping put his personal quest to an end. Still, she looked more like an undergrad in biology with her willowy frame and huge green eyes. He even remembered one case they’d worked on together in Indiana where they’d almost been denied entrance to a restaurant with a bar attached because the manager had to be convinced that Kyra was really over twenty-one.

“I guess I could ask you the same thing,” Kyra said, drawing his attention back to the present. “Did you actually volunteer for this particular assignment?” Her brow furrowed as she leaned back in her high-backed desk chair, and then she smiled slightly. “You didn’t, did you? Joshua, what did you do or say to somebody in the bureau to get you shunted over here?”

Joshua felt his cheeks flush. “You don’t want to know,” he told her, meaning every word of it. He had no desire to tell Kyra all the stupid choices he’d made in the last eight months. He was probably lucky that the worst his actions had earned him was this dead-end investigator’s assignment. If this was the answer to that prayer or whatever it had been in his car a few days ago, it was a pretty goofy answer. “So fill me in on what we’ve got so far. Nobody at the bureau seemed to have a lot of information.”

“That’s because there isn’t much yet. Some bird-watchers in a park were tracking something rare when they came upon bones stirred up by the spring floods. We’ve recovered about all we’re going to. We’re cleaning the bones carefully, and I’m trying to sort out how many individuals are involved. If I had to speculate at this point, I’d say we’re looking at three young women somewhere between twelve and eighteen.”

Josh tried to stifle the groan he felt building, but wasn’t entirely successful. “But that’s just speculation, right? And you don’t even know for sure how long these victims have been dead.”

“There were just enough remnants of clothing that I can tell you they’d probably been there no longer than twelve years, and probably not less than seven. So I can head off any questions about this being an ancient burial site, or Civil War remains. Believe me, you’re not the first person to hope for that. These were kids who were alive in the early nineties for sure.”

“How long before you can get more specific than all this?” He stopped himself before saying more, like “all this guessing” because he knew that would only stir up the scientist in Kyra.

“We’ll have a few more answers by Monday. At least by then I will know for sure how many people we’re talking about, and probably give you a better estimate of age, size and ethnic makeup.”

“So what do you want me to do until then?” Josh dreaded her answer, because it was likely to involve a lot of pointless, boring research.

Kyra huffed. “I know that look, Agent Richards. You’re already bored with this assignment and it hasn’t even started yet. I suggest you get used to the idea that you need to spend the next few days searching for statistics on teens that have gone missing in the time period we’re targeting. If you want to make it easier on yourself, just start with the Baltimore-Washington corridor in the most likely four years.”

How did she do that? Josh had forgotten how quickly Kyra tuned into his ways of thinking, and how different they were in their opinions. He sat up straighter in the office chair and tried to look more attentive. “Is there a spare office for me to use?”

Kyra shrugged. “Afraid not. We’ve got researchers doubling up already in this department. I can let you have a corner in here.” Her quick smile gave Joshua a start of surprise. “That way I can keep an eye on you and make sure you’re really checking out the missing kids’ stats.”

“Great,” he said weakly. Maybe this assignment would teach him to improve his attitude with his supervisors in the bureau. A few weeks of working closely with Kyra Elliott would either reform him or send him over the edge.

Kyra studied Josh Richards as he sat working at the laptop she’d been able to provide for him his second day on the job. He’d been in her office two days now and she was still taking in the difference in him since the last time they’d been on a case together over a year ago. Before, Josh had been sharp and distant with most people, focused on the particulars of his job and little else. But he’d had self-confidence that oozed out his pores to go along with that aloof attitude. Kyra had always wanted to try to get past the aloofness and explore the person with the attitude, but he never let that happen.

Now Joshua sat in his office chair, close to the computer. He was so quiet; no music playing, nothing personal to brighten this corner he worked in. There was almost a defeated slump to his shoulders, a posture that Kyra would never have associated with Josh before. “How’s it going?” she asked softly from where she sat a few feet away doing paperwork.

“Okay, I guess,” he said without looking up. “There are a couple of dozen missing teens listed in the corridor during those four years you pointed out. If you’re sure your victims are female, that takes out a few but leaves plenty more. Any ideas yet how many we’re looking at?”

