Chapter One
Bury the Dead
Willow
Willow wiped her brow and took a long pull from the water bottle at her waist, securing it again afterward.
Her Rottweiler, Max, ran over, and she removed a bottle from his harness.
She then stretched a flattened rubber cup to hold water.
When it was full, she rested it on the boulder and took a seat a foot away.
She looked out at the property, admiring the beauty. Some might not see it in the high desert landscape filled with cedar and shaggy bark trees, boulders, and rock, with little color until the sun went down and the earth was bathed in shades of red, orange, and yellow.
“It’s hotter than I thought it would be,” she complained to Max.
He looked up from the water, large drips falling off his muzzle, and went back to drinking.
She was searching for property markers. The fourth marker was hiding somewhere in the vicinity, and she couldn’t find it.
Her grandmother had left a map and given the general location, which was where Willow had concentrated her search.
The small metal spike with the property number stamped into the top had to be here somewhere.
She’d had to dig around for the first one, and she had a feeling this one would be as difficult.
After raising her hand to her eyes, she scanned the area again.
For as far as she could see, mountainous boulders spread before her.
On the other side of the hidden marker was BLM land, which stood for Bureau of Land Management.
It was the government agency that managed over 245 million acres of public land.
They used it for recreation, grazing, mining, and conservation, though the land out here was so out of the way, only the cattle found it.
Willow had been studying everything she could lay her hands on about the area she now called home. It was better than dwelling on the bad things. Dale, her only friend and also her housemate, told her that one day things would go her way. He believed in patience.
Since her grandmother, Joan, died, Willow had a dream. Not an actual dream and maybe goal was a better term. She wanted to use Joan’s property, now hers, to help women and children who went through similar circumstances to her own.
A year ago, she and Dale had christened the ranch Joan’s Legacy. The goal hadn’t gone the way she hoped. Dale was a retired sheriff’s deputy, and he thought he could help her find women who needed a short-term place to recover or hide.
The hurdle to help others was too high. After years of abuse, when Willow was fifteen, she killed her father.
The jury didn’t buy the abuse defense, and she went to prison until she turned twenty-five.
The last seven years of her confinement had been spent in an adult women’s prison.
It was a terrible place, filled with very strict rules and worse, hopelessness.
When she got out, Dale, a friend of her grandmother’s, helped her change her name and become a new person.
Her new life of good intent went to hell when he spoke with someone he knew from the women’s safehouse in Pinetop, an hour’s drive away.
The woman, Liz, had to know more about Willow, and she gave Dale a stack of paperwork for Willow to fill out.
When he arrived back at the ranch, Willow knew by the look on his face that his news wasn’t good.
“There’s a page for you to list your criminal history,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice. “If you lie, chances are good they’ll find out. Your name change holds up for people in town but won’t pass a thorough background check.”
Willow would carry the weight of killing her father her entire life, and there was no way to shake it. Her dream was shattered by a stack of paperwork.
“I told Liz it could be a problem,” he continued. “I didn’t tell her why, but she trusts me. Liz said there were difficult situations that didn’t fit the criteria for the government grant that funded the safehouse. With my recommendation, she might eventually send someone this way.”
Eventually.
To Willow, that meant never.
Keeping her disappointment buried, she killed time by learning about the land and cooking.
She religiously watched cooking shows and was determined to become an excellent chef.
Dale tried to talk her into taking a course at the local community college, but Willow wasn’t ready for that step.
She had an aversion to people. Her current learning took place inside her home.
The one time she visited the college to see their online learning area, the sterility reminded her of prison, and she couldn’t escape fast enough.
Eventually she might take a course online, but she would do it from home. For now, the cooking shows gave her plenty to learn and enough knowledge to dig into her grandmother’s vegetarian cookbooks and pass the meals off to Dale’s refined carnivore taste buds. Sometimes it even worked.
“A man needs protein,” he’d say.
From everything Willow read, Dale was wrong; meat was bad for you. Vegetarianism was another of her grandmother’s legacies, and Willow was determined to do her part. Years of existing off of prison food made just about anything cooked at home taste good, especially vegetables.
She and Dale would most likely butt heads on the subject until his eating gave him a heart attack.
She worried about it constantly, and he wasn’t getting any younger.
He had been in love with her grandmother, though Joan badmouthed him constantly when she came to visit Willow.
Now that her grandmother was gone, Dale had unofficially adopted her.
“No more morose thoughts,” she told Max, and gave him a pat on his large block head.
After a steady look in her direction, he licked the water from his lips and gave a faint whine. Dale had taken their other dog, Daisy, into town with him. Daisy was a Pitbull who survived a rabies outbreak and the Hogg family dog fighting ring. Unfortunately, Joan had not survived the Hoggs.
At the end of her break, Willow stood and began searching for the marker again. Twenty yards to the west, she discovered a narrow gulch that traveled upward. With no luck finding the marker, she decided to see where the gulch led.
The rock walls on either side were about ten feet high.
She could hear Dale chiding her that mountain lions loved to jump down from above.
Willow carried her shotgun, and she had Max to alert her if one of the cats was in the vicinity.
So far, Max stayed relaxed while they explored.
The property was filled with crevices, caves, and gullies.
She turned down a narrow branch off the main gulch, and followed Max. He raced ahead, and when she caught up a few minutes later, he was digging under a shadowed ledge.
“Whatcha got there, boy?” she asked as she came closer.
Max let out a low, muffled whine, his body tense. He stopped abruptly, with his paws planted firmly in the reddish-brown dirt. He lifted his head with a single bone clutched loosely in his jaws, like some kind of trophy.
“Come,” she said, but he didn’t budge, which was odd. Max was very well trained.
When she walked closer, a peculiar scent filled the air. There was no telltale rot, no decay, just the smell of something strange. She looked at the place Max had been digging and noticed a pale scattering of bones that blended with the surrounding landscape.
She stepped closer. They weren't white, but a faded, sun-bleached color, closer to an off-white or a pale, creamy tan.
The surface of the bones was stripped of moisture and organic matter.
A few pieces were cracked, with hairline fractures spiderwebbing across them. Some had a slightly porous texture.
Max released his prize and went back to digging.
Willow took one step closer and stopped.
Her brain, having seen the blunt shape of animal skulls before, registered something horrifying.
A large, empty space in the rounded bone formed a perfect oval where an eye should be.
The brow ridge was nothing like the sharp, bony plate of a goat’s forehead that Dale had identified months ago when they came across it. She was looking at a human skull.
A cold shiver cut through the heat and settled in her stomach. The object Max dug up was no longer a simple bone. It had once been a person.
“Max, no,” she said louder than she meant to.
He stopped and looked at her questioningly.
Willow’s first thought was to leave immediately and never tell anyone what she saw. She didn’t want the sheriff’s department combing through her property or conducting an investigation.
Max whined again.
“I know, boy,” she said softly. “We’ve got to tell Dale and let him handle this.” Max sniffed the bone he’d had in his mouth a minute before. “No,” she said again, and he instantly stopped, though he seemed perplexed that she didn’t want him to play with the bone.
Willow’s mind ran through scenarios as she and Max hiked back to the house.
The bones appeared old and had most likely been there before her grandmother purchased the property.
Or maybe a mountain lion attacked a hunter years before, and he was still a missing person.
There were multiple possibilities, and she wouldn’t be in trouble.
She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to dislodge the feeling of dread that wouldn’t let go. Why did she draw such negative energy? The dead should stay buried.
She reached the final ridge that led to the house, and a loud blast up ahead sent fear through her entire body. It came from a shotgun. Willow ran.