Chapter One
Deadly Justice
Bruno’s low growling woke Evie Tobin from a deep sleep.
Blinking in the darkness, she took a moment to get her bearings.
She and her German shepherd, Bruno, were staying in her mother’s house in Grand Haven, Michigan.
Her mother had passed away a few months ago after a short bout of cancer.
Evie was there to decide on either selling or keeping the house.
“What is it, boy?” Swinging upright, she stood and moved toward the window overlooking the nature preserve behind the property.
As it was August and the temperatures were mild, she had the window open, letting the cool night air flow through the screen.
At four in the morning, it was still too dark to see anything.
As Bruno’s growls continued, a shiver of apprehension snaked down her spine.
Then Bruno let out a sharp bark that made her jump.
Putting a hand to her heart, she turned to look at her dog.
With a frown, she realized he was sniffing the air, his ears pricked forward as he seemed to recognize some sort of threat.
Normally, she didn’t scare easily. Trusting her dog’s keen senses had her pulling a sweatshirt over her tank top and shorts, then slipping into a pair of shoes to let Bruno out.
Upon opening the back door, her shepherd bolted into the darkness, running straight toward the nature preserve. She followed him through the backyard but stopped shy of entering the woods. Straining to listen, she didn’t hear anything beyond Bruno’s sturdy frame crashing through the foliage.
Evie told herself Bruno likely scented an animal of some sort. Wrapping her arms around herself, she waited. Returning to her hometown had seemed like a good idea, but now that she was there, she had second thoughts.
Bruno let out several sharp barks. She bit her lower lip, wondering if she was wrong about an animal being out there. Could it be a person?
That didn’t make sense. Grand Haven wasn’t a big city; they barely had twelve thousand residents living in the small town known for beautiful sandy beaches and tall lighthouses overlooking Lake Michigan. Why would someone be hiking through the preserve at this hour?
After a long silence, she heard a twig snap. Then she caught the gleam of Bruno’s eyes as he loped out of the woods, coming straight toward her. She frowned in confusion when she realized he held something white in his mouth.
“What do you have, huh, boy?” Dropping to one knee, she put one arm around her dog’s neck and pried the object from his mouth.
A bone. She stared at it for a long moment. Then she slowly rose to her feet to peer into the darkness again. As an operating room nurse, Evie knew this was not an animal bone.
It appeared to be either a radius or an ulna bone from the forearm.
Again, she swept her gaze over the area. Was this some sort of odd coincidence? Surely Bruno hadn’t heard someone dumping a body?
No, if that was the case the limb would be intact. Shivering again at that gruesome thought, she turned and headed back inside. “Come, Bruno.”
Her shepherd trotted alongside her, his tail wagging as he looked up at her as if looking to be rewarded for a job well done. She tried to quell the apprehension that cloaked her as she closed and locked the back door.
With a grimace, she held the bone up to her own forearm.
Then she quickly set the bone on the top of the washer and dryer and washed her hands, trying not to think about the person the bone might belong to.
Maybe she watched too many TV shows, but her mind immediately went back fourteen years ago, to the summer after her senior year of high school when her best friend, Skye Gray, had gone missing.
There had been no evidence of foul play, at least according to Detective John Rueger.
Skye had planned to visit her mother in Grand Rapids the first week off school for their summer break.
Skye’s parents were divorced and living in different cities.
Unfortunately, Skye had never gotten to her mother’s.
Skye had a rocky relationship with her parents, so the theory was that Skye had gotten into her car, and rather than going to Grand Rapids, she’d just kept driving.
Evie had insisted that Skye wouldn’t just disappear without telling her or her boyfriend, Cameron Walker.
She and Cam had talked about it; they’d worked as lifeguards together at the lakefront the day prior to Skye leaving for Grand Rapids.
They’d worked until sundown and then had stayed for the lifeguard bonfire that night.
Skye had gone home early, intending to hit the road first thing in the morning.
Cam had been in no hurry to leave the night of the bonfire.
Initially, the police had questioned her and Cam at length, treating Cam as a suspect, until they’d verified that he’d been working both the day before and the following day as a lifeguard.
