A Grave Peril Read online

  A Grave Peril

  By Wendy Roberts

  Sometimes at night, she can hear the dead calling. Julie Hall’s job is to find bodies. For the sake of her sanity, she’s taking a much-needed break—but the dead don’t wait. With bodies piling up alongside her guilt, she knows she has to dive back in, despite pushback from her FBI boyfriend, Garrett Pierce. But Garrett is working a troubling case of his own and no longer seems like the man she fell in love with.

  Despite his warnings—or maybe because of them—when Garrett goes missing, Julie has no choice but to use her skills to find where the cartel buries their victims...before he becomes part of the body count.

  Don’t miss books one and two in the Bodies of Evidence series by Wendy Roberts. A Grave Calling and A Grave Search are available now from Carina Press!

  This book is for all the wonderful women who lift me up, cheer me on and believe in me whenever I stop believing in myself. Thank you.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Excerpt from Grounds to Kill by Wendy Roberts

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Wendy Roberts

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Every time I find a body I hope it will bring closure to those left behind. That’s a lot to ask of a corpse. The dead usually bring more questions than answers. Although I’ve taken a hiatus from using dowsing rods to find the dead, that hasn’t stopped the stiffs from piling up or the living from wanting to bring them home. Sometimes late at night I can almost hear the dead calling.

  As I stared into my laptop screen and scanned my email inbox, I drummed my fingers on the table and tried to decide if this was the week I’d go back to work. It’s been months. Both my FBI boyfriend and my psychiatrist agreed I should take my time. They thought the dead could wait and my sanity was more important. I understood their reasoning, but Garrett and Dr. Chen were not the ones fielding my overflowing inbox of requests from loved ones desperate to find and bury their dead.

  My dog, Wookie, came over and nudged my knee with his head. A cue that I’d been staring at my laptop on the kitchen table for too long and, meanwhile, his food bowl was still empty. An angry meow from the kitchen counter meant Fluffy felt the same.

  As I fed the animals and shooed Fluffy off the counter, I looked longingly at my laptop screen from across the kitchen.

  Maybe just a little case. A simple recovery that would ease me back into my Divine Reunions business of finding the departed. I had a restless feeling in my gut that had only grown stronger every day over the past few weeks. There was that one request a few months ago...

  I grabbed some coffee and sat back down at the kitchen table, then scrolled back through my emails until I found it. A mother looking for her son; a missing hiker. Searches for his body had been called off until the spring thaw. I glanced out my window at the blooming cherry tree in the center of the front yard and checked the weather forecast on my phone. It had been an exceptionally warm April. I sipped from my mug then read over the message details. Before I could change my mind, I sent off a quick request to the hiker’s mother for more information and attached one of my service contracts to the message.

  I closed my eyes, breathed in and said a silent prayer that it wasn’t too soon to return to work.

  “I’m ready.” I hoped the self-confidence in the words would fill the rest of my body.

  My cell phone chimed, and I let it ring a few times before I picked it up. It would be nine o’clock on the dot.

  “For a moment there I thought you were going to be a second late,” I chided as I leaned back in my chair.

  “And for a second I thought you were going to let it go to voicemail just to tick me off,” Garrett replied. His voice sounded strained and tired. “How are you, baby?”

  “I’m good except you’ve been gone almost a week and the dog and cat are starting to fight for your space in our bed.”

  “Do not let the animals in our bed!” Garrett exclaimed, but his voice held no enthusiasm for our usual playful argument.

  “Too late. I need someone to keep my feet warm at night.”

  Fluffy was once again on the kitchen counter. Wookie, the Rottweiler, noticed the infraction at the exact same time and barked sharply at the cat and then looked to me for approval.

  “Nobody likes a tattletale,” I told the dog.

  “Fluffy on the counter again?” Garrett asked.

  “Maybe I should just start to ignore it. I think he actually enjoys the spray bottle. I’m thinking I should just stop rewarding his bad behavior with attention.”

  “You’ll make a great mom,” Garrett said and then I could almost visualize him cringe. “Sorry, that just slipped out.”

  Still, the comment lay between us and created a sense of panic in my chest. I cleared my throat and changed the subject away from that more tender one. “When are you coming home?”

  “Soon.”

  “Soon as in tomorrow? Or soon as in before my hair turns gray?”

  “This case is just...” He exhaled loudly. “Hard. It’s damn hard.”

  “It would make me feel better if I at least knew where you were.”

  He didn’t reply. Having an FBI agent as a boyfriend meant a lot of unanswered questions.

  “Well, I’ve decided to take on a case,” I told him. “A simple one. Missing hiker that—”

  “Already?”

  “It’s time.”

  “I’m glad you feel ready. Could you wait until I get home?”

  Even though his tone was gentle, it still rankled. I hadn’t taken a dowsing job for months. Sure, I had my own doubts about going back to work, but I didn’t want to wait for his permission.

  “I’ve been waiting.” My back was up now. “I’m doing it. It’s time.”

