Scorched Read Free

the doctor standing beside the radiography tent. It was a welcome interruption. She could tell Aaron was about to launch into one of his lectures, and she was too tired to argue with him.
    “Get me an update on those lights,” she told Aaron, then remembered to smile. “Please.” She jogged across the camp and ducked into the largest tent, which was blessedly cool because of the giant fan they used to keep the expensive equipment from overheating. Dr. Manny Villarreal, a short man who happened to be a giant in his field, was seated at a computer with his usual bandanna tied over his bald head. Today’s selection was army green to match his scrubs.
    Kelsey zipped the tent door shut. She tilted her head back and stood for a few moments, letting the decadent eighty-degree air swirl around her.
    “When you’re done slacking off . . . ?”
    “Sorry. What’s up?” Kelsey joined him at a computer, where the X-ray of a skull appeared on the screen.
    “Victim thirty-two,” Manny said. “She came out of intake this morning.”
    “She?”
    He gave her a dark look. “Irene recovered a pink headband.”
    Kelsey glanced across the tent at Irene, whose unenviable job it was to painstakingly disentangle everyset of bones from the accompanying clothing and personal items. After being separated from the bones, each item had to be photographed and cataloged before being examined by investigators.
    “You’re the expert,” Manny continued, “but I’m guessing the profile comes back as a four- to five-year-old female, about thirty-eight inches tall, based on the femur. In addition to the headband, Irene cataloged a pair of white sandals. What we didn’t find were any bullets or signs of bone trauma.”
    “What about lead wipe?” Kelsey asked. The opaque specks typically showed up on X-ray after a bullet crashed through a human skull.
    “None,” Manny replied. “And as I said, no broken bones. So no obvious cause of death.” He leaned back in his chair and gazed up at Kelsey, and a bleak understanding passed between them.
    If this child hadn’t been marched to the edge of a pit and shot to death, like the rest of the people in the grave with her, then she’d died by other means. Most likely, she’d been buried alive and suffocated.
    Kelsey’s chest tightened and she looked away.
    “I— Excuse me. I have to get some water.”
    With that completely transparent excuse she ducked out of the tent and stood in the blazing tropical sun. She felt light-headed. Her stomach churned, and she knew Aaron was right. She needed a break—a Coke at least, or a PowerBar to get her energy up before she did something embarrassing like faint in the middle of camp.
    Lead from the front, her uncle always said, and he was right. Uncle Joe commanded Navy SEALs for a living,and he knew a thing or two about leadership. Kelsey needed to work hard, yes, but she also needed to set a good example for the six members of her team who had been toiling in the heat for weeks in the name of human rights. Kelsey was spearheading this mission on behalf of an international human-rights group with backing from her home research lab—the prestigious Delphi Center in central Texas. She needed to be sharp and in charge, not passed out from exhaustion. She was young to be managing such a big job, and she knew more than a few people were expecting her to fail—maybe even hoping for it. She needed to prove them wrong.
    Kelsey wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her grimy arm. She traipsed across the camp and rummaged through a plastic food bin until she found a granola bar.
    “Ma’am Kelsey?”
    She turned to see one of her team members, Juan Ocampo, emerging from the jungle with his metal detector and his shaggy brown dog. Milo aspired to be a cadaver dog, but in reality was simply a well-trained mutt who went everywhere with Juan. Kelsey didn’t mind the pup. She liked him, in fact; he was good for morale.
    Juan stopped beside her. His blue