Deadly Promises by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  "You sound surprised," Mia said.

  "I am. So far, he hasn't had the slightest interest in this case. At least, I thought he hadn't."

  "Well, evidently someone's interested, because this guy was under strict orders not to simply leave the package with the evidence clerk. He had me paged down to the lobby to make sure I knew that his item had arrived and it was top priority."

  "I'm shocked," Kelsey said. "Did you have the heart to tell him the true meaning of top priority around there? And why am I on speaker phone?"

  "I'm in the Jeep," Mia said. "Stick shift and cell phones don't mix."

  "It's after ten. Don't tell me you're just leaving work."

  "Okay, I won't. Actually, I'm glad you called. There's a chance your case could get bumped to the front of my line. What's your estimate of the postmortem interval on this thing?"

  Kelsey paused. "I'd say six months to a year."

  "Hmm..."

  "That's a loaded hmm. What's going on?"

  The Delphi Center's electronic gates parted. Mia waved at the guard and rolled through, then turned onto the two-lane highway that would take her into San Marcos.

  "It's possible your case could be related to an ongoing federal investigation," Mia said.

  "You're kidding."

  "It's a missing person case. About three months ago I got a bone sample in from Del Rio, which isn't far from you. I was asked to use mitochondrial DNA and get a profile for comparison with a known sample. It was all very urgent. The agent who brought me the sample--"

  "Wait a second. Are we talking FBI?"

  Mia didn't say anything, knowing her silence would be confirmation enough.

  "Why wouldn't they send it to Quantico?"

  "I'm not sure," Mia said. "But from what I gather, this investigator had an in at the Delphi Center and knew he could get a quick turnaround. I was ordered to analyze it ASAP, and that's just what I did."

  "And?"

  "And the results weren't what they had hoped. Whoever their missing person is, the bone isn't his."

  "His?"

  "The missing person is male. Have you determined the sex on these bones yet?"

  "I think so," Kelsey said. "We found the femur this afternoon and I've been working on it all night. I can tell you it's human, large in stature, probably male. And definitely an adult."

  "If the bone has been there six months to a year that would fit with my case, too."

  "Do the feds have dental records on this missing person?" Kelsey asked.

  "I'm not sure. Why?"

  "He's got some distinctive dental work. Expensive. You should get our forensic odontologist to take a look."

  "I'll do that."

  "Are you going to fill me in on what this is about?"

  Mia heard the annoyance in her friend's voice. They didn't normally keep secrets but, in this case, it wasn't Mia's decision.

  "I wish I could," she said. "I'll let you know what develops. Probably by late tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow? Mia, come on. What in the world is this about?"

  "I don't know yet," she lied. "But I'll tell you more as soon as I can."

  KELSEY HUNG UP the satellite phone, baffled. She walked over to the stove and stirred her pot of soup as she tried to decipher Mia's words.

  The Delphi Center was known for its rapid turnaround time. It was one of the things that set the lab apart from publicly funded crime labs around the country. But in her three years as a tracer, Kelsey had never once had one of her cases get bumped to the front of the line. And she'd worked on some high-profile investigations.

  What had she stumbled into?

  A light tap sounded at the door and her pulse jumped. Maybe it was Gage. He'd been standoffish earlier, and she'd been feeling snubbed.

  She opened the door to find Dr. Robles standing in the drizzle. He wore a yellow rain slicker, and with his gray beard he looked like the fisherman from those seafood commercials.

  "I've finished my examination of your femur," he said, pushing his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. "I concur with most of your findings, but I think your height estimate is a bit high. I would say five-eleven."

  "Thanks for the second opinion." Kelsey opened the door wider and waved a hand at the stove. "Would you like a bowl of soup? I was just about to eat."

  "Thank you, no. I should get to bed." He glanced uneasily over his left shoulder. "But you might offer the same hospitality to your friend."

  "What?"

  "Your police detective." The professor's look turned disapproving. "He shouldn't have to sleep in the rain."

  Kelsey poked her head outside and spotted the long dark lump beneath one of the nearby shade tarps.

  "Oh my God." She stalked over to him. "Gage! What are you doing?"

