Omens (Cainsville 1)

"I'm kidding. But I did just move a corpse. I think I can handle this."

"I'm their lawyer. It's a relationship based on mutual respect. I cannot waltz in there with another client."

Damn. Why did he have to make such a good point?

I sighed. "All right."

He hesitated.

"I said all right. Go. I'll wait."

Cleanup Duty

The man looked at the spot where he was supposed to find Josh Gray's body. It was gone.

He peered up and down the alley. Then he walked from one end to the other and checked the GPS coordinates on his phone. This was definitely the place.

He made a call.

"It's not here," he said when his boss answered.

Silence.

"The body," he said. "Gray's--"

"Are you actually telling me this on an unsecured cell line?"

Yeah, because I don't have a secured one, he wanted to snap back. He didn't. He apologized. Then he asked what the boss wanted him to do.

"Find it, of course. She didn't drag him out of there."

The line went dead. The man sucked in breath. This was stupid. If you want someone dead, you just kill them. All these layers of complication. First the old man. Now this. He didn't understand it.

The boss said Gunderson's death was a precaution, in case he decided to help the Larsen girl. Which was bullshit--from what he'd read in the paper, there was no way in hell Gunderson was helping the Larsen girl. And how would he anyway? He didn't know anything.

It was just a lame excuse to test the latest "upgrade" to the boss's invention. Now he'd tested it a second time, which left his loyal employee here, trying to move a body that appeared to have...

His gaze caught on the Dumpster. He shook his head. No way. The boss was right--the meth-head chick couldn't drag a two-hundred-pound guy, let alone lift him into a bin, which is why he'd been called on cleanup.

And yet ... well, there wasn't anywhere else to take him, was there?

He put his gloves back on and climbed onto the base of the Dumpster. Then he lifted the lid, peered in, and...

Holy shit. How the hell had she done that?

She hadn't. It wasn't possible.

Then who had?

As he took out his phone, a shadow passed overhead and he toppled off the bin, landing on his ass. He fumbled his .45 out and swung it up at...

A damned bird. A crow, it looked like. A huge one sitting on the side of the bin.

Had it smelled the body? That was all he needed.

But the bird wasn't looking in at the feast below. It was staring at him.

When he rose, the bird lifted off, almost lazily, but only flew onto a balcony overhead. Then it perched there.