Exposed (26 page)

Maddie emerged from her Bikram class energy-sapped and soaking wet. Hot yoga was a bitch, and although she’d been doing it for months, she still hadn’t quite bought in to the concept of exercising in 105-degree heat.

She stepped into the drizzle and tipped her face up to the moonless sky. The water felt good against her skin, and for a moment she just stood.

“See you at seven, Mad.”

She turned to see Kelsey making a run for the parking lot.

“What’s at seven?” she called over the rain.

“A skeleton recovery. You said you wanted pictures.”

“What if it’s wet?”

“Even better.” She smiled. “We’ll put up the tarp, and my students can get a sample of adverse working conditions.”

Maddie waved and hurried for her car. She slid behind the wheel and toweled off, regretting her recent interest in bone photography. Although an early wake-up call was a great reason not to stare at her phone all
night. And an even better reason not to give in to temptation should a hot FBI agent come knocking on her door.

Right. As if that was going to happen.

Maddie stuffed her towel into her gym bag and retrieved her phone from her purse. She’d just missed a text from her sheriff deputy friend Craig Rodgers.

An even better reason to resist temptation—she had a call-out. She didn’t bother plugging this one into her GPS. It was an intersection she’d been to many times before, one of those spots in the Texas hill country where curvy roads and steep hillsides made for scenic views and fatal collisions. She texted Craig that she was en route, set her trip odometer to zero, and headed for the site.

As she listened to the
swish-swish
of the wiper blades, she mentally inventoried what she had with her. She should be good, provided Craig had already put out road flares. She thought about the rest of her supplies and reviewed standard ops for a motor-vehicle accident.

READ the scene. Reconstruct, eye level, angles, damage
. The mantra had been drilled into her by her forensic photography instructor, whose voice always accompanied her on the way to a call.

Reconstruct
. She would approach the scene, looking for road hazards or weather conditions that might have contributed to the crash. The obvious factor was rain, but there could be more, and she braced herself for a tedious night. One of the challenges of accident photography was that the conditions that contributed to many accidents also made it tough to get good pictures.

Eye level
. Figure out which vehicles were involved,
and get photographs from each driver’s eye level. In the case of a sports car, that meant crouching down. With an eighteen-wheeler, she might need a stepladder.

Angles
. Shoot all relevant angles, including north, south, east, and west, and also corner photos of the vehicles. Corner shots would include two sides in the same picture, to provide perspective. Then she had to get interior views, which might show anything from seat belts that weren’t fastened to cell phones or empty beer cans. Also, she needed the license plates, which were highly reflective and tricky to photograph at night.

Damage
. This was a biggie. She had to get debris, tire impressions, skid marks. In the case of a hit-and-run, it was critical to track down any blood or trace evidence. Sometimes an entire case could be built around a few chips of paint or a few shards of glass.

Crash work was challenging, but Maddie never cut corners. Photos were especially important, because the people involved were often shocked or injured. Sometimes their memories were fuzzy. Sometimes they lied.

Maddie curved around a bend. Through the veil of rain, she saw yellow lights whirring in the distance. A tow truck had already made the scene, and she hoped nothing had been moved. As she got closer, she spotted the wreck—a white hatchback nose-first in a ditch. She didn’t see an ambulance, so maybe the injured motorist had already been rushed to the hospital. She parked on the shoulder, flipped on her hazard lights, and went to get the gear from the back.

Reconstruct
.

She scanned the scene as she zipped into a jacket and gathered her wet-weather gear. Steady rain. Slick
turns. This patch of roadway was known for collisions, but she didn’t see a second car, only the tow truck. She grabbed her phone from the console and dialed Craig. Voice mail.

“Hey, I’m on the scene. Call me.”

She surveyed the patch of road illuminated by her headlight beams. Raindrops shimmered in the light. Where was the tow-truck driver? She looked over her shoulder. What about the first responder?