  He opened one eye and peered up at her in the dimness. "Trying to get some sleep."

  "You can't sleep out here!"

  "Not with you yelling at me."

  "But... I thought you were in your truck."

  "Decided to stretch out tonight."

  "Get up. This is ridiculous. You don't even have a sleeping bag." He was using his duffel for a pillow, for crying out loud.

  "Kelsey, I'm fine. Go back to bed."

  "I'm not in bed. And there's no way I can sleep tonight knowing you're out in this rain. Come inside."

  He sighed heavily and dropped his arm over his face. "Kelsey, come on. I can't sleep with you. Jesus. If Joe finds out--"

  "I didn't ask you to sleep with me. You can sleep on my floor. Inside."

  He gazed up at her and she crossed her arms, adamant.

  Finally, he got to his feet. He wore the same jeans and T-shirt he'd had on earlier, and he'd gone to bed with his gun on. Was he really that worried about her safety?

  He shoved his feet into the boots parked beneath one of the worktables. "You're trying my patience, Quinn. I was almost asleep."

  She turned her back on him and went inside the camper. She moved a few stacks of books, then retrieved the sleeping bag from her fold-out bed and spread it out on the floor. She'd settle for a blanket tonight.

  Gage stood in the doorway, watching her. His gaze shifted to the stove.

  She tossed him a dish towel. "You told me you ate already."

  "I did."

  She watched him dry off, trying to imagine what he'd put together for his dinner while she'd been in here buried in work.

  "I've got chicken tortilla soup," she said.

  "Really, I'm okay." He glanced at the stove again.

  Kelsey took a clean bowl from the milk crate where she stored her dishes. It was one of her few indulgences. She didn't mind cold showers, and Laundromats, and no phones all summer. But she despised eating with paper plates and plastic utensils, so she brought dishes from home. She filled a bowl with steamy soup and put it on the table.

  Gage stepped onto the camper, finally, and looked around for a place to stash his duffel.

  "Under the table's fine," she said. "You can move those books."

  Gage stowed his bag and slid onto the bench seat. His long legs stuck out into the middle of the room.

  "Sorry about the clutter." Kelsey put two spoons on the table, then filled another bowl with soup and slid onto the seat beside him.

  Gage rubbed his eyes and sighed.

  "You weren't really asleep, were you?"

  His gaze met hers. "No."

  She sampled her soup. It was hot and spicy and the chicken chucks were tender. Kelsey wasn't much of a cook, but Gage took a bite and didn't leap up from the table in disgust, so she took that as a good sign.

  "You know," she said, "I do know a few things about SEALs. I'm pretty close to my uncle."

  He watched her as he scooped up another bite.

  "I know about BUD/S training, and Hell Week, and all those practice missions on San Clemente Island and up in Alaska."

  "What's your point?"

  "My point is, you don't have to act like Superman all the time. I'm already impres
sed."

  Their gazes locked. She'd told him she was impressed. And she was. She had an incredible amount of admiration for these talented men who dedicated themselves to training and practicing and honing their skills in order to be part of one of the most elite fighting forces in the world. She felt the same admiration for her uncle.

  But along with her admiration for Gage--and every other man in his profession--was something more. Something that had nothing to do with his job and everything to do with the way her pulse raced whenever he came near her. She'd never responded to a stranger this way, and she wasn't sure exactly what to do about it. He'd be gone in a few days. She needed to remember that.

  Maybe this was just about sex. And maybe, as Mia had so often suggested, Kelsey needed a rebound man. Her ex-boyfriend Blake lived in suits and went through life with a BlackBerry attached to his ear. He hated camping and kept hand sanitizer stashed in his glove compartment for emergencies. A hardened warrior he was not.

  Kelsey eyed Gage's T-shirt. Today's was desert-brown instead of olive drab, and the collar was slightly frayed. It would be tough to imagine a man less like Blake, and maybe that explained her fascination. Ever since Gage had shown up she'd felt edgy.

  But it was a good edgy. A warm-feeling-low-in-the-belly kind of edgy.

  Gage tipped his bowl to get the very last spoonful. He glanced up at her with those impossibly blue eyes. "What?"

