Whatever Remains Read Free

between the fence boards and disappearing in the woods. But his prey hadn’t stirred. It was too large to be a possum or rabbit, and not the right shape for a deer. His dinner? she wondered. Had he been eating…?
                  “Jade!” Asher called, and his voice sounded far away because she had, to her surprise, gone halfway down the drive and was closing in on the barn at a fast clip. Her pumps rapped against the asphalt, the sound echoing against the trunks of the old oaks that shaded the drive and played havoc on her depth perception as their shadows weaved together. Asher’s flat-soled loafers started down behind her.
                  For reasons she didn’t understand, curiosity had become too big to ignore inside her mind, and she had to know what poor thing lay under the lights on the arena sand. If it was a grisly coyote kill, she’d need to warn Jeremy; she didn’t want Clara seeing it when they went down for night check. If it was still alive – whatever it was – she’d need to put it out of its misery.
                  Her heels went through the turf like aerating spikes when she left the drive, so she walked on her tiptoes; felt the grass slap at her ankles. There was a pedestrian gate that accessed the paddock behind the barn and it squealed as she pushed it open. There was a path – a worn track in the grass where she and Jeremy and their students had passed hundreds of times.
                  Asher caught up to her. “Jade, what’s going on? What if that animal’s still down here?” He sounded more than a little frightened by the prospect. “You’re gonna ruin your shoes.”
                  The arena – 100x200 and filled with natural white sand – gleamed pale and eerie in the lamplight. Her eyes went straight to the center, to what she’d thought must be the coyote’s meal, and her brain registered the image before logic would allow her to believe it.
                  She’d seen this before – the outstretched arms, the sunken hollows of prepubescent hips and chest, the gangly legs curled – so many times in arenas: a child thrown from a horse, gathering their breath before they sat up, bawling over their most recent spill.
                  Only there was no horse.
                  There was an empty stretch of sand, a figure too still to be real, and all she heard was the thunderous leap of her own pulse cutting through the static whisper of the wind.
                  “Is that –  ” Asher started.
                  Jade wet her lips and fought the panicky bile rising in her throat. “Call 9-1-1.”

 
     
     
    2
     
     
                  W hy? Why, of all the houses in the county, did it have to be that house? Had Ben believed in karma, he’d say this was her way of screwing him over after all this time.
                  Lucky for him, all he believed in was the existence of evil. And numerical statistics. Statistically, it was only a matter of time until evil found its way to 4253 Iris Lane.
                  But, statistics or no, it sucked big ones that he’d been the detective to get the call.
                  He had a 2011 Charger – dark blue and rear wheel drive for police practicality – and the radio knob had snapped off two days before; he couldn’t adjust the volume or turn the thing off. Short of unscrewing the antennae – which he was about ten minutes from pulling over and doing – he was stuck shuffling through channels. “Sympathy for the Devil” seemed too ironic for words, so he flipped to the pop station and settled for some chart-topping British boy band shit that was slightly more tolerable than rap or hipster elevator music garbage. He wanted to turn the damn thing off, but in a way, maybe the noise was a good thing. Maybe collecting his thoughts was a piss-poor idea because once dread took