  Someone was trying to talk to him in the background and he told them to wait a second.

  “Could you take someone with you?” he suggested. “Maybe call Tracey?”

  Tracey was particularly useless on a hike and he knew that but if I ended up taking the lost hiker case, the drive was going to be a particularly long one. It might be nice to have someone along for the ride. “I’ll ask her.”

  “Good.” He sighed with relief. “When I get home—” he began, but then I could hear muffled voices in the background and he abruptly told me he had to go.

  “Okay, I love—” But the line was already dead.

  I frowned at the phone briefly, then decided to get in the shower. Later, when I was drying off, I caught my reflection in the steamy bathroom mirror and startled as if seeing a stranger. In a joint hair-dying evening, Tracey had insisted I needed to lighten things up. Quite literally. And now I was a bleached blonde.

  While I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, my phone chimed notification that I had a reply to my email. The mother of the missing hiker was thrilled I would help find her boy. She’d answered all my remaining questions, signed my service contract and thanked me profusely. Only a minute later my phone pinged again, stating she’d already paid my deposit. It was a go. I felt simultaneously exhilarated and sickened.

  I wanted to go back to w
ork and I was proud of my Divine Reunions website. I’d designed the site to help give loved ones a way to contact me about using my dowsing rods to find the bodies of their lost loved ones. I’d never expected to be so overwhelmed by requests from all over the world so, when things went to hell several months ago, I’d stopped answering inquiries. It was too hard to deal with death and dying. I was struggling just to live. My mind had been too fragile then. Was I strong enough now?

  I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to do one of the many quick meditations I’d learned from my psychiatrist. When I tried to clear my thoughts, immediately one unwelcome idea popped into my head.

  Wine would be oh so lovely right now. A massive glass of ice cold pinot grigio. Remember what it’s like to take that first swallow? The feel of that sweet tang hitting the back of the throat?

  The words flew into my head before I could stop them. The urge to drink happened more often than I liked. I’d been sober for many months now but I still craved alcohol like a lover’s touch. I pushed boozy ideas away and did one of the mindfulness exercises to help calm my pinging nerves and, when I was done, I stretched and headed to the kitchen.

  “He-e-ey, Mom.” As I walked by, I tenderly touched the jar containing my mother’s ashes that rested in a corner of the counter.

  I made myself some toast and refereed another battle between Wookie and Fluffy while I ate. Then, true to my word, I called up my friend Tracey and asked if she felt like tagging along for a ride to Hog Lake.

  “Are you looking for a dead person? Oh my God, you are, aren’t you? Of course, I want to come! Will I be home in time for my shift at six o’clock?”

  “Hog Lake is near Spokane,” I told her. “We’re talking ten or eleven hours round trip driving and however long it takes me to do the hike. You’ll be lucky to make it home by midnight.”

  “Damn.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You can come along another time.” I felt a wave a disappointment and realized I’d actually been counting on the company.

  “But this is your first time since...you know.”

  Of course I knew, and I didn’t want to talk about it. “I might not even find the body my first time out. There might still be too much snow on the trail to even give it a good look.”

  “Let me just see if I can switch my shift. I’ll call you back.”

  She ended the call and I went to the spare bedroom and opened the closet. My hands shook a little as I reached far into the back, behind some unpacked boxes, for my backpack. I began to pack it with everything I needed to find the dead. Granola bars, a baseball cap, sunglasses, a scarf, and water bottles. My dowsing rods lay where I last placed them, at the bottom of the pack.

  “Hello there.” I took out the copper rods and stroked the length of them. A small sigh escaped my lips. “I know it’s been a while.”

  The rods felt warm and responsive to the touch. As if they were welcoming me.

  I gingerly tucked them back into my pack and let Wookie out for a pee while I went in search of my hiking boots. As I walked through the kitchen, my toe caught on a tear in the linoleum that had lifted and curled. I cursed and stomped on the offending old flooring to punish it for hurting my foot. It must’ve been the hundredth time I’d tripped on the exact same location.

  Even though we’d lived in this house a few months already, the three-bedroom fixer-upper ranch still didn’t quite feel like home. When Garrett and I decided to move in together, we looked at dozens of houses before deciding to buy this one. It was in an area of Washington not too far from the city of Everett. Close enough for Garrett to commute into Seattle, and far enough from the city that I didn’t have to walk Wookie through streets lined with concrete towers. The to-do list on this house seemed overwhelming and the other houses too close. But Garrett had insisted that having neighbors was safer and that the work needed in the house was all cosmetic. He’d said we could take our time to make the place ours. At the time, I’d been weary and just hanging on to myself by a thread. When Garrett had continued to extol the virtues of a house needing work, my final answer had been a shrug of agreement. I just wanted a place that felt safe.