  "Nothing."

  Nothing was right. He was leaving soon, and this was going nowhere.

  Kelsey got up and felt his gaze on her as she retrieved a couple of beers from the minifridge.

  Gage raised an eyebrow. "Drinking on the job?"

  "I'm done for the night." She used the cuff of her sweatshirt to twist the cap off her bottle. "Here's to silver-bullet assignments."

  He gave her a look she couldn't read. Then he twisted his cap off and clinked bottles with her.

  KELSEY MADE A mean bowl of soup and she liked Miller Genuine Draft. All the more reason for him to get his butt back out there in the rain.

  And he would. Eventually. He planned to do some reconnaissance tonight while she was asleep. But for now sitting inside her messy camper and watching her put away dinner felt just a little too good.

  And so he stayed. And watched her. She'd changed into boxer shorts and a sweatshirt and he tried not to notice how good her legs looked without any shoes on. Gage forced himself to look away and wondered, again, what the hell Joe had been thinking sending him out here. Did he realize what he was asking? It was like sending a man across the desert and then asking him to guard a glass of water.

  Gage cleared his throat. "Guess we needed this rain, huh?"

  She gave him an amused look over her shoulder. Shit, had he really just teed up a conversation about the weather?

  "It's okay, I guess." She got them two more brews and joined him back at the table. "Not a problem for the dig, but I doubt it will help our search-and-recovery effort."

  It was a good point. A very obvious one, too. And when he got back to San Diego, Gage really needed to hit the bars with his buddies and brush up on some of his conversation skills.

  She was sitting beside him now, looking at him. The only light in the place came from a battery-powered lantern across the room, and she was half in shadow.

  "Are you ever planning to tell me about this favor you owe my uncle?"

  He untwisted the cap from her bottle and slid it to her. Then he twisted the cap off his. "What favor's that?"

  She tucked a lock of that auburn hair behind her ear and smiled. "The one that gives him the right to put you on seven days of babysitting detail?"

  Gage took a sip, stalling. He rested the bottle on the table. "He can put me on any detail he wants. He's my CO."

  She rolled her eyes. "Yes, but you're off duty. You said you were on leave."

  Gage shrugged. "Once a SEAL, always a SEAL." It was a lame answer, but that's all she was going to get. He wasn't about to sit here and rehash the worst night of his life. He wasn't going to sit here and tell her how he'd spent the past three months fighting depression and how he could easily be out of a job right now if her uncle hadn't intervened.

  "O-kay. I guess it's off-limits." She looked away, obviously stung by the brush-off, and he felt mean. She checked her watch. "It's getting late, anyway. I should get to bed." She started to stand up and he caught her arm.

  "Joe Quinn's the best Texas hold 'em player I ever met. You play?"

  She looked at him as if he'd just asked her if she was terrorist insurgent. "Are you kidding?"

  "No."

  "He taught me when I was, like, seven or something. I'll kick your butt."

  "Doubtful." He reached under the table and retrieved a deck of cards from his seabag.

  "Oh, sure. Like I'm going to let you provide the cards."

  He made a show of peeling off the cellophane, relieved that the awkwardness had disappeared. "It just so happens I picked up these cards a week ago."

  "Where?" she asked.

  "You always this suspicious?"

  "Joe taught me to gamble, so yes."

  "O'Hare Airport." He removed the jokers and shuffled the deck. When he was finished he let her cut the cards.

  "What are we betting?" she asked. "I don't keep cash around ever since the breakin. Oh, wait." She popped up and disappeared into the back of the camper. He heard her shuffling around, and then she returned with four rolls of quarters. "Laundry money," she said, dropping the rolls on the tables.

  Gage dug a twenty-dollar bill out of his bag and traded it for two of the rolls.

  He dealt. She picked up her cards, and a wicked smile spread across her face, as if he'd just given her a pair of aces. But he saw straight through her bluff.

  He checked his cards. He'd play five or six hands with her. Ten, tops. He glanced across the table. Her tongue swept over her upper lip as she contemplated her cards.

