Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9 by Robert J. Crane Read Free Book Online

shifts.
    I could see the Las Vegas Strip ahead of us, a grey stone footbridge at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard crossing over the street ahead. It was slanted diagonally away from us, toward the mall. Palm trees lined either side of the road and the mall’s facade was a square-tiled oddity that just looked out of place.
    The crowds grew thicker as we drew closer to the strip. As we approached the footbridge, I sent Scott a look that made clear my expectations. I wondered if he’d see it the same way as he slowed the car down and pulled off to the side of the road. I guess he had.
    I opened the door and stepped out into the sweltering heat. I felt like my body had been balled up and shoved into an oven. The air was dry, so dry I felt like I couldn’t even sweat at first. I stood there, half-wishing I could climb back into the sweet, cool SUV before I slammed the door, sealing my decision behind me.
    There was a cop standing next to the yellow tape that surrounded the crime scene. I didn’t see a cruiser anywhere in sight, and I wondered how long this poor bastard had been standing out here in this hell. I flashed my badge at him and he nodded as I ducked low under the tape.
    “Howdy,” he said, thumbs in his belt like an aw-shucks cowboy or something. He was wearing a khaki cop uniform, with black shades that made him look super-cool. He even had a crew-cut haircut that made him look like he’d just gotten out of the military.
    “Officer Nash,” I said, reading his badge from a little ways away. I saw his eyebrows move up in surprise that I called him by his name. “I’m Agent Nealon, this is Agent Byerly. FBI.”
    “Ma’am,” he said, deferring enough that I caught a whiff of ex-military from him. I wondered if he’d served overseas; if he had, this slightly-above-one-hundred-degrees heat was probably like a warm bath to him compared to Iraq or Afghanistan.
    “They got you standing out here all day?” I asked. The crime scene tape had been stretched around a splotchy break in the wall beneath the overpass where skull had met concrete, and both had yielded some before concrete won the battle.
    “Just a couple hours of my shift, ma’am,” he said, and I glanced back to see him at attention, hands off his belt. “They wouldn’t leave anyone out here all day, but we had a request from your Agent Li to keep it cordoned off until you’d had a chance to look around.”
    “Did you?” I hadn’t known Li had done that. I was a little surprised, actually; he and I didn’t really get along that well.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Nash said, all business.
    “Well, I’m here now,” I said, staring at that spot on the wall. “So you can go.”
    I sensed his hesitation without even looking. “Are you sure, ma’am? If you’d like, I could—”
    “It’s fine,” I said. I stared at the dark markings where dried blood—and other organic residue—caked the spot where the wall had cracked. It had shattered outward in a roughly circular pattern, and I imagined Charlie pinned against it like it was her own version of a halo. “Get yourself some water.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Officer Nash said and retreated. His steps were precise, a military cadence, as he walked back toward the escalator that led up the footbridge. I lost sight of him as he went up.
    “Why are we here?” Scott said from behind me as I stared again at the broken wall where my aunt had had her brains splattered. “We’re not detectives, Sienna. We’re not criminologists. There’s not a lot of hope we’re going to connect the dots and solve this murder.”
    “How do you know?” I asked, staring at the place where Charlie’s life had ended. Unexpectedly. Abruptly. “The report said it looked like she’d run after being lacerated on the abdomen.” I stared at the people moving along the strip ahead. “Shouldn’t there be surveillance camera footage?” I cursed the fact that I’d sent Officer Nash on his merry way before asking.
    “This