“Get it off me!” Laura shoved Bel, their fingers slipping in blood.
“Stop.” Eamon caught the teen, his strength immobilizing her as his free hand pulled Bel to safety. “Did she cut you?”
“No, I’m fine,” she answered. “It’s her blood, not mine.”
“Get it off me!” Laura struggled to escape Eamon’s control, but the giant man tugged her closer so he could peel the wire from her leg.
“Hold still,” he demanded, ripping the metal apart as if it were seaweed, and when the last of the tangled cables broke free from the girl’s calf, he tossed the wire to the boat deck along with the very human skeletal arm trapped inside it.
“Grab me that towel,” Bel ordered the muscular teen, doing her best to avoid the human remains mocking her from the boat’s deck. “Now!” she shouted when the traumatized student just stood there with a gaping mouth.
“Yeah… um…” the kid scrambled for the folded towel. “Here.” He launched it at Bel’s head, but she caught it before it slapped her in the face.
“Chicken wire,” Bel whispered to Eamon as she wrapped the fluffy fabric around the girl’s leg to slow the bleeding.
“Is that significant?” he asked.
“Combined with human remains? Yes…. Laura, sweetie, do me a favor and hold this towel around your calf.” Bel waited for the kid to follow her instructions before she gripped Eamon with bloody fingers and dragged him to the far corner of the boat. “It’s a trick used to dispose of bodies,” she spoke impossibly low so that only his enhanced hearing could understand her. “Whendisposing of a body in water, chicken wire is used to keep it from floating to the surface when the decay causes it to bloat. The wire weighs it down, but it also cuts into the flesh as it rots, releasing the gases and keeping it submerged. It also keeps limbs from breaking off and washing ashore to be discovered, while leaving it open enough for fish and other animals to consume the flesh. The body stays submerged until there’s nothing left but bones. A useful way to make sure no one ever finds the victim.”
“Those bones?” Eamon’s black eyes shifted to all that remained of a human arm stretching from elbow to fingertips. “Are we looking at murder?”
“Not necessarily, but it does suggest foul play,” she whispered. “A body doesn’t end up wrapped in chicken wire and sunk in the only part of the lake where no one’s allowed to boat or swim by accident.”
“So even if this wasn’t murder, someone didn’t want this found,” Eamon said.
“If not for these dumb kids getting stuck, these bones would’ve stayed down…” Bel’s voice froze in her throat.
“What?”
“The woods.” She pointed directly across the expansive water to the endless stretch of familiar green trees. “Recognize them? That’s the last place Ariella Triton was seen alive.”
“Areyou saying that hand belongs to Ariella?” Eamon asked.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Bel whispered. “But she went missing two months ago from right over there. No one saw her after the police broke up the party. No one saw her leave town. You couldn’t find her body, and now I’m wondering if it’s because Bajka residents know this is a restricted area. It’s the perfect dumping ground. Lina needs to confirm, but that skeleton is small.” Bel extended her hand for reference. “The size is close to mine… so I believe the remains are female.”
Eamon studied her with an unreadable expression, his motionless features like soft stone, and then, without warning, he dove overboard. The partying teens shrieked at the suddenness, and Bel held her breath as if she were down in thatwatery darkness with him. His pale skin vanished from sight, and her lungs burned long before he resurfaced.
“Do you think he got stuck like me?” Laura asked. “He’s been down there too long.”
“Just give him a minute.” Bel gripped the boat’s edge until her tanned skin turned white, and she forced herself to breathe, her brain ticking off the seconds as they turned to minutes without him.
“Maybe we should go after him?” The muscled teen said. “He’ll drown?—”
“I said give him a minute.” Bel’s voice was too harsh for the serene setting. The group fell silent, but a minute came and left without ceremony. And then another one. And another one.
“Isobel.” Eamon broke the surface so gracefully that she hadn’t even realized he’d returned until she heard her name, and when their eyes met, her stomach dropped from her body to land on the boat’s deck. His black eyes glowed too dark, his lips pressed together too hard. There were horrors in these waters—horrors worse than the rest of the wire-wrapped skeleton they’d expected to find.
“Jump in.” Eamon raised his hand in an invitation. “Hold your breath, and I’ll swim for you.”
“What’s down there?” She couldn’t peel her bare feet off the deck.
“Just jump in.” The man was almost always serious, but the severity of his gaze screamed for her to climb onto the jet ski and return to the department picnic because the minute she slipped below the surface with him, everything changed.
“What did he see?” Laura asked. “Was it the rest of the body?”
Bel ignored her question. It wasn’t just the rest of the body. It was something worse. Something disturbing enough to frighten the devil.
“Keep your mouth shut,” Eamon said as she jumped overboard. “Don’t swallow the water.”
