Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(72)

“You got a minute?” he asked. “I need to show you something.”

She darted a glance over his shoulder, clearly worried about Robles seeing him go into her place. Evidently satisfied that the guy had turned in for the night, she opened the door behind her.

“I’m making dinner,” she said without enthusiasm. “You’re welcome to have some.”

“I’m good, thanks.” Gage ducked his head and walked through the door, then instantly regretted his words as the spicy aroma of whatever she had cooking hit him full force. He hadn’t eaten all day, and the dinner he had waiting for him tonight was a cold MRE.

“It’s a mess,” she said, squeezing around him.

Mess was an understatement. The camper was small and chock-full of clutter. Beside him was an eating alcove with a Formica table that had a notebook computer on top and books stacked beneath. Gage put his plastic shopping bag on the table as his gaze skimmed over the minuscule kitchen and a door that probably led to a bathroom. Beyond the kitchen, he caught sight of what looked like a fold-out bed with a sleeping bag on top. Something red and lacy was strewn across it.

Holy God.

“What’s in the bag?”

His attention snapped back to Kelsey. “Huh?”

“The bag?”

“It’s for you,” he said. “Your com setup here sucks.”

She peeked inside. Then she gazed up at him with those big brown eyes, and he had a flash of her in that red bra. “My com?”

“Communications. You’ve got one sat phone for the entire group.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said defensively. “The cell service is extremely patchy. That’s why we have the sat phone.”

“You need something for you. On your person. I need to be able to reach you at all times.” He took out one of the radios and turned it on to demonstrate. “See? Just press this button here when you want to talk. It’s got a long-life battery and a range of about five miles, which should be plenty.” He paused and waited for her to look up at him. “Were you going to wait for me to go with you?”

“Go where?” She was doe-eyed now, innocent as hell.

“Wherever you were going when I pulled up.”

She hesitated. “I need to check something at the recovery site.”

He stepped closer until he was invading her personal space. “Lemme explain how this works, Kelsey. You set foot off this dig site, I’m coming with you. That’s a dangerous highway and I don’t want you driving around alone, especially at night.”

She crossed her arms. “What happened to ‘hand me a shovel and pretend I’m not here’?”

“That was before I knew you were camped out within spitting distance of a homicide scene.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re jumping to conclusions. I’ve hardly had a chance to examine the bone, much less determine the manner of death.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you think your uncle would say if I called him and told him about your little find today? I bet you a thousand dollars he’d say ‘tell her to pack up camp and hightail it home.’”

“That’s ridiculous. I have a job to do here.”

“Yeah, and although this might come as a surprise to you, I get that. Which is why we aren’t packing. But I don’t plan to go back to my CO and tell him I let his niece get carjacked or killed or so much as breathed on wrong under my watch. So until your work’s done here I’m your shadow. Get used to it. Now, where are we going?”

She gazed up at him, and he could see the frustration simmering in her eyes. He could understand it, too. She had a job to do, and she wasn’t used to people standing in her way. But Gage had a job to do also, and this was one job he didn’t plan to f*ck up.

“All right, fine,” she said. “Let’s get going. You can help.”

She took the black thing out of her pocket and handed it to him. It was lightweight and slender and looked like some sort of high-tech Maglite.

He glanced up at her. “Help with what?”

“The search,” she said. “I want the rest of those bones.”

KELSEY WAVED HER UV lamp over a pile of rocks. She took a few more paces and did another scan. Another few paces until she was at the very edge of the area she’d mapped out for tonight.

She shoved her orange-tinted glasses up on top of her head and glanced around at the blackness. “You finding anything?”

“No,” came Gage’s faraway response.

Kelsey sighed and switched off the blue light. They’d been out here nearly two hours and had netted nothing more than a few pieces of trash, a broken eggshell, and some miscellaneous long bones, all easily identifiable as belonging to small mammals. Each time she’d spotted the faint bluish glow, she’d felt a surge of excitement, only to be disappointed by an up-close inspection.

“This what you do back in San Marcos? Tromp around crime scenes looking for skeletons in the dark?”

“No,” she admitted. “We work by day, usually, and usually with cadaver dogs. But you never know what you might see with an alternative light source. Teeth. Clothing. Lots of dyes contain chemicals that fluoresce. I was hoping we’d find something out here that could lead us to the rest of him.”