  Gage's gut tightened. This was a bad idea. He should be doing recon right now, not playing poker with his CO's niece.

  He looked at Kelsey. He looked at his cards. And he knew, with certainty, that this wasn't going to be his lucky night.

  Six

  The bones were buried in a shallow grave about thirty yards west of the highway. It wasn't ground-penetrating radar or a metal detector or any other gadget that led to their discovery, but rather the eagle-eyed gaze of a seventy-two-year-old anthropologist.

  "Nature doesn't like straight lines," Dr. Robles had said, after calling Kelsey over to have a look at the rectangular pile of rocks. They hardly stood out against the stony creek bed but Robles was right--on close inspection the arrangement looked man-made.

  After it became clear what he'd found, Robles returned to the shade of the caves, taking most of the students with him. A few stragglers loitered behind, clearly more interested in recent bones than ancient ones.

  Kelsey shut out all distractions now as she worked within the string boundaries she'd staked out around the site. After thoroughly photographing the area, she'd removed dozens of rocks, examining each for any sign of trace evidence before laying it aside. After just the first layer she'd begun to find scraps of rotten clothing and human bones: an ulna, a radius, several metacarpals. When the full arm took shape, she stood up and photographed it from multiple angles before moving on to the thoracic cage.

  The sun blazed down. The minutes crawled by. She was at the digging stage now, and with every scoop of her trowel and swipe of her brush her sense of alarm grew. A leather belt. A scrap of rope. The tattered remnants of a pair of blue jeans.

  A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up, expecting to see Aaron. Instead it was Gage, who'd spent the better part of the day on the hillside, watching God only knew what through his binoculars.

  Kelsey returned her attention to the form emerging from the dirt. She carefully dusted a humerus with her boar's hair brush, knowing that any marks left behind by a metal tool could be mistaken later for signs of violence.


  "Still no sheriff," she muttered.

  "A deputy's on his way," Gage said. "Sattler just called the phone at the dig site."

  Kelsey gritted her teeth. It was late afternoon. She could have used the sheriff's help this morning.

  Gage knelt beside her, respecting the string boundary she'd erected around the grave. He watched her for a moment.

  "You all right?" he asked in a low voice.

  "Fine."

  "You're shaking."

  "Adrenaline," she said. "It always happens to me."

  "Anything I can help with?"

  "Not unless you want to be subpoenaed to testify at a murder trial."

  Gage glanced down at the remains as she brushed away another clump of dirt. It was the rope. Seeing this man's wrists still trapped in their bindings made her feel... not anger, exactly, but a consuming sense of injustice.

  Gage put a hand on her shoulder. "You need some water?"

  "I just need to concentrate." She glanced up. His blue eyes were filled with compassion, and she realized she was being brusque.

  She sat back on her haunches and sighed. "I'm fine, thank you."

  He leaned over and kissed her. Just a soft brush of his lips against hers.

  A few seconds ticked by before she could speak.

  "What was that for?"

  "I don't know." His hand dropped away. "You looked sad."

  For a moment, they stared at each other. Then he stood up, and she realized there was a car coming. She got to her feet and recovered her composure as a sheriff's cruiser pulled off the road. The deputy parked and got out, then retrieved something from the backseat.

  To her acute disappointment, it wasn't a cadaver dog.

  "Dr. Quinn?"

  Both Kelsey and Gage turned around to see Aaron trekking across the creek bed. Everything about her field assistant, from his tone of voice to his expression, telegraphed disapproval, and Kelsey knew he'd seen the kiss.

  She snapped off her surgical gloves and stuffed them in her pocket. "What is it, Aaron?"

  "We've got a problem. Dylan is missing."

  "He's on the escarpment, photographing the petroglyphs." She looked around for her water bottle. Where had she left it?

  "That was after lunch. No one's seen him since two."

  "Where's Jeannie?" Gage asked. "Maybe they're taking a little break at the mine shaft."

  Kelsey looked at Gage, surprised how clued in he was.

  "Yes, ask Jeannie," Kelsey said. "She probably knows."

  "She's the one who told me he's missing," Aaron said. "Apparently they had an argument, and no one's seen or heard from him in two hours."