Near You (Montana Series #2) - Mary Burton Page 0,2
have a purpose.
Pocketing her cell, I shove the clothes into a garbage bag. They will go in the trunk of her car to be used at a later date.
The heady scent of copper wafts as crimson silhouettes the body in ever-widening shadows. In the distance, an animal howls as if the blood scent stimulates its hunger. Soon it will be circling. My unfamiliarity with this wild country and the creatures stalking the night prompt me to hurry.
Grabbing a fresh, finer-point knife from another pocket, I flick it open and carefully trace the outline of her face, which she uses to manipulate men.
I nose the blade tip under the skin along her hairline. It takes several minutes of angling and gently probing until I can grab a flap of skin. Once I have a fingerhold, the process quickens. With a tugging, blade-swiping motion, I work around the outline of the face, ripping away subcutaneous fat and fascia. Several times the skin catches, threatens to tear, and forces me to stop pulling and let the knife do its work.
The process takes ten minutes, longer than I had anticipated, but experience has taught me if I rush, my trophy will be ruined, because facial skin is thin and prone to ripping. Around the eyes is the tricky spot, because that area tends to snag and tear.
Skinning, like any task, improves with repetition.
Practice makes perfect.
Finally, I lift the skin mask from her skull and pull a bag from my pocket, snapping it open so it catches the air and inflates. Carefully, I tuck my trophy inside and lay it flat on the ground. Though satisfaction lurks close, I do not dare acknowledge it.
At her side, I kneel and carefully angle her body toward the sunset, because she had loved it, and then I douse the body with gasoline. When the can is completely empty, I jog back to her car. I strip my own clothes off, and the cool evening air sends gooseflesh rippling. From the trunk I grab fresh clothes, and I dress as efficiently as I kill. Thirty seconds later my bloodied clothes are in another garbage bag. I place the can, the bag of clothes, and my trophy in the trunk before fishing a box of matches out of my pocket.
It is growing dark as I dig a flashlight from the trunk and shine it on the path to make the final trip up the hill under the half-moon sky. The ground is wet from last night’s rain, and several times I slip and stumble in the mud or on a rock.
Her body is saturated in shadows as I strike the match. A familiar sulfur scent, which I have loved since I was a child, rises up seconds before the flame appears and grows tall and bright. I toss the match onto the body.
The gas fumes light with a sudden hiss, illuminating the dark sky. A fire out here will be a beacon for the curious as well as the do-gooders. It will not be long before people come. But that is the point. I do not want the animals to consume her. I want her found.
The clock ticks in earnest.
The gravel shifts under my feet as I race down the hill and slide behind the wheel of the car. I start the engine, using the keys I told her not to bother carrying to the overlook. Smoke and flames, fouled with the scent of burning flesh, climb in the night sky. Forgoing headlights, I nose the car toward the old road marked with potholes and switchback curves.
In the rearview mirror the fire burns. Steady Montana winds whisk its embers toward the dry scrub brush hugging the hills. The damp ground will corral the flames, keeping the mountainside safe. No sense damaging the earth.
I settle back into the driver’s seat, and my thoughts turn to the next town. And the next name on my list.
Flipping on the headlights, I press the accelerator, switch on the radio, and drive faster. This is more fun than I ever anticipated.
CHAPTER ONE
Forty miles east of Missoula, Montana
Wednesday, August 18
7:15 a.m.
When Sergeant Bryce McCabe of the Montana Highway Patrol received the call from the local sheriff in Deer Lodge County, he was at his ranch, stringing barbed wire along a hundred-yard stretch of pastureland. He hoped to be stocking cattle by next spring, but days off had been rare in the last few months, so progress was slow. The cattle might have to wait another year