Trinity by Kristin Dearborn Read Free Book Online Page A

her ear. Val answered; his voice thick with sleep.
    “I need your help,” she said.
    “Where are you?” He paused a moment. “What the fuck time is it?”
    “After five. TJ’s dead.”
    “What?” He sounded clearer now. “How do you know?”
    “I’m standing next to his body. He’s in the road, 719 towards town. Someone killed him.” Val said nothing, so Kate kept going. “You were one of the last people to see him. You just got out of jail. You know how Rich will spin this.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “Get out here.”
    “Truck has a flat tire.”
    “You can walk.” God, why was he being difficult?
    “Okay.”
    He hung up. She put the phone in her pocket, and took a moment to breathe fresh air that didn’t smell like decay before going back to TJ.
    Exhaling through her mouth, she looked at the crumpled mess before her. This road didn’t see much traffic, clearly he’d been dead for a few hours, the blood around his throat and face was a tacky dark brown in the building light. The sun peeked over the top of the pines, tossing long striped shadows across his mangled torso. His left arm was gone. Shit. Did the killer take it with him? Maybe a sword could do this kind of damage, wielded in a sequential way to make it look like claws? Did the killer like trophies? Or was it a bear after all?
    Kate looked at her watch, 5:40 am.
    The mine. The old Olympus Mine. Less than a half-mile from where she stood right this second. No one would ever find the body or the bike. She and Val had explored there some years ago, back when they were kids (everything with Val had happened some years ago, she reflected), and she recalled a fairly wide road in with a drop-off down into an impenetrable blackness. Once Val got here—she hoped he would run, get here fast, every second TJ lay in the road was time a car could come—they could take TJ to the mine. No one would find him there.
    She popped the trunk open. Looked at TJ. Looked at the small trunk, with its dirty gray carpeting. If his blood got on the carpet, which it would, and the police linked it back to her, she and Val both would be in a world of hurt. She kept a dirty Indian blanket in her trunk. That should work. Doubled up, the blanket covered the gray carpeting of the car’s trunk. Or should she wrap his body? That seemed more respectful.
    This wasn’t the time to cry. She blinked back tears. The pink had almost melted off the clouds overhead, they no longer looked like floating cotton candy. Shouldn’t it be raining for this kind of thing? Thunder and lightning?
    Sucking in a wavering breath and stifling a sob, she slid her hands under his armpits and hefted. Fuck. He’d needed to lose weight, and now that it was dead weight—even missing most of his left arm—she began to doubt her ability to do this. She had to wait for Val. She couldn’t get him from the ground to the trunk of the car, he was too heavy. His blood stained her hands, and she wiped them on his jeans, the muscles underneath feeling so…inanimate.
    She stepped away from him, to where she could breathe again. She listened to the bugs and the birds, the happy morning choir all around her.
    And something heavy moved among the trees.
    Her breath, almost a sob, caught in her throat as she whipped her head towards the noise. She wanted to call out Val’s name but she couldn’t make the sound come. What if the killer was back? Did it-he-want to claim TJ’s other arm? Should she hide? She realized she was simply standing still, holding the blanket in her hands. The car wasn’t too far, surely she could make it there before—
    Val stepped out of the trees, wearing the same black T-shirt from the night before and his jeans.
    “You scared the hell out of me.”
    “Who else did you think it would be?”
    “Someone killed him. They could still be out here.”
    Val walked over to the body and pulled a pair of leather gloves out of his pocket. She saw something flicker in his eyes, the