There was no human-form equivalent, though I’d always thought the exhilaration of race car driving might come close. Not that I’d ever tried it.
I crossed my arm over my chest, holding his gaze. Waiting for him to ask about Yvette’s case. To ask why I’d snuck out the back door of the bar after I’d spoken to Nolan Blake, then avoided him all day.
“So…who is that?” Austin said instead, and I didn’t understand what he was asking until I turned to follow his gaze, which was focused on the ground behind me. On a narrow rectangular outline barely visible in the dirt, beneath an old, half-rotten tree.
Shit.
“That’s a grave, right?”
“Um…yeah.” But not the kind of grave you visit or put a headstone on. It was the middle-of-the-woods, hope-no one-ever-finds-it kind of grave. One that had been there for years and had been refilled twice, because of natural sinking.
One I hadn’t intended to show him.
It was a grave I’d had no idea I was headed toward, as I’d run through the woods with no conscious destination. My subconscious, though, was a real bitch, and this was not the first time she’d fulfilled some need I wasn’t even aware of feeling.
In this case, the need to make sure that monster was still six feet down, his grave undiscovered, his eternal damnation uninterrupted.
“So, whose is it?” Austin was looking at me rather than the grave, and again I wondered just how good he was in an interrogation room. All I could tell for sure was that I wanted him on my side of the table.
“No one’s. No one worth mentioning, anyway.”
“Well, it must be important, if you came all the way out here to—”
“Just ask me,” I snapped, my tongue so thick I had to concentrate on the words. “Just ask what you came out here to ask.”
Austin glanced at the grave again, then his focus returned to me. “You have very loyal friends. Employees, I mean. And a very loyal sister. None of them will tell me a damn thing without your approval. So…what are you hiding, Charley? What did you find out from Nolan this morning?”
“Nothing useful.” I started walking in the direction of my car and, his footsteps followed, crunching through dead leaves and fallen branches. “Nolan’s sister died a few years ago, of symptoms that could be scratch fever.”
“Couldbe?”
“She was in another territory, and he wasn’t able to see her. Or go to the funeral.”
“And you think he had nothing to do with it.”
I glanced at him as we walked, twigs biting into the soles of my feet. “He’s not that good a liar, Austin. No one is.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t mean—”
“That he didn’t kill Yvette? I know. But you’re the one who says there are no coincidences in a murder investigation.”
“You’re saying it would be coincidence if his sister was murdered in the same manner he murderedmysister, if those aren’t related?”
I nodded, stepping over a rotting log.
“But it isn’t coincidence if theyarerelated. If he committed both murders, or he killed Yvette as some kind of copycat. Or to get some kind of twisted revenge for his sister.”
I stopped walking and suddenly he was so close, I had to look up. “So then, show me how they’re related. Does Nolan Blake have some reason to want your sister dead, the same way his died? Did you kill his sister? Did Bishop?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then he had no reason, that you know of, to kill Yvette?”
Austin frowned. He pressed his lips together.
“You’re the cop. If you can find a connection, I’ll listen. But until then, don’t you think the most likely scenario is that his sister was a victim of the same crime, by the same perpetrator?”
Austin started walking again, and I found myself rushing to catch up, to my own irritation. “Are there any others?” he asked without looking back.
