Shattered by Death (A Jo Oliver Thriller Book 2) Read Free Page B

here for me again, Nick.
    He answered on the first ring. “Hello, beautiful.”
    “Nick…”
    “What’s wrong?”
    This man who knew me so well would sense the tremble in my voice that no one else could hear. “Nick! I need you. Come. Please, just come. Now.
    “Where are you? I’m on my way.”
    “I’m at the boathouse.”
    “The boathouse? Why?”
    “They’re dead. Both of them.”
    “Dead? Del?”
    “Yes.”
    “Both of them?”
    “Yes.”
    “The girlfriend?”
    “Yes!”
    “Just stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Have you called it in?”
    “Yes, just before I called you.”
    “Don’t touch anything. Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
    I clung to Nick’s voice like a lifeline. The best of the best the FBI had to offer—a man I might have married in another time and place. I needed all the power that Nick Vitarello could rain down on any crime scene in the United States with just one phone call.
    If I ever needed you, I need you now.

 
     
     
    I’d promised not to touch anything. I’d promised to wait. The combination of throwing up and calling it in had cleared my head, and I had just under ten minutes to soak it all in. I started taking pictures with my cell phone. The open door. Snap. The layout of the bodies. Tamra’s body lay broken. Snap. A gunshot wound to Del’s right knee. Their knee caps? Snap.
    Del. I pocketed my phone. My hand fell limp at my side. I stepped near his head and looked down, my gut clenching. His mouth was drawn into a sickly smile. I leaned down a little lower. Fishhooks pulled his lips up on either side into a gruesome, impossibly cruel grimace, fishing line knotted behind his head. His eyes were wide open in horror. His chest looked crushed in, right above the heart. What was left of his broken body was too horrible to contemplate. Whatever else might have happened was impossible to tell.
    Given the nauseating smell, coupled with the level of decomp, these bodies had been here at least a day.
    Tamra was a shattered doll, arms and legs sprawling. She’d been placed in Del’s arms, with one leg draped across him, but the leg was broken and twisted. Where her hip should be, the fabric lay in the wrong direction, dried blood everywhere. The back of her skull was crushed: dried blood, gray matter, and who-knows-what had oozed out all over the wooden boards underneath them. I looked away.
    It was off. Crime techs would figure this out, but there weren’t blood spatters everywhere. Why not?
    Del… dead ? My feet might float into the air . Dear God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but in some secret place of my soul I’m a little relieved . They were sprawled across the boathouse floor. My boathouse floor.
    They got what they deserved.
    This would not look good for me at all. If I had been sent to investigate this murder, would I ever have believed in the innocence of a soon-to-be-former spouse just happening to arrive first at the scene and conveniently all alone? Nope. Not on your life.
    I was in a boatload of trouble.
    A silent scream formed on my lips as tires crunched on the gravel drive. I stepped out of the boathouse. Nick’s sedan raced down the hill toward me. He braked hard at the bottom, sending gravel everywhere, sliding the last few feet to a stop. When he stepped out, three men got out with him. I’d raised the level of threat and investigation from county to federal with just one phone call. The locals wouldn’t like that. But I needed Nick by my side, running this thing down. Sorry God. I know I should be leaning on You, but right now I’m turning to Nick. I needed a little more work in the trusting God over man department.
    His men fanned out to secure the scene while he bee-lined over to me, and put his arms around me, claiming me with one warm embrace. I sighed into him, unable to speak, clinging to my life raft. Whiskers brushed the top of my head as he swiveled his neck, taking in the scene before him. We stood like that for a long