“I think we have three individuals,” Kyra said, trying to give Josh a reminder that these were people they were talking about. “And they’re definitely female. I can tell from the brow ridges on the skulls and the size and shape of the pelvic bones.”

Joshua winced but didn’t turn away from his computer. “I guess that narrows it down a little bit. How specific are you going to be able to get, anyway?”

“You’ll probably be surprised by how much I’ll probably be able to tell you,” Kyra told him. “Haven’t you ever hung out with any of the forensic experts at the bureau?”

Joshua shook his head, and Kyra noticed that the light caught small glints of silver in the ginger of his temples. That was new and it disturbed her a little. What kind of stress did that to someone who had to be in his mid-thirties? “Not by choice. For the most part I took the information they had to give me and went back to my own investigations.”

Ouch. They were definitely going to have to work on Josh’s attitude toward people. Kyra tried to think of ways to help him start seeing the individual nature of those around him, whether they were crime victims or fellow workers. Maybe a little education was the answer. “Do you want to know more?” Kyra wasn’t sure what his response was going to be, or why she was so interested. In the past two days Joshua had come in on time, done his job quietly and left when the rest of the day shift did. If he’d gotten to know anyone yet it would be news to her.

“I’m not sure. What would that entail?” His normally pale face appeared even paler. Why hadn’t she ever noticed that he had a dusting of light freckles across his cheekbones? As his face blanched a little, they stood out in relief.

“Depends on how much you want to know. I won’t force you into anything you don’t want to be part of.” Kyra gave him a quick smile, expecting him to answer with one in return, but he stayed solemn. “I think most of it is really interesting, but not everybody does.” She thought about bringing up the young state policeman a few days back, but held back. That might just bring out Josh’s competitive nature and she didn’t want him doing anything just to prove that he could best somebody else.

“I’d like to know a little more, but I’ll warn you up front that I don’t handle detailed medical stuff very well. I know there won’t be blood involved here, but there have to be plenty of other things that will bother me in your labs.”

“That’s possible. I’ll sketch things out in broad terms for you and if you want to know more about an area, ask me, okay?”

Josh nodded, a tiny bit of color coming back into his face. His shoulders began to lower from the tense position they’d held almost up to his ears, and he looked like somebody who was really listening.

She took a deep breath and prayed silently for guidance and wisdom. “So, the first thing that we do when all we’ve got to work with is bones is try to find as many teeth as possible. Even if we can’t match dental records to a victim, the condition of their mouth tells us a lot about who they were.”

Josh’s brow wrinkled for a minute, and then his expression cleared. “Okay, that makes sense. I guess people out on the fringes of things don’t really have great dental insurance or anything, do they?”

“They don’t.” Kyra was glad that he had picked up on what she said this quickly. “When you’re down on your luck there are a lot of things more important than dental care, like eating and having a roof over your head. We can also tell a lot about age from looking at somebody’s teeth. If their third molars have erupted they’re probably past eighteen.”

“Third molars. Does that mean wisdom teeth?” He really did catch on fast. Now, if she could just somehow steer that intellect into learning a little compassion…

“Right. And one of the reasons I could figure out that these three girls were younger than eighteen was that none of them show any signs of having wisdom teeth coming through to the surface.”

“What if you don’t have any teeth?”

“Then it’s a lot harder to come up with an individual’s identity. We can figure out whether they’re male or female, and approximate size and age, but without teeth most skeletons are hard to identify. The only other help is if someone has had some kind of bone reconstruction that led to plates or rods being left in their body, or if injuries that show up on X rays leave a mark.”

“Do you have enough teeth to identify these three girls?” Kyra still wasn’t sure if his question came out of concern or merely the hope that the work he was doing wouldn’t be in vain.

“I think so. At least two of the three have had some dental work, so if we can match up X rays of a missing person we’ll be okay.”

“And the third one?”

“That’s going to be a bit more difficult. She should have gotten some dental work, but never did. There are unfilled cavities in a couple of her teeth and she could have used braces. I’m working on one angle that may help identify her, though.”