  The biggest drawback for me wasn’t the endless amount of work the house needed; it was the proximity of neighbors. Every time I let Wookie outside and whenever I walked out the door to my car it seemed that either Hairy Neighbor on one side, or Bald Neighbor on the other, were out to greet me and wanting to make small talk. They liked to hang around Bald Neighbor’s fancy Alfa Romeo Spider and stare lovingly at its shiny red paint.

  Garrett felt having people close by was a form of protection. He had far more faith in people than I did. When I let Wookie back inside the house, Bald Neighbor was out watering his flowers in the backyard and he stopped to give me an enthusiastic wave. Although I returned the wave, I hastily closed the patio doors and then the drapes covering them.

  I found my hiking boots tucked far under our bed. They’d seen a lot of wear before we moved, and they hugged my feet nicely as I slipped them on.

  “Behave, you two,” I told the cat and dog as I slipped the backpack onto my back.

  Fluffy was engaged in an elaborate bathing ritual and didn’t even glance over. Wookie offered me a sulky look because he wanted to come along.

  I walked out to my Jeep and felt the cool, misty spring air that would burn off as the April sun rose in the sky. Just as I backed my Jeep out of the driveway, Tracey called. She’d traded shifts with someone and was free for our adventure.

  “This is going to be awesome!” She sounded entirely too enthusiastic about a field trip to find a dead person. Then again, Tracey wouldn’t be hiking. She was more likely to be taking advantage of my heated seats and scrolling through social media on her phone.

  When Garrett and I moved in together, Tracey had found a new place to rent and a new job only a few miles away. She claimed she could work at a grocery store anywhere and liked having a friend nearby. She’d packed up and moved just for me. It was the type of commitment to friendship I’d never experienced before.

  When I pulled up to Tracey’s apartment building a few minutes later, she struck a seductive pose, her pale pink hair draped over one eye as she thrust out her thumb as if hitching a ride. I smiled despite myself. Tracey and I were the same age, but we were darkness and light. She wore her late twenties like a glittery fairy full of the spark of life while the same years were heavy on me like a weighted blanket of trauma and drink.

  “I’m so excited!” Tracey gushed as she flung open the passenger door and carefully climbed inside. A knee brace made it more difficult.

  “I’m impressed you’re dressed for hiking.” I eyed the brand-new hiking boots on her feet, lightweight jacket over her arm, and a small pack she put on the floor at her feet.

  “I know you like to hike so I bought some gear months ago when there was a sale.” She slid me a sidelong sheepish look. “I may be only visually hiking because of my damn body but I want to at least look the part.”

  Tracey had a connective tissue disorder that made her joints unstable. She had braces that switched onto various joints depending on the day.

  “What happened to your hair?” she asked.

  “I had a trim.” I touched my hand to my head.

  “But you cut off all the pink.” There was a slight hurt in her voice. When Tracey dyed her entire head pink and mine blonde she’d convinced me to pinken the tips of my hair. At the time it had felt childlike, lighthearted and fun. The very next day I’d taken scissors and cut those pink ends off.

  “It’s great on you.” I offered her an apologetic flicker of a smile as I steered out of her parking lot. “But I don’t think it’s my style.”

  When she opened her mouth to protest, I shut her down by giving her something to do.

  “Take my phone from the console and look up the notes I made about today’s search, okay?”
>
  She dug out my phone, opened the emails and read out loud.

  “Douglas Prost, age thirty-one, told people he was going to hike Hog Lake in October of last year. When he didn’t return home that day, his mother reported him missing. Local rescue crews went out the next day, but they stopped looking when a blizzard made the search too dangerous. His mother tried to hire some private search crews but they all turned her down because of the heavy snows this winter. Because of our extra warm spring, some crews have already ventured out, but they have yet to locate the body.” Tracey turned to me. “You made a note here that says ‘easy 5.’”

  “It’s an easy five-mile hike,” I explained. “I looked it up.”

  While I took the exit onto I-90, Tracey fiddled with the radio until she found a station playing angsty rap songs where she knew all the words. I usually preferred to listen to audio self-help books on my drives, or guided meditations. The music grated on my nerves all the way through Snoqualmie Pass and well past the town of Ellensburg. When Tracey slumped in her seat and nodded off I shut down the radio and she promptly woke.

  “Just need a while to think,” I explained.

  “Could we make a stop?” Tracey asked. “Need a coffee and to pee and not necessarily in that order.”

  We made a stop at a gas station in the next town. I decided to use the washroom too and when I came out Tracey was paying for a pile of candy bars and telling the woman at the counter all about our plans to find Douglas Prost.

  “I heard about you finding dead people,” the woman said, nodding sagely. “I used to live up in Blaine many years ago. I knew your grandparents back in the day too and—”

  “I’ll see you in the car,” I told Tracey.

  She returned carrying two coffees and a sack of candy all balanced precariously in one hand while she opened the door and climbed inside.

  “This one’s for you,” she said, handing me one of the coffees.

  “Thanks.” I put the coffee into the cupholder, then turned to her. “Don’t do that.”

  “What? Buy you coffee?” She blinked innocently.