The Better to Bite (Howl #1)(9)

My eyes locked on the bulletin board on the far right. The board that was filled with pictures of folks with giant MISSING letters above their names. I stalked closer to that board.

I scanned the details on those pictures. “All these people…” I raised my voice so Shirley could hear me. There were supposed to be a few deputies in the office, but I didn’t see them. Just me and Shirley. “They all went missing from Haven?”

Haven wasn’t that big. This was insane.

Her chair squeaked as she pushed it back and came toward me.

My eyes darted over the pictures. Jason Tanner, age 25—missing for three months. Susie Harper, age 31—missing for six months. Julia Hall, age 23—missing for two months.

I counted the other flyers, because there were so many…All going back over the last six years. What the hell?

Now the hairs on my arms were rising and images were floating into my head. Fast, too fast…

Julia Hall…Jason Tanner…Susie Harper…

“They’re hikers, tourists…” Shirley’s voice was sad. “People go into the mountains around here on their own all the time. Some of ‘em never make it out. They just get lost and can’t get back home.”

A buzzing filled my ears. Lost. Julia Hall. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin.

The skin wouldn’t be there now. She’d just be bones.

Bones beneath a twisted, gnarled oak tree.

“Sheriff Brantley searched for them all, but he couldn’t find a trace of them.”

Susie Harper. Red hair. Green eyes. Water poured over the scraps of clothes…

I stumbled back. My lips tried to form words, but I shook so badly, I couldn’t talk. Dad!

“Such a shame,” Shirley continued, her voice dripping with sympathy. “For them all to get lost like that…”

Nothing was ever lost. Not from me.

My knees buckled.

“Hon, hon, are you all right?”

A skull gleamed in the sunlight. Leaves blew around its white—

I fell and this time, no one was there to catch me. My head slammed into the hard tile.





Chapter Three


“You know where they are,” my dad said.

We were at home, on the porch, and the sun was setting in the woods behind the house. The fading light looked like streaks of blood across the sky.

I nodded. I had a huge goose egg on the back of my head, and despite the fact that I’d held an ice pack on the thing until my fingers were numb, it still ached.

He exhaled. “I should’ve moved those damn pictures.” I could hear the anger in his voice.

Because my dad knew how I was. Part of my “different” self. If I knew something was lost, it was like some kind of switch just flipped on inside me. Say “lost” and I instantly homed in on whatever was missing. Jewelry, mementoes…people.

My back teeth clenched. “Three of them…I saw three bodies.” I would have seen more, I knew it—I could have seen them all. But I’d focused on those three the most and the images had come to me. If I’d learned the names of the others…

I would have seen more bodies.

No, not bodies. I hadn’t actually seen bodies. I cleared my throat. “Bones.”

He swore. My dad hated finding the victims too late. I knew he didn’t just like to catch killers—though he’d sure made a splash doing that back in Chicago. He wanted to actually save people.

He’d been too late to save them back home. He was too late to save these others now.

“Julia Hall’s beneath an oak tree. Susie Harper’s in a stream, and Jason Tanner,” I couldn’t get the image of his skull out of my mind, “he’s up on a slope, under some tree with big, yellow leaves.” I couldn’t give my dad an exact location because it wasn’t like I had coordinates floating in my head. I wasn’t that good. But if I were out there, walking in the woods, I’d be pulled right to the body that I thought of. I’d be pulled until I’d found what—who—was lost.

I knew what I had to do. I straightened my shoulders. Suck it up and do what has to be done. “Dad, tomorrow, we can—”

“No!” His snapped denial was immediate.

I pushed to my feet, tension tight in my body. “I can take you to them.” He knew I could. We couldn’t just leave the bones out there. Those people had families that were worried about them. Families that were probably hoping they’d be found, alive.

Not going to happen.

Dad turned toward me. He still had on his sheriff’s uniform. His eyes looked tired. When I’d woken up back at the station, fear had been in his green gaze. I hated it when he worried about me. Unfortunately, he seemed to worry all the time.

More now since mom was gone.

He exhaled on a frustrated sigh. “If you go out there, and you immediately turn up three bodies…” He began.

I bit back my instant response of Not bodies, just bones.

“Don’t you think,” he continued quietly, “that people will wonder how we found all three of ‘em so quickly?”

Of course they’d wonder, but I forced myself to smile. “Nah. They’ll just think you’re a really awesome sheriff who solved three missing persons’ cases within a week of taking the new job.”