“Okay, you just admitted that without teeth or dental records it’s hard to identify somebody. Did she have broken bones, or some kind of screws somewhere?”

“No, but hers is probably the most recent of the three sets of bones to be left where they were. And there’s one other identification help if you’re dealing with female bones.” She stopped there, giving Josh a little time to figure out what she was talking about on his own.

He had his thoughtful look, then sadness flashed across his features. “You just said all of these girls were probably under eighteen, right? The only other thing I can think of that bones could tell you would be if they’d given birth. That’s awfully young, isn’t it?”

Kyra felt her emotions spiral back to a place she didn’t really want to revisit. It took her a minute or two to gather herself together to answer him. “Younger than most people, but it might help explain the lack of dental work. If this girl was already a mom before her eighteenth birthday, she had lots of other things on her mind.”

Joshua’s expression stayed clouded. “And it also means that someplace out there is a kid whose mother never came home one day. For his sake, or hers, I kind of hope she’d given the baby up for adoption.”

His statement showed more intensity, and more caring, than Kyra had seen from Josh so far. Maybe helping him care about others wouldn’t be as difficult as she’d thought. What he said also made Kyra wonder what his own childhood had been like. It wasn’t something she was going to ask him about, at least not yet. When she looked at him again he seemed to be studying her. “What?” she said reflexively, hoping she didn’t sound too sharp.

“I don’t know. You had a different look on your face there for a minute. Sad and kind of faraway. It’s not what I usually see.” And with that statement Kyra felt the slow heat of anger and confusion rise in her. How could she be so easy to read?

She gave herself a mental shake and straightened her shoulders. “Well, I guess it’s just these kids. I don’t let the job get to me too often, because then I’m no use to the very people who need my help the most. But you’re right, sixteen or seventeen is too early to have a baby for most young women. I’m not so sure I agree with you on the whole adoption thing. It depends on what kind of family a mom has, how close they are. If an aunt or a grandmother can raise the child, everything is fine.”

“That sounds good, but I don’t think you really believe it,” Josh said, his words back to the flatter tone he’d used most of the time. “Everything isn’t going to be fine in a situation that allows the body of a young girl to be missing for seven or eight years without a lot of public outcry.” His eyes narrowed as Kyra watched him think.

“You said before that you might know by Monday what ethnic makeup these kids were. How do you figure that out from bones?”

“The differences can be subtle,” Kyra admitted. “Different bone densities in some structures, the shape of an eye socket…”

“You can say orbit. I know that much. My mom was a nurse.” Something about that memory was painful for him, because now Josh was the one to have a brief look of sadness across his face. Kyra filed that away as something else to discuss later.

“Okay. I’m never sure with people whether or not I should keep things simple in case I’m talking way over their heads, or just talk to them the way I would to a colleague. It sounds like you’re closer to the colleague level.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but coming from you that’s a compliment. So, colleague, how long are you going to stay and work on all of this tonight?”

Kyra shrugged. “As long as it takes. There’s nobody waiting at home except Ranger, and he’s pretty self-sufficient.”

Joshua’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t remember you mentioning a live-in…friend before.”

Kyra stifled a giggle. “That’s because Ranger’s a cat. About fourteen pounds of black fur and attitude who keeps my place free of field mice and crickets, and still doesn’t understand after eight years why I won’t let him go outside and stalk them out there.”

“Oh.” Josh smiled faintly. “Well, if you’re not going to hurry home to him, would you like to grab dinner someplace? I’ve heard some of the other staff members talking about a Thai restaurant not too far from here.”

“I am hungry. And as long as this is just colleague-to-colleague,” Kyra said, giving Josh a pointed look.

“Definitely. I won’t even offer to buy your dinner.”

“Good. You get back to your computer and I’ll shut things down in the next room. I should be ready to go in fifteen minutes.”

Remember, just colleague-to-colleague, Kyra reminded herself as she put things to rights in the lab. It might take a lot of work, but she was determined that Josh Richards was never going to know that she thought of him in any other way.

