“Steven, it’s Finlay,” I said in a low voice, checking over my shoulder to make sure I was alone. “You know that… parcel I asked you to hold on to for me? The special one I asked you to keep at the farm for a while? I just need to know if it’s still there. That you didn’t move it or… open it for anybody. Call me when you get this.” I disconnected, feeling anxious and off-balance, unable to shake the feeling that the dismembered dummy was no coincidence as I started back toward the group. Ahead, shouts ofI found somethingorShould I bag this, Detective?were answered by encouraging comments from the instructors while my sister called out the point values.
I paused, my phone light shining on a crumpled piece of paper in my path. I bent to pick it up. The paper was dry, which meant it couldn’t have been out here long. The sleet and freezing rain we’d had the night before would have turned it into frozen paste by now. I smoothed it out and held it under my light. The sales receipt was dated earlier that day from a hardware store not far from here. Three items had been purchased with cash: a pair of work gloves, a hacksaw, and a permanent marker.
I hurried through the brush, ducking back under the yellow tape to find Vero. “Hey, I think I found something,” I said, holding the receipt out to her.
Her eyes widened as she took it. “Where was it?”
“Past the yellow tape, about a hundred feet that way,” I said, pointing loosely to where I’d found it.
“Too far,” she said, handing it back to me. “That’s outside the crime scene. The instructors said they only dropped clues within fifty feet of the grave. Probably so we’re not out here searching all night. Why? What is it?” she asked when I refused to take it.
“Look at the items they bought.”
Vero frowned at the receipt. “If this was part of the exercise, why’d they leave the clue so far from the crime scene?”
“Unless it wasn’t part of the exercise at all.”
“Let’s wrap it up, everybody,” Nick called out. “Bag and tag the last of your evidence and sign it into the chain of custody with an instructor.”
I took the receipt from Vero and stuffed it in my pocket.
“But we still haven’t found the murder weapon,” Mrs. Haggerty’s grandson pointed out.
“Sometimes we don’t,” Nick said frankly. “Head back to your dorms and grab some shut-eye. Tomorrow, a few volunteers from the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office will be coming to assist us with a mock trial.” The announcement was met with excited chatter as teams began filing back through the woods toward the dorm.
Vero arched up on her toes, searching the crowd. “I’m going to catch up to Pete and see if he’s had any luck with our bullet. I’ll meet you inside.”
I lagged behind the rest of the herd, hoping to avoid Riley and Max, my thoughts still stuck on the dummy we’d found. Between Harris Mickler’s toxicology report and the dummy named Carl, it was starting to feel like the ghosts of my past were coming back to haunt me.
A cane clicked down, blocking my path, and I clutched my chest, sucking in a gasp.
“You really shouldn’t walk alone in the woods at night. You never know who might be out here.” Nick reached for my hand, helping me over a fallen branch.
“Like the axe murderer who hacked up your CPR dummy?”
He shook his head and sighed. “Yeah, exactly like that. When I find out which one of those assholes did it, I’m sending them a bill.” The path ahead of us was reasonably clear, but he held my hand anyway, both of us ambling slowly to the rhythm of his cane. “And now I’m going to be up all night correcting tomorrow’s handouts, because the autopsy report I prepared for our mock trial says our victim was strangled. And her name definitely wasn’t Carl.”
I forced out a laugh, determined to push thoughts of Carl West- over from my mind. Nick and the other cops weren’t taking the dummy seriously. I was probably overthinking this. “If it’s any consolation, it was a pretty fun class. You know, minus the wholebeing dragged out of bed in the middle of the nightthing. You could have warned me about that, by the way.”
“That wouldn’t have been fair to the other teams. Besides, I told Charlie.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, remembering Charlie’s warning about getting to bed early. “That hardly counts.”
“Precisely.” He paused beside a tree, resting his weight against the trunk as he pulled me into the space between his legs. He smelled like coffee and his leather jacket, and faintly of the spicy cologne that he wore. The three together were a deadly combination, and my breathing became shallow as he reached for the zipper on my coat. “You know,” he said in a seductively low voice as he dragged it down. He reached inside my breast pocket, somehow managing not to touch me as he withdrew my cell phone from it. “You’re not supposed to have this in class. I should probably confiscate it, but I’ll let you off with a warning.” He grinned as I snatched it away from him. His expression grew serious as I checked to make sure the screen was locked before tucking it away. “Everything okay? I saw you leave to make a phone call. It’s not the kids, is it?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just… Steven being Steven,” I said through an infuriated sigh.
Nick nodded. A sobering silence drew out between us. Somehow,even after Steven had walked out on our marriage, he still managed to make everything in my life revolve around him. I pressed a hand to my temple. “Can we just… not talk about him?”
Nick drew my hand from my face with a tentative smile, holding it between us as he ducked low to meet my eyes. “There is actually something else I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. We didn’t really finish the conversation we started in the kitchen last night.”
“What part?” I asked cautiously.
“The part when I was telling you how much I like spending time with you.” He stroked a thumb over mine, his voice falling soft. “I’m glad you came this week. I’m sorry if anything I did or said made you doubt that. When the citizen’s academy is over, I thought maybe we could—”
“Nick!” My sister’s shrill shout carried like a Harpy’s through the trees.
Nick’s head dropped back, a ribbon of frustration spooling into the sky with his heavy exhale. “Be right there,” he shouted back. I started to pull away, but he cupped my hands between his. “You’re freezing. You want to come inside and get something warm to drink? There’s hot chocolate in the faculty lounge, and I’ll be up for a while fixing all these damn reports anyway. I’d love some company.”
