Haunted (A Bishop/SCU Novel Book 15) Read Free Page B

all kinds of treats.
    “Thank you,” she murmured.
    “My pleasure. You have a good weekend, Sheriff.”
    “You, too.” Trinity took a couple of steps back, then turned and retreated to her Jeep.
    As soon as she was inside, she offered the treat to her dog. “With Miss Edith’s compliments. You want it now or later?”
    Braden sniffed and made a soft huffing sound Trinity recognized. “Later, then,” she said, dropping it into one of the cup holders in the Jeep’s console.
    Very shortly, she had backed out of the cottage driveway and was driving along one of what the locals referred to as cross streets that ran parallel to Main Street, the lowermost street in Sociable. The rest of the town proper climbed a mountain, literally; there were half a dozen streets that climbed straight up from Main, most reaching or nearly reaching the topmost cross street in front of the church, and a good dozen cross streets connecting most of them.
    Trinity turned her Jeep and started up the mountain, catching a glimpse of the white steeple rising high above Sociable; it was indeed visible from nearly any vantage point in the town, though the church itself had long ago become hidden by overgrown shrubbery planted rather inexplicably all the way across its front and the graveyard beside it as well.
    Her radio crackled suddenly. “Sheriff?”
    She reached for the handset, using the one in the Jeep both because it was more reliable and because she hadn’t bothered to wear any part of her normal uniform except for her gun.
    “Yeah, Sadie?”
    “You asked to be notified if any more information came out about those lost hikers?”
    “There’s news?”
    “Not good, I’m afraid.” Sadie wasn’t really accustomed to dealing with violent subjects in a town like Sociable, so her shock was both obvious and entirely natural, even though she was clearly doing her best to sound professional. “Report is, a few hours ago they found the bodies of the first two girls miles south of where they disappeared. I thought they said more than seventy-five miles, but could that be right?”
    Trinity said, “It would be an unusually large search area, even after weeks of searching. Unless they got a tip where to look.”
    “Maybe that was it. Anyway, they . . . thought at first a bear had gotten to them, but . . . They said it was a knife, and a sharp one. Cut them all up, those poor girls.”
    Trinity kept her own tone detached with an effort. “Raped?”
    “No, and while I say that’s at least one thing they didn’t have to endure, it seems the FBI people they have on scene are saying it’s significant there was no sexual assault.”
    “They say why?”
    “Not that I’ve heard. You want me to call and ask?”
    “No. No, I’ll do that myself. Anything else, Sadie?”
    “Just a general warning to law enforcement to be on the lookout—though for who or what they don’t really say. Anybody suspicious, I guess. Asking that we spread the warning that nobody needs to be hiking the southern Blue Ridge right now. And that whoever murdered those girls might be heading south.”
    Toward Sociable.
    Neither of them said it.
    Neither of them had to.

 
    Hollis Templeton accepted a hand up from her partner and tried not to show how winded she was. “Man, that’s a hike.”
    Reese DeMarco, looking past her to the ravine they had just climbed out of, said, “If he was looking for an inaccessible place to leave them, he chose well.”
    “Not too far off one of the trails, though,” she pointed out.
    “Yeah, but in January, it’s not likely to be very well traveled; we’re fairly lucky there’s no snow cover at this elevation. If we hadn’t had a chopper up, we never would have spotted them. And if we hadn’t, wildlife would have disposed of the remains in a matter of days no matter what the weather did.”
    Miranda Bishop left the ranger she’d been speaking to and joined them at the edge of the ravine. “We won’t know until an ME