THREE

The Thai restaurant was small, casual and smelled fantastic from the moment Josh walked in. The aroma of chilies, spices and lemongrass filled the air, and he discovered that he was hungry. How long had it been since he had felt truly hungry and interested in food? Then again, how long had it been since he’d had dinner with an attractive young woman, even if she was practically his boss?

He tried not to take it personally when Kyra insisted that they both drive to the restaurant. It wasn’t a matter of trust, she explained. “You’re going home afterward and I may come back here to work on one last thing.”

“I have a feeling there’s ‘one last thing’ a lot of the time,” Josh told her, watching her flush with color in an admission that didn’t need words to go with it. Kyra’s tenacity was what had made them a good team when he’d needed her help in cases for the bureau. So it didn’t surprise him that she gave that kind of focus to her work all the time.

“There is,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I expect everybody in the lab to work like I do. As long as they give things their best effort, I’m fine with a reasonable work week.”

She double-checked to make sure he knew where the restaurant was, and headed toward her car. Josh wasn’t sure what he expected to see her get into, but the vintage Ford pickup truck gave him a surprise. When she showed up at the restaurant he intended to ask her about that.

He settled in to wait for her, taking the corner table a young man pointed out, and ordering an iced coffee while he waited. He watched the door of the restaurant, listening to the overhead bell jingle as people came in. Just about the time his drink came, Kyra walked through the door and he was struck by her appearance.

Why hadn’t he ever noticed that the woman was downright beautiful? She’d unfastened the clip that held her glossy auburn hair. She must have ridden over from the lab with the window rolled down in the truck. Her cheeks were pink and she looked slightly windblown, refreshed and healthy. Josh mentally contrasted what he must look like; pale skin that hardly ever saw the light of day, lines beginning to etch the corners of his eyes and his workday uniform of a white shirt, dark pants and an extremely sedate tie.

Kyra slid into the seat across from him, looking at his iced coffee. “I should have told you to order me one if you made it here first. I know I probably don’t need any more caffeine this late in the day, but I really like those things.”

“I’ll make a note of it for next time,” Josh said, wondering where the words came from as soon as they were out of his mouth. What made him think there was going to be a “next time” with Kyra? She’d made it clear this wasn’t a social engagement, just dinner with a workmate. Even an hour ago that wouldn’t have bothered him; why did it feel like it mattered now?

In any case, Kyra seemed to ignore his comment. “Cool. Do you like chicken satay? We could split an order while we waited for the rest of dinner.”

“Sure.” Josh let her order the appetizer and her iced coffee while he thought about ways to ask a few questions about her without seeming overly interested. But his new awareness of Kyra’s beauty and the constant reminder that she was basically his boss right now left him tongue-tied for a while.

They ordered their dinners and Kyra made a little small talk while Josh tried not to ask too many questions, even though at least a dozen were running through his mind. The satay came and they probably ate half of it before Kyra looked over at him and smiled.

“Hey, you’re mighty quiet,” she said. “Once you got me alone outside the labs I expected all kinds of questions.”

Josh told himself the flush he felt must be due to the amount of fiery Thai chilies in the peanut dipping sauce. “I don’t want to irritate you. You’re dealing with enough questions right now just focusing on this case. Do you work like this all the time?”

Kyra shrugged slightly. “When I need to. And I won’t work all weekend. I don’t work on Sundays unless it’s an emergency and I have no other choice.”

“I guess everybody needs some rest. But wouldn’t it make more sense just to work through and try to catch a break in the case?”

“Not for me. There are all kinds of reasons that I can get more accomplished in six days than I can in seven. My Sundays are precious to me.”

Josh felt his heart sink. “I’ll bet you spend them in church, don’t you?”

“Not always. But I do try to spend them in ways that bring honor to God, and there aren’t too many times that that means hanging out at the lab.”

“So where do you go if it’s not church?” Josh caught himself leaning forward to hear her answer.

Kyra stirred the straw around in her iced coffee. “All kinds of places. I go horseback riding sometimes, grab ice cream with some friends, maybe even just sit quietly alone or go to the movies with four or five teenage girls.”

How was any of this a way to honor God? Josh felt really confused about that. Kyra didn’t look confused at all. She appeared perfectly happy with her choices. This discussion was going to take a lot longer to finish than Josh had figured on.

