“Good morning, Agent Pyne.” Paula had worked the front desk of the Juniper, Oklahoma branch of the FBI. She was in her mid-fifties, had bleach blonde hair that she wore piled on top of her head in a loose bun or back in a tight ponytail. Neither was flattering, but today was a ponytail kind of day.

“Morning, Paula. Got anything for me?” Nora asked.

“I do,” she said, sorting through a stack of small yellow papers on her desk. “Prosper PD called.”

She pulled a few papers from the stack and held them out in front of her. “That Shane is a good one,” she said, wagging her red tipped finger at Nora. “I can’t believe you let that one get away. I know plenty of girls who would snatch him up and hold on for dear life.”

Nora rolled her eyes as she listened. The truth was that Shane was great. He had been a kind and loving partner, and Nora missed him terribly most days. But disasters can destroy even the strongest structures and their marriage was no exception. “Yeah,” she said, “he’s great. What did he want?”

“I said it was Prosper PD, not Shane.” Paula smiled, showing her nicotine stained teeth smudged with fuschia lipstick. She leaned forward a little, pinching a cigarette between her lips and reaching for a lighter.

“Are you supposed to smoke in here?” asked Nora.

“Going through the motions of smoking helps me make it to my next break,” she said then tossed both the lighter and cigarette to the side. “Anyway, it was Shane. He said he needs you to call him.”

“Hello, ladies.” Special Agent in Charge Avalos walked through the door of the offices and made his way past them and into the bullpen.

“He is so hot,” Paula whispered. She whipped her head back to face Nora. “Think he’s available?”

Since she and Paula were often the only women in the station, Paula would frequently attempt to engage Nora in gossip sessions.

“Pretty sure he’s married,” Nora said, giving a little chuckle and walking off toward the bullpen.

“Not what I asked,” Paula called after her.

She couldn’t help but smile at Paula’s brazenness as she made her way toward her desk. Dukes was already seated at his desk talking loudly to a few of the other men in the office. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips and, noticing her walking over, cocked one eyebrow, giving his handsome face a boyish look.

“Boys,” she said, greeting the men as she put her purse in her desk drawer. After she settled into her desk, she dialed the number of the Prosper Police Department.

“Detective Pyne, please,” she said into the phone receiver.

Impatiently tapping her fingers on the desk, she looked around her. Being the only woman in the office who wasn’t a secretary meant she often found herself on the outside looking in. The volume of Dukes’ conversation lowered, a sure sign they were saying something she wasn’t meant to hear. She glared in their direction. Again, she thought of Bill.

Bill Reynolds was a man’s man, but Nora was his partner. He took his job seriously and when the “locker room” talk got out of hand or, even worse, included her, he would put a stop to it. Nora missed him.

“Well, boys, Red’s here. Better get busy before she gets her panties in a twist,” Dukes said loudly.

The other men laughed as they dispersed and Dukes spun around in his chair to face her. “Hey there,” he said.

She opened her mouth to tell him to fuck off, but Shane was on the line before she got the words out.

“Pyne,” he said.

“Hey, Paula said you called me,” Nora said.

“Yeah, I expected you to call me after the other night. You okay?”

“I’m great.” Rubbing her forehead she asked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Dukes was leaning back in his seat, arms folded in front of him, watching her closely. His gaze made her uneasy, and she reacted to him by sticking her middle finger up at him and turned her chair so he couldn’t see her face. “I didn’t call you because I have nothing to say. And if I had known that is what you wanted, I wouldn’t have called now.”

Shane started to say something else, but Nora didn’t want to have this conversation. She put the receiver back on the phone base and steadied herself before turning to Dukes who was still watching her.

“Is there something on my face?” she asked him, wiping the area around her mouth with her hand.

“No.”

“Then stop looking at me like that,” she snapped.

“Okay, people,” SAIC Avalos shouted across the room. “We’ve got a live one. Gather round. Prosper PD found a Jane Doe last night in an abandoned barn on Highway 51 last night. While canvassing the area they found a shallow grave. It was empty, but there were signs that someone had been buried there. They don’t believe the Jane Doe and grave are related. We have been asked to find out who was in the hole, how they got there, and where they are now. Pyne and Dukes, this one is yours. Everyone else, keep an ear to the ground.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

***

The hole was in the middle of nowhere by Nora’s calculations. The barn was about half a mile south of where she and Dukes stood looking into what was obviously a makeshift grave.

Dirt was flung in all directions around the hole, but there was an obvious ring of dead and dying flowers surrounding it. Near one end was a small arrangement of rocks. The average hiker or passerby would think nothing of the four stones when they came upon them in the woods. They were lined up in an almost natural way. Almost.

