out her chin. “Worry about yourself, Sheriff. I’m fine.”
“You do realize that we’re on the same side, right?”
Melba sighed. “I’m still mad at Dan,” she confessed.
“Why?”
“Because he’s so damn smart.”
“You’d rather he was stupid?”
“No, I’d rather he was the slightest bit humble.”
Eli gave a loud guffaw at that.
A good thing, because it would be a while before he laughed again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BODY SWAYED gently between shadow and light, surrounded by shimmering dust motes. The scents of mildewed hay, mice and death mingled in the cold air inside the old barn.
Eli swore, and Melba released a small cry of startled dismay.
“Shit,” J.P. said, standing behind them.
“You have a knife in your truck?” Eli heard himself ask, as the initial shock of finding another body—the second in as many days—began to subside. “Get it.”
While J.P. ran for his truck, Eli slipped on a pair of gloves from his pocket and looked for something to stand on.
The rafters in that barn were high, and the rope was long, though not long enough to be accessible to a man standing on the ground. A pillowcase covered the head like a mask, but Eli knew who this was.
It was Melba who located a dusty trunk sheathed in cobwebs, pushed up against a far wall; the two of them hauled it into the center of the space as J.P. rushed back in with the requested knife.
Before Eli could scramble onto the trunk, J.P. did it. He moved with the practiced ease of a rancher’s kid all grown up.
As the body turned in slow half circles, he swore. Almost lost his balance on the trunk, which threatened to splinter beneath his weight.
With a few slashes of his hunting blade, a relic of his time in the armed forces, J.P. cut the body down.
Clad in a long, filthy coat, worn sneakers, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, the dead man landed just this side of the trunk, toppling forward to land facedown on the hard dirt floor.
“Freddie Lansing?” Melba asked, even as Eli crouched, turned the corpse over onto its back and reached for the pillowcase.
“Yes,” Eli said. He would have been a liar if he’d said he wasn’t relieved, but he also knew that this situation was the start of a major crap-show.
He pulled the pillowcase away, revealing Freddie’s purple, bloated face. His tongue protruded, a classic response to strangulation, and his eyes bulged.
Melba was on her way to the SUV to call for backup and the coroner.
She returned after a few minutes.
“Alec and Sam are on their way,” she said. “I told Alec it looks like a suicide, and he asked if he ought to roust one of the state’s CSI teams.”
Eli, standing beside J.P., was looking around the chilly space, chinked with blue sky and sunlight, comparing it to the images Dan had opened up on the dark web, back at Sara’s place.
“What did you tell him?”
Melba looked extremely out of place, in her bright red holiday dress, and she was shivering. Realizing for the first time that she must have forgotten her coat in the rush to get to this place, Eli took off his uniform jacket and laid it over her shoulders.
“I said he was probably the best person to make that particular call,” she replied. “If Freddie Lansing didn’t take his own life—and I don’t see any reason to believe otherwise—then Alec will be able to tell us.”
Eli nodded, mildly distracted. He squinted, found the cot he’d seen online and then the backpack. Went for it.
“What can I do to help?” J.P. asked quietly. He was standing with his booted feet apart and his arms folded. Like Melba, he’d forgotten his coat, but he didn’t look cold.
“Go back to the gate,” Eli suggested, carrying the backpack outside, into the sunshine. J.P. and Melba followed. “Point Alec and the others in the right direction.”
“Got it,” J.P. said, and headed for his truck. On his way, he turned, tossed Melba a grin and remarked, “I like your uniform, Deputy Summers.”
Eli gave a grim chuckle, and Melba pretended she hadn’t heard what J.P. said.
The wind was brisk now, and without his coat, it bit into Eli’s hide like row on row of shark’s teeth.
He set the bag on the hood of the SUV, examined the outside for any kind of identification, but there was nothing beyond a partial orange price tag bearing part of the word “clearance.”
Melba drew nearer, as intrigued as Eli was. Had been since they’d spotted the backpack in Freddie’s website photos.
He’d