Before he could ask more questions their entrées arrived along with a bowl of rice. “This all looks great,” Kyra said with enthusiasm, and she surprised Josh by reaching over and taking the serving spoon in his pad thai.

Maybe she was confused about what she’d ordered. “Hey, Kyra? I think the pad thai is mine,” Josh said.

She smiled but didn’t put down the spoon. “Well, yeah, but you’re okay with sharing, right? I think sharing dinner is fun. It gives us both something new to try.”

This was totally outside his experience. “I guess. It’s just a little different for me.”

Kyra giggled softly. “What’s the matter? Don’t bureau people share their food? Or don’t you like green curry? I didn’t get it too hot, honest.”

When he didn’t answer right away, Kyra looked more serious. “This really isn’t something you’re used to doing, is it? If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll just stick to my own dish and you can have yours. Sorry.”

She started to put down the spoon, and Josh found himself reaching over gently and taking her wrist. “No, it’s okay. You’re right, it’s not something I usually do. I just didn’t grow up in a sharing kind of environment. And you are correct about the other part, too, because bureau folks are pretty protective about their property, including food.”

“That’s too bad,” Kyra said with a soft smile. “They’re missing out on a lot.”

“I imagine so.” Josh looked down to realize he was still holding on to her wrist and let it go. “But I think it’s time I stopped missing out.” He took the spoon in the rice and served himself a little, spooning the fragrant green curry on top of it. Kyra’s answering grin lifted his spirits like nothing had in days.

Later, after coconut ice cream, Kyra argued when he told her he was going to follow her back to the lab. She stood in the parking lot near her truck with her arms crossed, frowning slightly. Josh explained, “I know you’re no delicate flower who needs constant protection, but I was raised to treat women a certain way. If that bothers you, I apologize in advance, but it won’t keep me from following you back to the lab if you’re going to go back to work.”

“I’m definitely going back,” Kyra told him. “Although, after this dinner I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to work before I’ll want to go home and doze. Ranger will like that.”

Josh struggled to find something to say to that. With his allergy to pets he wasn’t real enthused about Kyra having a cat. At least she hadn’t brought enough cat dander into the office to make his eyes water. “Once you’re in the building, I’ll head home,” he told her. “I just want to make sure everything is all right.”

Her answering hug was brief but warm and the surprise of her giving it to him rocked him back slightly on his heels. “You’re sweet and I won’t argue. Thanks.” In a moment she was in her truck and Josh walked quickly to his car so that he could follow her as he’d promised. Around him the jasmine notes of her cologne filled his senses and followed him the rest of the evening through his drive to the lab and all the way home.

Everything was gone. It was Saturday morning and the Watcher stood in the mud under the trees at the park, looking in surprise at the yellow caution tape surrounding several shallow impressions in the earth. What had happened here? The last time he’d visited, the two bird-watchers were calling the police, but he hadn’t expected this much action this quickly. All they could have found were a few unconnected bones.

Now that the tall weeds and scrawny saplings that had grown up in his private garden had been washed away by the spring rains, it looked like a different place. Having the police mess around with things on top of that made it unrecognizable. His things were gone. Or at least they’d been uncovered from their hiding places. Somebody had found them, that was certain. The yellow tape and spindly orange plastic fencing might have been made to look like this was just an area the parks service was trying to keep people out of because the ground was swampy, but he knew differently.

How dare they mess everything up! This was his place, with his secrets. Now what was he supposed to do? As he stood there wondering, there was a rustle behind him, and a voice called tentatively. “Sir? I’m going to have to ask you not to go any closer to the fenced area. If you’re bird-watching, we’re directing people over to the South Trail.”

For a moment the Watcher felt as if he was going to jump out of his skin. “What? Oh, sure.” Relief washed over him as he realized that to the young park ranger, or whatever he was, the binoculars around his neck and his nondescript jeans and shirt made him look like any other guy out to enjoy a Saturday in the park. “Sorry, Officer. I wasn’t trying to do anything illegal.”