Nora squatted next to the stones searching for meaning in the arrangement. Dukes stood next to her. He was resting his hands on his hips and scanning the nearby area with his eyes.

“You got something, Red?” Dukes asked.

“These rocks,” she said, annoyed he had called her Red, but deciding not to address it. “They were put here on purpose. A grave marker, maybe? I’m wondering if there is any reasoning behind the arrangement.”

She could hear Dukes breathing but he said nothing.

“Dukes?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Do you see any meaning or reason in the arrangement of the stones? I feel like they were placed purposefully. Not just dropped or tossed.”

Birds were chirping and singing in the distance. Their melodies made his silence more evident. The forensics team photographed, bagged, and tagged the few pieces of evidence they could find. They took soil samples to be analyzed and made a plaster cast of the two footprints they found.

There was a clump of long, blond hair mashed into the dirt at the bottom of the hole. Most of the hair was covered in mud or blood, most likely both, but the blond shone through in some areas, almost white. One of the techs reached down with a gloved hand and picked it up, placing it in a plastic bag labeled with the case number and other relevant information.

Nora took a moment to gather herself. She felt a profound sense of sadness looking at the burial site. A child, woman, or victim of some kind most likely lay in this hole recently. Someone who was probably loved and missed by people learning or who learned long ago how to live without them. A near impossible task.

A cool breeze blew across her face and through her curls. The sound of a woodpecker drilling a tree somewhere in the distance, filled the silence.

She noticed Dukes wasn’t paying attention to the breeze, the forensic technicians, or the vacated grave. He had abandoned his station behind her and was now pacing in a small circle and chewing on his fingernails. He had been a little on edge since leaving the station.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked, rising from her squatting position and squinting against the sun.

He stopped pacing and turned to face her. “What?”

“You’re going to wear another hole in the ground if you don’t stop pacing like that. What’s got you going?”

“Just thinking,” Dukes answered.

“About?”

“Just personal shit,” he said, taking two big steps toward her. “Anything here?”

Nora shook her head. “Not really. Maybe forensics can tell us something. And leave the personal shit behind for a while, will ya? I need you to focus.”

Dukes nodded his head and raised a hand in front of him, an unspoken apology. “Looks like we are about done. Wanna get some food?” he asked. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah, we need to hear from the lab so we have something to go on, I guess.”

Dukes slipped on his dark sunglasses and traipsed off toward their car.

“I’d prefer a drink,” she said, under her breath.

“We can do both,” Dukes said from in front of her.

***

The sun shone through the crack where the curtains met in the middle and right into Nora’s eyes. She rubbed them with the back of her hands. Blinking away the morning sand and grime, she sat up on the edge of a bed she did not recognize.

“Mmm...hey there,” came a voice she did, and a pair of lips pressed against her bare shoulder.

FUCK! Dukes was sitting up behind her. He moved closer to her, wrapping his arm around her and cupping her breast. Nora mentally gave herself a lashing. What was she doing in bed with Jeff Dukes? He was her partner and this was a terrible idea. She stiffened and cleared her throat. “Hey.”

He nuzzled her neck and moaned a little. “We have some time before work,” he said.

She did not want him, she wanted to run from the room screaming that she had made a huge mistake; that she didn’t fuck her partner. But she could not stop her body from softening, from responding to his touch and her mind went foggy.

“I don’t think we should do this,” she said. She didn’t think they should have done it in the first place, but the taste of whiskey in her mouth indicated had not been thinking clearly the night before. She remembered having drinks with Dukes at the bar but nothing after.

He pulled her against him and slid one hand between her legs. “But you want to,” he said.

Turning her head so she could see his face, she saw his eyes were dark with need. He brushed her hair from her face and pulled her knees apart.

She knew she should stop him but she thought about how good it would feel to just get lost between these sheets with this man. To forget what is missing, who is missing, and how she is at fault - always at fault. To let the world consist of her and the ecstasy sex would bring, nothing more.

“I want you, Nora.” Dukes took her hand and placed it on his erection, sucking in a quick breath at contact.

Giving in to desire, hers as well as his, Nora pressed her mouth against his. She lay back and pulled him on top of her, welcoming his weight and running her hands down his back, exploring the muscles she found there. He smelled lightly of perspiration and booze and his skin was warm and firm.

“This can never happen again,” she whispered, arching her back, riding the wave of pleasure his fingers brought her.

He smiled at her. “I planned on making it happen over and over.”

Her orgasm ebbed, but she could feel it building again. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“If you say so,” Dukes said as he entered her.