The back of her neck prickled.
READ the scene
. Maddie was reading everything about this scene, and something felt off.

Doing a slow three-sixty, she tried to penetrate the gloom of the surrounding woods. She glanced at the phone in her hand as she walked back to her car. On impulse, she dialed Brian.

“Beckman.”

She could tell by his voice that he was in the middle of something.

“Hey, it’s Maddie.”

Static. “—hear you.”

“It’s Maddie. Sorry to bug you, but—”

Crack
.

Searing pain. She dropped to her knees.

Crack
.

Gravel flew up, stinging her face. She pitched forward and caught herself on the bumper of the hatchback.

Gun
. The word slammed through her brain. She hurled herself into the ditch. Pain lanced up her arm as she bumped against the car.

Dear God, I’m hit
.

Another sharp
crack
. She looked around frantically. Car. Branches. Mud. She crouched motionless, trying to absorb the unreal reality as icy water swirled around her ankles. Someone was
shooting
at her.

Panic expanded in her chest like a balloon. She darted around the side of the car and cowered beside the engine block, panting. She looked across the road and saw her phone and equipment bag on the gravel, spotlit by her headlights and getting pelted by rain.

Her chest heaved up and down as she looked around wildly. Her ears rang. And then the high, tinny noise changed into a low grumble that could be heard over the drizzle.

Truck
.

Her heart jackhammered. Terror gripped her as she crouched in the ditch and searched the highway. No headlights, but the noise was getting closer. Every cell in her body screamed for her to
move
.

She scrambled up the slippery embankment and darted for the cover of some bushes. Thorns pricked her legs through her yoga pants. She looked around desperately. Where was she? Where could she go? She was surrounded by branches and tree trunks, everything yellow in the chaotic swirl of tow-truck lights.

She plowed deeper into the woods. She peered through the trees and spotted her Prius. Was the passenger door unlocked?

A pickup halted beside her car. A large dark figure leaped from the truck bed. He stepped in front of the headlight beams. She caught a glimpse of the gun gripped in his hand just before he leaned into her car and switched off the lights.

Maddie sucked in her breath. Her heart pounded madly as she listened to his shoes crunch over the gravel. When he hurdled the ditch, she turned and plunged into the woods.

How many were there? Was she surrounded? The branches reached out like tentacles, grabbing her clothes, her hair, her feet, as she pushed through the brush. Her arm was on fire. She knew she’d been hit, but she shoved the thought away as she plowed through the thicket. She had to move. She had to hide. She had to—

The ground vanished, and she was on her butt, slipping down a hillside. Something stabbed at her, snagged her hair. She tumbled to the side as the ground grew steeper and steeper, and she felt herself gaining momentum. She bumped over rocks, tree roots. She flailed with her hands out, grasping for vines, branches—anything to slow her—but the force pulling her was getting stronger. She was losing control. Her stomach dropped out as she actually caught air. She hit the ground again and tumbled through the stabbing darkness.

She smacked into something hard. Her chest seized. She couldn’t breathe. For an endless moment, she felt numb.

Then a giant wave of pain rolled over her. Her pulse roared in her ears. She gasped for breath. She managed to get a ragged gulp of air into her lungs as a burning sensation pulsed up her arm.

She clenched her teeth and tried to block out the pain as she rolled onto her side. The air smelled wet and loamy. Her face was pressed against something cold. Leaves? She reached her hand out, and another bolt of pain hit her. It took a moment to catch her breath. She
extended her fingers and encountered something hard and textured. Bark. She’d crashed into a tree.

Her skull throbbed. The world was jarringly off-kilter, and she realized her head was positioned lower than her body on the steep slope. Another nauseating wave of pain hit her, and she was sure she’d vomit. But she swallowed down the bitter taste.

She closed her eyes, which made the world only slightly dimmer. She was in the woods. It was dark and rainy. She could hide here.

She could also die here.