The kid smiled. “Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong yet. I’m just supposed to keep people from getting into areas like that one where it’s too swampy for us to be sure of your safety. And I’m not an officer or anything, just working here for the summer.” The kid pointed toward his yellow name badge and the Watcher could see that it gave the kid’s name below the bright green line that proclaimed him a volunteer. So he hadn’t done anything yet, huh? Wouldn’t this kid be surprised if he knew? But with any luck, he wasn’t going to know, and neither was anybody else. The Watcher tried to walk nonchalantly away from this ruined place. Somebody was going to pay for this; he just needed to find out who was responsible.

It was time to go home and look through the newspapers to see what the police said about their finds. That would tell him who had dug up his treasures. Didn’t they realize that it would be their fault when he started hunting again? Without his secrets here, how could anybody expect him to access his memories? Now it would be time to find a new place, and new things to fill that place, even sooner than he’d planned.

By ten o’clock on Saturday morning, Kyra’s back ached. Her shoulders tightened with the focus of her efforts with the magnifier and the smaller pieces of bone. Sometimes when she was busy like this she remembered Gran sifting through a jigsaw puzzle. The difference was that Gran did her puzzles for fun, humming softly while she matched the pieces. Kyra did her work in a much more serious way, but the painstaking business of matching the pieces was the same. And when she finished putting together one of her “puzzles” it could mean closure for a family somewhere who finally knew where their loved one was.

More bone pieces, and larger ones, were coming out of the cleaning room now. In the work area she’d set aside just for this purpose, Kyra kept turning bones in different directions, angling them slightly while examining their color and texture. They’d separated out the pieces that were most likely human at the dump site. Bringing them back to the lab allowed Kyra and her researchers to separate out anything that wasn’t human bone.

Now, after the cleaning, it became clearer which pieces went together. The set of bones that went back the farthest had softer details around the edges and an entirely different color to their surface from the ones that had been in the ground a shorter time.

Each set of skeletal pieces that Kyra wanted to keep separate had its own gurney, arranged in a horseshoe so that she could have easy access between the three steel gurneys. If anyone asked, the skeletons were just A, B and C, but already to Kyra they were Abigail, Bethany and Chloe. She prayed that some day soon she could give these girls back their real names, but until then she wanted to do all that she could to make them living human beings in her own mind.

As she identified what seemed to be two of Chloe’s metacarpals, the door to the room swung slightly on silent hinges, making Kyra jump a little. “Who’s there?” Her voice sounded a little high and sharp in her own ears. She wasn’t used to having much company on Saturdays.

Josh came through the doorway with a grimace. “Sorry. I didn’t even think about startling you. I knew you’d be here, and frankly, I ran out of things to do at home so I decided to come in and try to get something done.”

Kyra looked at Josh, realizing that this was the first time that she’d seen him out of his weekday uniform of dark pants and a white shirt. Today he wore khakis and a sportier shirt, and no tie, either. “That’s okay. I was so focused on this set of bones and what they’re telling me that I didn’t expect anybody to come in.”

His brow wrinkled a little. “I have to admit that it’s really strange to me to hear you talking about bones telling you anything. Frankly, I don’t even know how you can tell which ones belong to which…set.”

His pause told Kyra that Josh still didn’t think about Chloe and the others as real people yet. It would probably take an identification of at least one set of the bones for Josh to see any of them as a girl who had lived, grown, had sorrows and joys like anybody else, and then died. She sighed softly. “They tell me quite a bit, Josh. And explaining how I can tell one person’s remains from another might take me a couple of hours. Once I’ve worked through everything we’ve collected, maybe I can show you.”

He nodded slightly. “Sure. I understand that you can’t do it right now. Getting as much done as you can makes more sense. Meanwhile, I’ll go in and sort through some more missing persons reports on the computer.” He crossed the room, heading for the door that led to Kyra’s office. “Does anybody make coffee on weekends?”

“Sometimes. There aren’t many of us in today, though, and nobody’s gotten around to it. I’d welcome a cup if you get some going,” she told him.

“That I can do,” Josh said, with a ghost of a smile on his lips. “In my department at the bureau, making decent coffee was a survival skill not dependent on gender or rank within the department. If we could have talked them into a cappuccino maker I could have run that, too.”

