Note to Readers
Her eyes were wide with fear and death. She stared up at him as if appealing to him for help. She wasn’t the only one.
“Come on, Forrest,” his brother Donovan implored him. “Whisperwood PD needs your expertise.”
Forrest gestured at the body lying amid the piles of dirt where Lone Star Pharma had intended to expand its parking lot. The drug company had had to put its plans on hold once the asphalt crew had dug up the body. “This isn’t a cold case.”
She couldn’t have been buried that long; the body had barely begun decomp. Not that he was that close to the scene, which the techs were still processing. He’d wanted to stay out of the way, but his brothers had urged him closer.
“This isn’t the only body that turned up recently,” Jonah, the oldest of his brothers, chimed in on the conversation. He and Donovan had picked up Forrest from their parents’ ranch and brought him out here. Now he understood why. They were trying to get him involved in the investigation.
They stared at him now. And even though Donovan wasn’t biologically their brother, he looked more like Jonah than any of their biological brothers did. They were both dark haired and dark eyed, whereas Forrest’s hair was lighter brown and longer than their buzz cuts, and his eyes were hazel.
“Unfortunately she isn’t the only recent casualty,” Forrest agreed.
A dozen people had lost their lives due to the flooding and wind damage Hurricane Brooke had wreaked on Whisperwood, Texas. Despite being early in the season, the storm had been deadly.
“That’s why we’re here—to help out because of the natural disaster,” he reminded his brothers. They were part of the Cowboy Heroes, a horseback rescue organization formed years ago by ranchers and EMTs. Forrest had volunteered to help the Heroes’ search-and-recovery efforts—not the police department. “And this isn’t a natural disaster.”
Though this person might have been one of the people reported missing since the hurricane, the storm hadn’t caused her death. From what Forrest could see in the lights that the Whisperwood PD’s forensic unit had set up to illuminate the crime scene, the young woman had bruising around her neck and on her arms and legs. She hadn’t drowned or been struck by a fallen tree.
She’d probably been strangled and maybe worse.
A chill raced down his spine despite the warmth of the August night. The death had happened recently.
“This is murder,” Jonah said. He must have noticed what Forrest had. “Just like the body that Maggie and I found last month.” He shuddered now. “And that one definitely falls within your area of expertise.”
Forrest shook his head. “Not anymore.”
A shooting had forced his early retirement from the Austin Police Department’s cold-case unit. That shooting and the pins that held together the shattered bones in his leg were why he’d had to retire with disability and why, as a volunteer with the Cowboy Heroes, he was consigned to a desk, operating the telephones. He took the calls about what people were missing:
