Backblast, Candace Irving [i love reading books .TXT] 📗

She prayed so. The Bambi-lover theory might be the only thing standing between this crime scene and the discovery of a second, meticulously sectioned body. Unfortunately, given the particulars she and Tonga had noted, it was more likely they were on the verge of a timely repeat, no matter the motive, and they both knew it.

"Shall we proceed?"

"Sure thing." Kate offered an arm to the aging ME as he stood.

"Thank you, young lady."

Kate held her tongue as she returned the doc's smile. At thirty-one, she doubted she passed as a kid anymore, even to a man on the verge of retirement. But there was no point in reminding Tonga, not when he'd come to know her as the teenage daughter of a local deputy who did her algebra outside the autopsy suite while waiting on her dad's "work".

Just as well. The doc's indulgent humor disintegrated with each subsequent unbagging. By the time they'd pulled the upper torso out and laid it on its slightly flayed-open front to photograph the reverse, Kate's mood had sunk deeper and darker than the ME's.

Like her, their victim was a combat vet.

She might not have had a chance to roll their mystery man's prints, but between the half-dozen bullet and shrapnel scars, the excellent level of physical conditioning of the chest and limbs, not to mention the detailed 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagle" tattoo that covered the entire upper back, they were most likely dealing with the remains of a former Army soldier between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five.

All they needed now was a face and name to go with it.

Tonga's sigh was heavy with dread. "I'll get the last one."

"No, you opened the previous three." He was the worse for wear for it, too. The endless string of drunk-driving, drug-related and natural-causes deaths hadn't prepared the ME for this. Pulling out coldly sectioned human limb after limb had taken its toll on the South African giant, each shrink-wrapped piece peeling off another layer of his surprisingly tender soul.

Kate knew the feeling. For her, the rude awakening had come at nineteen. She'd been a cherry military policeman on her first tour in Afghanistan. She could still close her eyes late at night and feel the scorching heat on her skin, smell the ripening muck that had once passed for human fluid and flesh invading her lungs as she canvassed the aftermath of her first IED explosion. A black plastic garbage bag in one hand, the damned-near unidentifiable remains of a squadmate in the other as she bent down, again and again, to pluck up the disjointed fragments of flesh and bone scattered about the road like the burnt and bloodied leavings of some twisted Mardi Gras parade.

The sludge that had been simmering in Kate's gut since before she'd woken that morning began to churn.

"Are you unwell?"

She dragged on a smile. "Not at all. Look—Seth's waving to us. Why don't you head over and see what he needs while I verify the contents of that last bag?"

Shame mixed with the gratitude in Tonga's eyes—but he took the escape as Kate headed for the final sack.

One missing head laid out on the road, and they were done with the worst of it. The eyes would be the hardest. They always were. God willing, they'd be closed.

Kate braced herself as she knelt to pop the final row of staples. But as she reached inside to carefully cradle the head that did indeed await her, a wave of nausea crashed in, damned near swamping her. Instinct merged with an unexpected riptide of terror and she jerked to her feet.

The nausea worsened.

Threatened.

For the first time in her career, she was a split second from heaving all over her evidence. Instinct kicked in again as Kate spun to the right and bolted into the trees lining the road. She was still sucking in huge gulps of blissfully cool air to combat the nausea that continued to threaten when she felt the palm on her back.

Patting. Soothing.

Lou.

She kept her eyes on a spindly pine, desperately trying to focus on the fragmented lines in its bark and not the perfect, scarlet slash at the base of that shrink-wrapped head.

"Kato? What the devil was in there?"

"Nothing!" Scratch that—and calm down, damn it. "It's a head, Lou. Just a head."

So why did merely picturing it—a simple, solitary head attached to a face she'd never even seen before today—make her want to vomit all over again?

And her lungs. Why wouldn't they cooperate?

Kate clamped down on the dive watch wrapped loosely about her wrist and began to twist, forcing herself to draw her breath into her lungs, then push it out with each steady sweep. The exercise in tactical breathing helped. But it was the constant, scraping friction that gradually hauled her out of the past, slowly but surely anchoring her in the present.

Lou's hand pressed into her shoulder as she straightened, then disappeared as she edged away.

"You want me to call the doc?"

The irony of the ME having to hurry over to soothe her nerves almost caused Kate to smile. Almost.

She found the strength to face Lou. "I'm fine. Must've been the pancakes I had for breakfast."

It was a lie, and this man had known her long enough and well enough to call her on it.

Lou swallowed it anyway. He patted her normal cheek for good measure. "S'okay, kiddo. This is my first freshly severed head too."

That was just it. When she'd stared into that bag, she'd had the distinct impression this wasn't hers.

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