Grave Secrets (Manhunters 1)

What the fuck? It was three degrees outside and eight o’clock at night. The kid had school in the morning, and Savannah worked the early shift at the local café.

“Did they just bail?” Sam sounded as shocked as Ian felt.

“Yeah.” He exhaled and settled. “They’re playing some kind of twisted game.”

“Are you sure she didn’t make you?” Sam asked.

Annoyance flared. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No offense, dude,” Sam added. “Chill.”

“I don’t think they’re playing a twisted game,” Everly said. “I think they’re practicing their escape.”

“If Bishop is listening in,” Ian wondered aloud, “why isn’t he monitoring both sides of the house? Why have just one guy out front?”

“Maybe because it’s so fucking cold out here,” Sam offered, “they know she couldn’t get far without the car, and the car’s out front. If the car’s home, she’s home.”

“And you can’t see both the front and the back from one vantage point,” Everly said. “He’s already messing with his staff by having someone dedicated to watching her. He can’t afford to have two guys watching her. Come out, Heller. We’re done here.”

“I’ll meet you at the mining office in ten,” Ian told them.

“Roger that,” his teammates said in unison.

But instead of heading straight to his truck and the second of three tactical installment sites of the night including Lyle Bishop’s office at Bishop Mining and Hank Bishop’s office at the sheriff’s department, Ian followed in the Bishops’ footsteps, careful to put his feet right where Savannah had placed hers so he didn’t leave a third trail.

He’d walked over a quarter of a mile before he heard their voices in the night. Ian leapt over the pristine snow to land behind the thick trunk of a pine tree.

“That’s three times

in a row,” the boy told his mom as they made their way back to the house. “You’re not letting me win, are you?”

“Never. You’re getting really fast.”

“I’m doing the tuck and roll you taught me. It doesn’t even hurt in the snow.”

“Right?” she said, her voice happy. “It’s fun too.”

“So fun,” her son agreed. But his voice turned nervous when he asked, “Does Dad think the bad guys who killed Mason will hurt us too?”

“Who told you Mason was killed by bad guys?”

“Dad.”

“Your dad shouldn’t say those things. Is that why you wanted to play To the Moon and Back?”

“Sort of.”

“Look, sweetie.” Savannah stopped and crouched, closing her gloved hands around his arms. “What happened to Mason was terrible and sad. But it doesn’t have anything to do with us. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Your dad is just…he’s just…overprotective.”

The boy nodded, and the two started toward their house again.

Ian waited until the chunk of the front door closing echoed in the night, and their bedroom windows closed with a snap-snap.

He trekked through knee-deep snow on his way to the truck, where he’d parked on a side street. He turned on the heat full blast, then knocked his feet against the running board to shake off the snow clinging to his pant legs.

Once he was thawing out in the truck, Ian replaced his team’s earbud with the one listening in on Savannah’s duplex, and pulled onto the street. The sound of running water and the boy’s laughter filled his ear but did nothing to quell the sense of unease curling in his stomach.

This certainly wasn’t one of the high-risk, clandestine black-ops missions he’d performed for Uncle Sam, but it might not turn out to be as boring as he’d anticipated either.