Stranded by Alex Kava Read Free Book Online

thinking, “Will this one be her?” Would he finally find his little sister?
    This last body had been that of a child, approximately the same age Brodie was when she disappeared. But even when the bodies were those of adult females it didn’t rule Brodie out. Just becauseshe disappeared at eleven years old didn’t mean she had died then. There was always the possibility that she had lived on for any part of the fifteen years she had been missing. So each child, each teenager, each young woman, each unidentified female corpse, held promise and misery. And each time a body was identified as someone else, Creed felt a sickening combination of relief and sadness. Relief because she might still be alive. Sadness because if she was, it could be a life of hell on earth.
    He looked up at Hannah, met those brown eyes that could lecture as good as love. “Let me take a shower and you can tell me about the assignment.”
    He stood and the room swirled. He caught himself and glanced at Hannah to see if she noticed. Of course she had.
    “Don’t worry, okay?” he told her and this time he was serious. When that didn’t seem to convince her, he added, “I promise I’ll let you know when it’s time to get worried.”

CHAPTER 10

    Maggie would rather be back in the mud instead of being stuck inside to watch from the window.
    The mobile crime lab had just arrived. She saw Tully stop them in the driveway. He directed them to the site where the garbage bag waited. She knew he would make them outline their plan of how they’d remove the body before he allowed them to start.
    He’d been on his cell phone since he’d left the farmhouse in between questioning the property’s executor, Howard Elliott, and ordering around Sheriff Uniss and his deputies. In the past, Tully always seemed pleased to hand off jurisdiction to the local authorities. A play-by-the-rules guy, he understood and accepted his role as outside consultant. So Maggie was pleased but, again, surprised to see him taking over with such relish. Perhaps he was simply happy not to be stuck in the house with a half-naked Lily.
    Maggie felt like she had gotten the short straw. For ten years she had fought to be treated no different than her male colleagues. And for the most part she was successful. One look into Tully’s eyes had reminded her that dealing with Lily was a job for a woman. No discussion. No doubt about it. Which made little sense to Maggie because, despite their shared gender, there was absolutely nothing else she had in common with this woman.
    She glanced back at Lily, who still hadn’t put on any additional clothes, claiming it was way too hot and she needed to cool off.
    “Damned bugs are crawling all over the place,” she had told Maggie as she picked at the scabs already on her arms. “They’re in my clothes, too.”
    Maggie hadn’t seen any evidence of bugs in the house and wondered if they were hallucinations caused by the drugs. The house was, in fact, remarkably clean for a place that had been vacated ten years ago. Someone had been taking care of it and it certainly wasn’t Lily.
    Taking a break from her bug and skin-picking obsession, the woman had found a half-eaten candy bar among the scattered empty wrappers. She was now nibbling around the peanuts and nougat. She took cautious bites at the side of her mouth. Her teeth were in worse shape than Maggie had originally thought. Despite the discomfort, it sounded like the woman was grinding her teeth in between bites.
    As Maggie looked around the bedroom again, she wondered if Lily had flushed her entire stash and, if so, what she’d do when she realized it.
    “She was really good to me,” Lily said suddenly without prompting.
    It took Maggie a couple of seconds to realize she meant the farmstead’s owner.
    “How long did you live here?”
    “I don’t remember,” she said, as all the nervous motion of her body lessened.
    Lily’s eyes darted around for the answer. Her leg stopped