2
ADDIE
Icouldn’t help it. I kept looking back at the ravine. There was something strange going on. This woman should have left behind a ghost. Her soul had to be somewhere.
Right?
The only time a corpse didn’t have a soul was when they moved on to the other side without hesitation. That’s what people who lived full lives did. Someone who was murdered and dumped in the woods would have lingered. They would be full of rage and pain, waiting for someone like myself to come along and help them find their murderer.
I hated when they did that. I wasn’t a detective. All I knew how to do was make a good cookie butter latte.
My stomach grumbled at the thought of coffee, like I needed the extra caffeine—I really didn’t. This detective made my anxiety skyrocket. When he reached for me, I’d been shocked. Like a deer in the headlights of a tractor trailer, I’d frozen. It’d taken several moments for me to shake free of the fear that’d hit me.
“Is…is there anything else that I can help you with?” I asked the detective.
He gave me a shrewd look up and down. His dark eyes took in everything. They caught on the label of my jacket, on the snag in my athletic leggings, and on the haphazard tie of my hiking boots. He was taking notes; I could tell. But what could he discern from my messy appearance?
He wasn’t all that clean, himself. His blond hair curled around the nape of his neck like he should have gotten a hair cut a couple of months ago. It stuck out at odd angles, telling me he’d likely rolled out of bed before driving out here. That’s what his clothes said, too. They were wrinkled and mussed, one side of his button-up shirt hanging out of the waistband of his pants.
He shouldn’t be in a position to judge, but I didn’t have a badge here. I was at his mercy until he dismissed me.
“I asked you a question,” he grumbled.
Man, he was about as friendly as a rabid dog. Just his tone made me jerk back like I’d been bitten. Would I catch his rabid nature just by being around him? If that was the case, I would have caught it from Vi or Ness ages ago. Both of them had that same kind of energy.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now. Maybe it was the way this man looked at me like I’d killed his family.
My jaw dropped. “Wait! You thinkIdid this?”
“You’re certainly top of my suspect list right now.”
I gaped at him. My heart hammered wildly. My mind tumbled, all my thoughts bleeding into one another, so I couldn’t find the right words to defend myself.
He gestured to the nearby ravine. “You could have driven out here to dump the body and misjudged your own strength. A clumsy hold on the victim and March mud likely sent you tumbling into the ravine with her. So, you felt the need to call and reveal the body, so we didn’t track any ripped clothing back to you.”
I blinked, taken aback. “That’s pretty complicated. Are you sure anyone would go to that much effort?”
Once more, he looked me up and down. This time, I knew exactly what he decided.
He thought I was too stupid to come up with this.
I fought the urge to kick him in the shin. I wasn’t Vi. I could restrain myself, especially when it involved a detective who could absolutely put me behind bars. That wasn’t how I wanted to spend my day.
If anything, I wanted to go home and spend the last of my day off trying to shake this awful feeling. I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep. My sleeping bag was more comfortable than my own bed at this point. However, there were plenty of other things I could do to escape thoughts of this missing soul.
I had a stack of romance novels waiting to be read. They all had men with kilts on the cover.
“Listen,” I said. “You and I both know I didn’t do this.”
My attention slid back to the ravine. Whodiddo this? Who killed a woman who looked just like me? What happened to her soul?
I shook myself free of my thoughts. This wasn’t my problem.
Yet, death whispered that it was. The cold fingers on my shoulder and the lifeless lips pressed to my ear warned me that if I ignored this, there would be consequences. I wanted to throw off the presence hanging off my shoulder, but it’d never worked before. Death followed me everywhere I went.
Even here, where I thought I would be safe.
“How about you come down to the station so we can talk more?” the detective asked.