He looked around into the corners of the room. “I know this is a brand-new set of labs. I don’t suppose…”

Kyra had to grin. “Nope, the State of Maryland barely sprang for regular coffeemakers. Weekdays when everything is open, I think there’s a cart in the lobby closest to the cafeteria that serves foo-foo coffee.”

That brought a laugh out of Joshua for the first time. “Foo-foo coffee, huh? After that iced coffee last night I figured you for a vanilla latte kind of person. Guess I was wrong.”

“Guess you were,” she said, trying to focus on her work. “When I’m not eating Thai or Vietnamese food, straight, black coffee in any insulated container that keeps it hot and prevents me from spilling it is my beverage of choice.”

He gave her a mock salute. “Ready in ten minutes, ma’am. I’ll even wash the mug.” Before she could reply he was through the doorway and out of sight, leaving Kyra to wonder what part of what she’d said had tickled Josh. He had a nice laugh. Too bad he didn’t use it more often.

She’d puzzled out two bits of Bethany’s foot, and what she thought was her left orbital arch, when Josh slid back into the room as quietly as the first time, making her startle again. “Any chance we can get you to wear a bell or something?” she groused. “You’re just too quiet.”

“It’s a talent I need when I’m doing undercover work. Besides, people reveal a lot more about themselves when they don’t think anybody’s there. For example, you tend to stick just the tip of your tongue out at the corner of your mouth when you’re trying to figure something out.”

Kyra had a flash of irritation as he handed her the warm travel mug. She was tempted to make some smart remark, but the truth was that Josh was right. “Thanks for the coffee,” she said, trying not to sound too irritated. Being astute was part of his job. She realized that she could probably use his gifts of perception about people to explain to him how she knew things just from looking at the bones in front of her. But first, she wanted to sip some of this coffee and stretch to get the kinks out of her neck. Deep concentration on these small bones left her physically pained after a while.

When she looked back at him, Josh had a thoughtful look on his face. “What?” she asked, hoping he’d tell her what he was thinking.

“You look uncomfortable. How many more hours can you lean over that kind of close work without making yourself sore for days?”

Kyra shrugged, still trying to get some of the kinks out. “A few. I think I’m close to a breakthrough here, so I’ll keep at it. If I can find a few more facial bones on…gurney B,” she said, unwilling to tell Josh about the names she’d given the girls, “we might have enough to start looking for medical records.”

“Don’t you always need teeth for that?”

“It helps,” Kyra admitted. “But I think I’m seeing a pattern of some old, healed facial injuries in this one skeleton. It’s the kind of thing that would have given her a distinctive look, and probably left a legal trail as well.”

Josh’s expression clouded. “You said these bones probably belonged to teenagers. If the injuries you’ve found are healed, you’re thinking child abuse, aren’t you?”

“It’s one of the top reasons for fractures in kids, unfortunately. I wish I could say it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, me too.” He turned around, then appeared to reconsider leaving and faced her again. For a moment he stood silently. “How can you see stuff like this and still believe in God? What kind of God lets little kids get beaten up?”

“God didn’t beat up this child. A human being is responsible for that,” Kyra said with more fervor than necessary. “If you want to see what God can do in a kid’s life, then come with me tomorrow.”

“To church?” Josh asked, a challenge in his steely eyes.

“No, to the mall for a movie. Bring money for popcorn and ice cream after the show.”

“Sure.” His quick acceptance surprised Kyra. She’d expected him to put up an argument.

“And clean out the backseat of your car if you need to,” she instructed. “My truck will only hold two besides me. You’ve got seat belts for three in the backseat, don’t you?”

“Yes.” He raised one eyebrow, seeming to ask what he was getting himself into. “What were you going to do before I came along?”

“I have no idea,” Kyra admitted. “I figured that if God wanted me to take all of the kids to the movies, then a way to take them all would show up.”

“And you got me instead,” Josh said. Kyra didn’t have the heart to tell him that she thought he was exactly what God had in mind. Josh was nowhere near ready to hear something like that.

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