Deep breaths.
Don’t let him see you taking deep breaths.
“So we have another victim,” I say, in that too-calm voice, and this is what’s really panicking me. Not the fact I’m standing on a body, but what that body signifies. Someone who did not get out of Nicole’s hole alive.
“We don’t know that,” Dalton says. “He could have fallen. Done the same thing you did, and if he wasn’t with a partner—”
“It’s a she.”
“Fine. She fell. It happens, and it’s a tragedy, but people disappear out here. Hikers, campers, spelunkers—”
“She’s not dressed for that. She’s wearing a sweater and jeans.”
He makes that growling sound—I’m annoying him with my logic. This is not the time for that shit.
I try to wiggle my ass down to take a better look at the body.
“Don’t—” Dalton begins.
“Homicide detective, remember. Not going to mess up my own crime scene. Except for the fact I am inadvertently standing on the body.” I curse and try to shift my feet, which only makes things worse, bones crackling under my boots, the sound making me freeze as I am all too aware I’m crunching a victim, adding insult to injury.
Speaking of injury …
Yes, let’s focus on that. What did she die of?
It’s impossible to even guess, given my angle and the way the body is wedged. I move as carefully as I can to one side, wincing as the corpse shifts with the movement. As it does, though, I see a hand. A brown-skinned hand still wearing a gold wristwatch.
I see that hand … while seeing both light-skinned hands of the poor woman I’m standing on.
“Eric?” I call.
When he doesn’t answer, I look up, and he’s not there, and I’m thrown into my nightmare, where he’s at the top of the hole and then he’s gone and—
“Eric!”
“Here!” His voice booms, and he scrabbles against rock. “I’m right here. Will’s back, and I’m getting the rope from him. Just hold on.”
“There’s another one.”
Pause. “What?”
“There’s another body. I’m standing on two victims.”
* * *
We’re back in Rockton. We barely made it to the edge of town before Dalton was off his horse, waving the reins at the poor resident who happened to be walking past. She takes them, looking bewildered, and Anders says, “Just lead him behind us.” Dalton’s making a beeline for Val’s. He gets about twenty paces and stops. Wheels. Snaps, “Butler?” and resumes walking.
“That’s my cue,” I say as I slide from Cricket. Anders reaches for the reins. As he takes them, he whispers, “He’s just freaked out.”
“I know,” I say, and jog to follow Dalton.
By the time I get there, Dalton is already striding into Val’s living room, having not bothered to knock, telling her we brought back two bodies and get the goddamned council on the phone now.
Val’s gaze shoots my way, as if begging me to tell her this is some terrible joke. But the fact that I’m standing beside Dalton answers that question.
She looks as if she’s going to be sick. Physically sick. For once, she does not argue when we demand to speak to the council.
Ten minutes later, Phil is on the speaker. He tells Dalton that, yes, he realizes it’s urgent, but Dalton needs to have Val call ahead and set up an appointment time.
“Yeah, fuck that,” Dalton says and launches into an expletive-peppered description of what we’ve found. “We need a doctor,” he says. “We have two goddamned bodies and no one qualified to examine them.”
Phil sighs. “If we haven’t found a doctor in four months, we certainly can’t do it in the next—”
“There used to be a guy,” Dalton says. “A former resident who stayed on call until we got someone else.”
“Dr. Russell. He passed away five years ago. And before you ask, no, we do not have another former resident who was also a medical professional and willing to be on call. We’ve been through this. We’ve contacted the last two town doctors—”
“Yeah, yeah. They were assholes. I don’t want them back.”
No one mentions Beth. There’s still part of me that might say, in an emergency, maybe she could return, briefly.… But after what she did to me, Dalton couldn’t get her out of Rockton fast enough. And we don’t even know if she’s alive.
I can tell myself the council wouldn’t execute her for her crimes. For the exposure threat she posed, though? That’s why we’re stuck with Diana, isn’t it?
If I say I’m sure Beth’s alive, I’m being naive. Willfully naive? I hate that, but this is how we deal with the bargain we’ve made. We live in our castle, and we protect those within and pretend not to see that the moat is filled with ravenous piranhas. Yes, perhaps, every now and then, someone falls in, but they swim out and wander off. Yes, that’s it. Everyone who leaves is out there, alive and well.
“Perhaps I need to say this slower for you, Eric,” Phil continues. “We do not have a doctor to send.”
“At all?” There’s a note in Dalton’s voice that I know well, and I realize what he’s getting at, but Phil only sighs and says, “I’m going to blame this misbehavior on stress. I understand you are concerned, Eric. I understand how difficult it must be to have Ms. Chavez return in that condition and now to find two bodies that may be connected. But extenuating circumstances aside, there is a limit to how many times—and in how many ways—I can tell you, no, we do not have a doctor up our sleeves.”