She’d been there too. She knew Cam had been upset, then angry with Skye for leaving without a word.
Yet he’d confided that Skye hadn’t been happy in Grand Haven either.
So really, the idea of Skye taking off wasn’t the most outrageous idea.
Still, she and Cam had hounded Detective Rueger for weeks about Skye’s case until they’d finally given up. The case had gone colder than Grand Haven’s arctic winters.
Skye had turned eighteen in March, so technically, she was an adult and could make her own decisions. Yet the way Skye had ruthlessly cut ties with her and Cameron had always bothered Evie. At the very least, she thought Skye would have said goodbye.
Now she couldn’t tear her gaze from the bone Bruno had brought in from the woods. She was tempted to reach out to Cameron but then decided against it.
For one thing, she knew Cam had joined the army after summer was over, a month after she’d left for college. And as far as she knew, Cam hadn’t been back to Grand Haven since. She had his old phone number but doubted it was any good fourteen years after the fact.
She was only in town to deal with the house.
After attending college for nursing, she’d worked in Grand Rapids until her mother had gotten sick.
Evie had brought her mother to Grand Rapids where she could keep a closer eye on her.
But the cancer had been found too late. Within four weeks of moving her mother, Janice Tobin had passed away.
That had been in April. Now it was early August, and Evie was finally making the time to return to her hometown to deal with her mother’s small house. Her father had passed away very young, so it was just Evie and her mother who’d lived there.
Bruno’s cold nose touched her hand. Evie pulled herself from the past and back to the present. Stroking Bruno’s soft fur, she moved out of the laundry room.
There was no point in trying to get more sleep.
Not after this. She quickly dressed and headed into the kitchen to make coffee.
Eyeing her watch, she decided she’d take the bone to the police station as soon as they opened.
A quick search on the website indicated that would be at eight in the morning.
Granted, she could call 911 now, but did finding a human bone qualify as an emergency?
Probably not. And really, she wasn’t even sure if the bone was human. She was a nurse, not a pathologist.
Yet deep down, she was convinced the bone was human.
As she sipped her coffee, she considered her options.
She could simply drop the bone off at the police department and consider her job done.
It would take weeks, maybe even months to get DNA results from the bone, and even then, there was no guarantee they’d find the person in the system.
Especially if the bone didn’t belong to Skye Gray.
Or she could take Bruno out to the nature reserve to see if there were other bones. She didn’t relish the idea of finding a grave, but it might be better to know right away what they were dealing with.
Evie sipped coffee and ate a muffin for breakfast, before turning to Bruno. “Are you ready to take a walk, huh?”
Bruno scrambled to his feet, his entire body wiggling with excitement.
He loved walks. She pulled on a pair of hiking boots, then grabbed the only item that could be used as a weapon, a large can of bear spray.
She headed out into the backyard. As if knowing exactly what she wanted, Bruno bounded into the woods, taking the same path he’d gone earlier that morning.
Evie held the bear spray in one hand, while she moved low-hanging branches away from her face with the other. The ground beneath her feet was dry; there hadn’t been any rain for two weeks. It seemed like every twig she stepped on snapped loudly, announcing her presence.
Maybe that was a good thing, because she still didn’t know what had caught Bruno’s attention in the first place. Scanning the ground, she didn’t see any footprints. There was evidence of broken branches, but she didn’t know if they were made by Bruno or something else.
Someone else, she silently amended.
Just as she was second-guessing her decision to come out here, Bruno quickened his pace. He ducked straight through two bushes, disappearing from view.
“Bruno? Wait up, buddy.” She hurried to follow her dog. Pushing through the brush, she stopped abruptly when she saw an open area where the dirt had been churned up by animals foraging for food.
Cautiously stepping closer, her heart thudded painfully in her chest as she saw there were more bones that had been brought to the surface. Most notable of all, a human skull.
Covering her mouth with her hand, she took a hasty step back and glanced around the gravesite. Because clearly that’s what Bruno had found.
And even from a distance she could see a few remnants of striped pink, purple, and blue fabric intermixed with the bones. Very similar to Skye’s favorite top.