CHAPTER ONE
2428 Words
CHAPTER ONE
FBI Agent Harley Cole tossed the legal pad aside and slouched back against the wall, stumped. Around her spread a sea of papers patterned with sticky notes, the contents of the file her father had passed on to her just a few days before. Somewhere in all those police reports and witness statements, amidst all the irrelevant details, lay some piece of evidence to help explain why Harley’s younger sister, Kelly, had gone missing on a camping trip seventeen years before.
It has to be here somewhere, she thought. I just need to keep looking.
She had grown excited when she learned a homeless man had been found sleeping in his car near where Kelly went missing. The police had investigated him thoroughly, however, and found no indication he had anything to do with Kelly’s disappearance. As for witnessing anything, he claimed to have heard nothing all night except crickets.
Still, Harley wasn’t going to let herself get discouraged that easily. It took a peculiar kind of self-confidence for her to believe she could find something her father and a host of investigators had overlooked for nearly two decades, but she had one advantage all the others lacked. While her father had the determination to c***k the case but not the investigative experience, and the investigators had the experience but not the determination of a grieving family member, Harley had both. She was both motivated and trained, which gave her the best odds of anyone to figure out what happened.
That was how she looked at it, anyway.
Then again, that didn’t mean the best way to find those answers was to keep beating her head against the wall until she jarred something loose. This was going to take time, and as much as she wanted to sprint to the finish line, she needed to treat this like a marathon, and that meant recognizing she had needs.
Namely eating, sleeping, and otherwise behaving like a human being.
Sighing, she plucked the last fry from the carton at her elbow, dragged it around in the salt, and popped it into her mouth. She chased it down with a cold swallow of black coffee, then grimaced as she chewed a few grounds that must have overflowed the coffee filter.
Really living the high life, she mused.
Her phone lit up with a notification. She scooped it up eagerly, hoping it might be Bryce, her high school crush with whom she had recently reconnected. A moment later, she sagged back, disappointed to see it was merely an alert from her phone company saying an automatic payment had gone through.
It had been a full week since she had last seen Bryce, and he hadn’t been responding to her texts since then. She assured herself he was just busy—caring for a hundred horses took a lot out of a man.
Still, she couldn’t help questioning whether she had read too much into their previous conversations.
She read the last message she had sent: Hey, just checking in. Haven’t heard from you in a bit. Everything okay?
She started to write a new message, something about how she was thinking of him, but then she deleted it, deciding it sounded desperate. The ball was in his court. She wasn’t going to go begging on her hands and knees.
You knew it was too good to be true, a nagging voice told her. Thinking you could rebound a month after divorcing Rob? A lot to ask, don’t you think?
Maybe it was a lot to ask, but she was a new girl in an old town, and she was still making it her home again after spending almost half her life on the East Coast. She needed all the help she could get.
He’s stringing you along, the voice told her, and she thought of that band of white skin she had seen on Bryce’s ring finger. Had he recently been divorced, or did he just like to play the field when his wife wasn’t around? She didn’t think Bryce was the kind of man who would step out on his wife. Then again, a lot had happened since high school. It was possible her former crush had changed just as much as she had.
Deciding she would need another cup of coffee to get any further through her father’s notes, she scrambled to her feet and plucked the coffee mug off the carpet, swirling the last few sips around and watching the coffee grounds bob to the surface. Before she could leave the room, however, her phone buzzed.
Praying it wasn’t going to be a waste of time, she stepped across the heap of papers, picked up the phone, and swiped right before the call went to voicemail.
“Hello?” she said, then held the phone away so she could read the name: Alex Newbury, the station chief of the FBI’s Santa Fe field office—and her direct superior. She heard a garbled sound and held the phone to her face again.
“How are you, Agent Newbury?” she said.
“Another day in paradise,” Newbury answered in his baritone voice. “How’s the house coming along?”
Harley had been on leave for the past several days, settling into her new house and recovering from the adrenaline high of the Rasco case, an investigation that had nearly ended with her being eaten alive by a herd of feral pigs. That was the reason she had given Newbury for requesting time off, anyway. The truth was her purpose had a lot more to do with the file of papers her father had handed her than with any R and R. Kelly’s case was the one she really wanted to solve.
“Better than expected,” she said, gazing around at the unfurnished living room as she paced. “Starting to look a lot more like home.” This was not exactly true, but she needed to say something.
“Glad to hear it. Some agents struggle when they’re off the clock, have a hard time keeping themselves focused.”
Newbury paused. Harley sensed an unspoken question in the silence.
“I find ways to keep myself busy,” she said.
“Not too busy, I hope. I’m going to need you to come back.”
Harley’s heart sank. “Another homicide?”
“That’s right.”
“Can’t the local PD handle it? It’s not in our purview to investigate every killing in the state.” The Bureau could assist the local police on investigations at their discretion, but they generally didn’t get involved unless a federal crime was committed—a bank robber hitting banks across state lines, for instance, or a body found on Indian land.
Newbury sighed in a way that suggested he had more on his plate than he could stomach. “Listen, just get down here, okay? When you see the mummy with your own eyes, you’ll understand.”
Harley stopped pacing. “The mummy?”
“Wrapped in gold foil like King Tut. Do I have your attention now?”
Already Harley could feel the gears turning in her mind. That was all it took—a little curiosity, a little mystery, and she was off to the races. She couldn’t help it.
