The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,98

one day I biked out and just went exploring. I haven’t been back in a very long time.”

They made it around the side of the building, and just as he’d described, the open area of the campus rolled out before them—which was, yup, still marked with crushed dead grass.

“Jesus…” Bill said. “What the hell?”

“Crop circles, Caldwell style, right?”

Bill proceeded ahead of her, and Jo went some distance farther—before she had to stop and look behind herself.

They were being watched. She was sure of it.

“Hey! Wait up,” she called out.

As she jogged forward and caught up, he said, “I need to come back in the daytime with a camera.”

“Maybe we should just go now—”

“Look at that storage building over there.” He pointed ahead. “The roof’s been torn off.”

“You know, in retrospect, coming during the day would be better. I mean, we can’t really see anything—” She sniffed the air. “Is that pine?”

“From the broken rafters. That damage is new.”

Sure enough, as they went over to the debris and she picked up pieces of splintered wood, the cuts were all fresh, the yellow insides of the old boards exposed. And asphalt shingles were everywhere around the roof-less shed, littering the crushed ground—

Jo’s foot caught on something and she fell to the side, her ankle giving way. As the earth rushed up to her, she threw out a hand and twisted around, saving herself from a total face-plant.

“What the hell?” she muttered as she looked at what had tripped her.

It was not a footprint. A giant footprint. Nope.

“Are you okay?” Bill put out a hand—then got distracted by what she’d noticed. “What is that?”

“I’m fine, and no clue.” She stood up by herself and brushed her slacks off. “Is it just me or does this feel like a grown up episode of Scooby Doo?”

Bill took his cell out and snapped a couple of pictures with the help of his flash. When he checked what had been captured, he cursed. “No, we definitely have to come back during the day.”

Jo got down on her haunches and examined the sunken pattern in the ground with the flashlight in her phone. The imprint was deeper and smudged on one side, as if whatever had made it had been pushing off in mid-run.

Bill shook his head. “Does your buddy—Dougie, I think you said that was his name—have resources?”

She glanced up. “You mean, could he have paid to set this all up?” When the reporter nodded, she had to laugh. “He can barely fund his pot-related munchies. No, he didn’t do this, and as far as I’m aware, he doesn’t know anyone who could.”

“Maybe this was made by a four-wheeler.” Bill lowered himself down, too. “Skidding out.”

Not even close, she thought.

“But what about the roof?” Jo nodded at the topless four walls. “It wasn’t blown off by the wind—there was a little rain recently, but nothing even close to a tornado. And as for an explosion? Nothing is charred and there’s no smell of smoke, which you’d expect to find if it had been a bomb.”

Bill regarded her steadily. “When you grow up, do you want to be an investigative reporter?”

“I’m twenty-six. By all accounts, I have grown up.” Although rooming with Dougie and his ilk might disprove that notion a little. “I really think we should—”

As she stopped talking, Bill looked around. “What?”

Jo searched the shadows, her heart beginning to pound. “Listen … I think we need to go. I really … really think we need to leave.”

“Where … did my house go?”

As Bitty asked the question from the back of the GTO, Mary leaned forward in her seat—not that the shift of position did anything to change the vacant lot she was staring at.

“Are we in the right place?”Mary got out of the car and held her seat forward so Bitty could join her. “Is there any chance…”

Rhage shook his head as he looked across the roof. “GPS says this is the right address.”

Shoot, Mary thought.

“There’s the ivy bed.” The girl burrowed into her coat. “That mahmen planted. And the apple tree. And…”

The house must have been condemned and torn down at some point, Mary decided, because there was nothing left over, no piles of splintered wood, no chimney’s cinder blocks, just saplings and weeds growing in its place. The outline of the driveway, such as it was, had survived, but it would not for much longer with the encroaching vegetation.

As she and Bitty walked forward, Rhage stayed a couple of paces behind them, his looming