Disturbed Mind (A Grace Ellery Romantic Suspense Series Book 2) Read Free Page B

it has felt that way every day that I’ve known you. I meant it when I said I loved you at the hospital. That wasn’t just relief or stress talking. I love you and, it may be a little too soon, but if I can offer you a place in my home when you’re struggling to live with the Schneiders, I am more than willing to offer a bed and a drawer.”
    “And maybe some of your bathroom, too?” I ask, smiling.
    He grins. “Just a little bit of that, too.”
    I wrap my arms around his neck and pull myself up to kiss him. Everything is perfect and my life is finally repairing itself since Francis’s attack. For the first time, when I close my eyes, I see my future instead of my past.

Chapter Five

Sam, 2015
    ( E arly Thursday Evening ; Neabsco Creek, Pearland, Virginia)
    THE FIRST THING I SEE is a silver Honda Civic that is chained to a tow truck. Water drips off the edges of the car, so I can assume that it came out of Neabsco Creek. When I pull up beside the two police cars parked at the end of the bike trail, I know that the death must be grisly. The two police officers and the tow truck driver are all avoiding looking at each other and the atmosphere is full of revulsion.
    I get out of my car and grab my forensic kit. I approach the car, and an intense feeling of despair grips me. As I spot the body, the skin stripped off its face and the front of the skull crushed, I can feel the bile acid start to rise up my throat. I quickly turn on my heel and walk a few steps into the woods before hurling up my lunch.
    I dry heave for a couple of minutes before wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I close my eyes, but I don’t think the image of the desecrated body will ever vanish from my conscious mind. I can only presume it’s a man from his broad shoulders and large hands, though there wasn’t much signs of aging, so he was likely in his late teens or early twenties. I can still see the bloodstain trailing down the man’s white shirt and black leather jacket with a smaller amount of speckled on his tattered jeans. When I walk back out of the woods, one of the police officers is waiting for me in front of the Civic.
    “Pretty gruesome, huh?” he asks. “That’s why we needed someone special to come down here. This is the first murder that Pearland has had in…forever. The last murder was probably of Native Americans back when Columbus sailed the ocean blue…there certainly hasn’t been one in my lifetime. So, we called down to the Murray Police Station….and here you are.”
    “Here I am,” I say, taking a deep breath. “What exactly happened here? It doesn’t look like the body is newly deceased.”
    “We’re not sure. Two swimmers found the car earlier. They were teenagers…I think they were doing some skinny-dipping since the weather’s been unseasonably warm for this time of year. We decided to pull it up in case someone had crashed and drowned. The teens said they had no idea a body was in it after we discovered John Doe here. I ran background checks on the two of them, but they’re squeaky clean. The car has Ohio plates. Some of the guys are trying to get ahold of the owner, but the guy’s license plate says that he’s forty-nine years old, he’s two hundred and twenty pounds, and he’s six four, so…I don’t think this is the owner unless the killer did a liposuction and used lots of aging cream.”
    “He could be the killer, though.” I look back into the car. I try to look at the body as a puzzle instead of someone who was once living. I still want to vomit.
    “It seems that the killer wanted the guy’s identity to remain unknown. The killer was smart enough to know that the body would eventually be found. The face is gone, including the whole bone structure, so it would be difficult to reconstruct. From what I can see inside his mouth—it appears that the jaw is broken—his teeth are missing. I’d bet his fingerprints are gone, too. The killer was meticulous. He is very skilled at what he