Damn you, Newbury, she thought, though she wasn’t really upset with him. She just didn’t like being manipulated so easily.
“I’ll be at the office in twenty minutes,” she said, preparing herself mentally for the chaos she was about to go back into. Ordinarily she would have welcomed the chaos—she thrived in it, after all—but she couldn’t help wishing for just a little more time off.
“Good,” Newbury answered. “I have a feeling we’re going to need all hands on board for this one.”
Harley ended the call and let her hand drop as if the phone had suddenly doubled in weight. She glanced toward her office, thinking of the papers spread out across the floor—the papers that very well might contain the clues to understanding her sister’s disappearance.
Those clues would have to wait for now. Harley had to go see about a mummy.
* * *
A cacophony of sound washed over Harley as she entered the Bureau’s normally quiet field office in Santa Fe. Phones were ringing, agents in dress shirts and suspenders were talking in small groups with their hands on their hips, Newbury’s secretary was racing about with a file of paperwork pressed against her bosom, and a TV was playing in an adjoining room.
Whatever was going on, it was big. Harley felt a flutter of excitement in her stomach.
Slipping into the break room, Harley turned up the volume on the TV. An African American woman in a sleeveless blouse was standing at the edge of a river, gesturing toward the mouth of a cavern roped off with yellow caution tape.
“The bodies were discovered by a tour boat that set out south along the Rio Grande earlier this morning,” the reporter said. “If you look closely, you can actually see the tunnel leading to the chamber in which the bodies were found.”
Here the feed switched to a camera showing a close-up of jagged walls glistening with moisture. The passage delved forward into darkness, then seemed to take a hard turn.
“Police have yet to offer any theories on how the bodies got there,” the reporter continued, “as well as comment on the state of the bodies found. Are they recent killings, or is this an ancient burial site just now discovered? There is some speculation that—”
“Getting your information from the news stations now?” a voice behind Harley interrupted. She turned around to see Anthony Callaway, her partner on the Rasco and Navarro cases, filling the doorway with his broad frame.
At first glance, the two appeared to be opposites. Callaway was the big, folksy cowboy, always polite and never in a hurry. Harley, on the other hand, was the slim and trim Yankee, a firebrand who would stop at nothing to get results. But they had developed a hard-earned respect for one another over the course of their previous two investigations, and there was not another person in the world Harley would have rather worked alongside.
Harley gestured at the stubble on Callaway’s jawline. “Is that just me, or are you getting a few grays?”
“About time I got credit for all my wisdom,” he said. “Don’t worry, you’ll get there.”
Callaway was Harley’s senior by two years, a fact that he liked to remind her, as if he were always one step ahead on the path to wisdom and experience.
The TV droned on as a speleologist with spectacles that kept slipping down his nose talked about calcite deposits and carbonic acid.
Harley let out a deep sigh and looked at Callaway, waiting for him to speak. He stared back silently, a touch of curiosity in his emerald eyes.
“So?” Harley said. “You going to tell me how many bodies we’re dealing with?”
He nodded, his face growing serious and professional. “Four. All female, it looks like. It’s still early, and we’re getting all our information from local PD. We haven’t sent anyone down yet.”
“Why not?”
“I was waiting for you.”
“Just my luck,” she murmured. “I ask for time off, and my boss calls me back to investigate a quadruple homicide.”
“Come on, you were born for this. Besides…” He lowered his voice, leaning close enough for Harley to smell the cinnamon scent of his cologne. “Newbury trusts us to get s**t done. That’s why he gave the case to us, not someone else.”
Harley stared at the TV, though she was not listening to it anymore. As much as she would have liked to be back at home studying her sister’s file, this was her job—and she was damn good at it.
“Okay,” she said, nodding as she mentally got herself in gear. “Tell me everything.”
“There’s the Harley I remember,” Callaway said with a fleeting smile as he closed the door behind him. Then, locating the remote beside the microwave, he muted the TV and leaned back against the sink. His dress shirt rustled as he crossed his arms.
“They were found by some twenty-somethings on a boat tour,” he said. “Bachelor party. But you probably know that much already.”
“Have we identified any of the bodies?”
“One.” Callaway paused, gazing at her steadily. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.
“Does the name Daisy Ballard ring any bells for you?” he said.
She was about to say no, when suddenly she recalled a jingle she had heard on the radio a week or so ago as part of a politician’s ad campaign. Harley was pretty sure the politician had been running for governor, and the song had been from an old family video of his daughter singing to him.
Harley’s heart sank as she made the connection. “The governor’s daughter, the one from the radio ad.”
Callaway nodded. “Governor Trenton Eugene Ballard. He’s getting an early start on his reelection bid this November. About two months ago, he filed a missing persons report for Daisy.”
Harley cursed softly. She could already feel the pressure beginning to mount. Though every homicide was a crime, not every homicide was newsworthy. But the murder of a governor’s daughter, especially alongside three other bodies? The press would eat it up. And Harley suspected it would not be long before the governor was breathing down their throats, demanding answers.
“He’s no friend of law enforcement,” Callaway continued. “He was a defense attorney before he became governor, and he made it abundantly clear on more than one occasion how low an opinion he has of us. Learning his daughter has been found dead after he reported her missing two months ago—I doubt it will improve his opinion.”
She fished her keys from her pocket. “Then we’d better head over to that cavern and find some answers before we talk with him.”
- Writer
