Read Online Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain - Free Book Online Page B

Archie said.
    “Should be fine,” Ellen said. “There,” she said suddenly. She turned her flashlight to Cody, who was crouching a few feet from where Archie and Henry had just been searching. “Good boy,” Ellen said. She walked up behind the dog, clipped his lead back on, and gave his head a vigorous rub.
    The area that Cody was indicating was covered with vines. Archie walked up and sank down to his hands and knees. “Shine your lights here,” he said to the others. One by one they all stood around him, Susan, the ornithologist, Henry, Ellen, the patrol cops, the Search and Rescue workers, each shone a flashlight on the spot where the dog had knelt, until the ten yellow circles of light joined into one. Archie moved the ivy and morning glory vines aside with his hands. He started out slowly, methodically, careful not to disturb anything he didn’t have to, and then began pulling at the vines, uprooting them and tossing them to the side. When he had cleared the area he sat back on his knees.
    Susan leaned forward. “There’s nothing there,” she said.
    Archie turned to the dog. “Should we dig, boy?” he asked, scratching the dog’s head with his muddy hand. “Is it buried?”
    Cody cocked his head and looked at Archie and then looked at the now bare spot of earth.
    “I’ll get the shovels,” one of the Search and Rescue volunteers said, and he headed noisily for the path.
    Archie looked at the mud. It was rough, thick with pebbles and roots. Archie picked up a pebble and rolled it between his fingers. It was light and porous. He touched it to his tongue.
    “Why are you eating that rock?” Susan asked.
    “It’s not a rock,” Archie said. Rocks were dense and wouldn’t stick to saliva. This was porous. “It’s bone.”
    Cody whined and pulled at his lead.
    Archie looked up at the dog. Anything that would chip bone like this wouldn’t leave hair like what they’d seen in the nest. There was another body. “Let him go,” he told Ellen.
    She unclipped Cody’s lead and he bounded off, nose down, about thirty feet up the hillside, and then crouched down.
    Archie picked up his flashlight and scrambled after him, barely aware of the others behind him, their flashlights bobbing in the darkness. The hillside was thick with ferns, almost prehistoric in their enormity. He pulled himself up the slope by grabbing hand-fuls of fern fronds, using their root systems as leverage. Their tiny seeds stuck to his hands. When he got to Cody, he knelt down beside him and the dog licked his face. Then the dog whined again and nosed at a large fern that abutted a cedar bent cockeyed from the hillside. Archie reached out and pushed a fern frond aside and pointed his flashlight underneath.
    “See anything?” Henry called from behind him.
    “Yeah,” said Archie.
    The skeleton was partial, but it was definitely human. He could see a foot, the remaining skin dark and leathery, which is why it hadn’t been eaten. The calf bones were picked clean above the ankle, so the foot looked odd, like a grotesque shoe. He swung the flashlight farther under the fern and saw what was left of a shrunken leather face, black lips, the cracked hide of a cheek, an eye socket, a half-crushed skull. And there, still rooted to the dehydrated scalp tissue, a tangle of blond hair.
    “There you are,” he said quietly.
    Susan and Henry appeared on either side of him. Susan sank down next to him, her leg touching his. He was getting used to having her around.
    “Three bodies all within a hundred yards,” she said, pen pressed against her notebook. “Are they connected?”
    “Maybe,” Archie said. “Or maybe not.” He looked up into the dark woods. It had stopped raining and the clouds had parted, revealing a bright shard of moon. In the distance, through the trees at the edge of the woods, he could make out the light of a house.
    “Find out who lives there,” he said to Henry. “And then find out if they have a wood