Terror washed over her as she remembered the gunshots, as she remembered dropping to her knees. He knew she’d been hit, and he was still out there, coming for her.

He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming!

She shifted her body and swung her legs around. Gingerly, she touched the wound on her forearm. It burned. She was soaked and muddy, so it was hard to feel for sure, but it had to be bleeding.

She shifted onto her hip, taking the weight off her arm. Leaves clung to her neck. Some had gotten inside her jacket, and she recalled that it was black, like her pants. Good camouflage. Clinging to that single positive thought, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think of a plan. Could she make it back up to her car? Should she try? But the shooter was still searching for her. He probably had a flashlight. He definitely had a gun.

Or two. The first sounds had been the distinctive
crack
of rifle fire. But the weapon she’d
seen
had been a handgun.

He wasn’t alone.

Her breath hitched as reality hit her. At least two armed men against a woman with no weapon.

She
had
a weapon. She’d listened to Brian’s warning and tucked her pistol into her purse on the way out the door tonight. It was up in her car at the top of the hill, but that may as well have been the top of Mount Everest for all the good it did her.

And she was injured. She thought of being hunted down like a wounded animal and felt a fresh spurt of fear. But her fear was quickly displaced by anger. The very real prospect of getting slaughtered out here in the rain and mud filled her with a blinding fury even more intense than the pain in her arm. Who the hell were these people? They had something to do with Jolene Murphy and everything else, but she didn’t understand why they were after her, why they were absolutely intent on killing her. Damned if she was going to let them.

Clenching her teeth, she sat up. A flash of lightning revealed her surroundings in stark black-and-white, but only for a moment, and then she was in darkness again. She felt around with her good hand. She was at the base of a tree. Beyond that, she didn’t feel any bushes thick enough to conceal her. She grabbed a root and pulled herself away from the tree so she could scoot farther down the hill. Going up was beyond her. She felt battered and woozy. So she scooted down—slowly, on her butt, until her feet encountered a plant. The first one was thorny, but she kept moving along until she felt something thick and sort of soft, maybe some kind of evergreen.

Light flickered. She glanced up and blinked into the
darkness, trying to make out shapes. The yellow glow had disappeared above the tree line. All that was left was an inky sky, barely lighter than the trees.

A strobe of lightning, and she did a quick glance around. She was in a clump of bushes at the base of a ravine. The walls were even steeper than she’d guessed. Maybe that would work in her favor.

But it was raining, had been since before she’d left the yoga studio. And this area was prone to flash floods. With a sinking heart, she realized she needed to make her way to higher ground.

Maddie’s arm burned. Her head throbbed, and the mere thought of working her way back up the slope exhausted her. She felt so tired, so completely drained of energy. She wanted to lie down in a bed of leaves and go to sleep.

An all-new fear sparked to life inside her. Maybe she was tired because of blood loss. She couldn’t succumb to that. If she went to sleep right now, she was as good as dead.

She forced herself to move up the hill, a little at a time, digging her thin canvas shoes into the mud and pushing with her thighs until she found a ledge. She waited what felt like an eternity for another flash of lightning and then scooted herself into the cover of a bush. It smelled like a cedar, and she hunched under its branches and peered out at the gloom.

Another flicker. Not lightning this time but a flashlight beam at the top of the hill. She held her breath as it sliced through the darkness, sweeping methodically over the hillside. It disappeared into the trees, but her fear remained razor-sharp as she waited for it to come back.

She looked down at her arm, even though she couldn’t see it. She felt the sleeve of her jacket, felt the hole in the fabric where the bullet had ripped through. Another wave of nausea hit, and she leaned against the tree.

Would Craig come looking for her? Would Brian? But he didn’t know where she was. Maybe neither of them did. Craig had summoned her to this scene, but something seemed wrong about that now, as wrong as the scene itself.

God, she was so tired. None of her thoughts fit together. She couldn’t get her mind to work.