The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,86

Joy the day that she goes missing. They probably have more stuff we haven’t figured out yet. Glasses.”

Tean caught them on the bridge of his nose and slid them back up. “Did you just take Ammon’s side?”

“Ugh. It was an accident. Do you have any special veterinary acid I can take a shower in?”

“Jem, this is pointless. How am I supposed to prove someone else did this?”

“Use that big brain full of book knowledge.” Something cold and wet pressed against Jem’s arm, and he flinched. Scipio was shoving the rubber bone into his hands. Jem’s heartbeat climbed, and he had to take a breath and smile before putting his hands on the table, out of reach. “All three of them have motive. That doesn’t mean she did it.”

Tean was staring at Scipio.

“He’s fine,” Jem said. “He’s not bothering me.”

“Sure he is,” Tean said absently. “I’m starting to figure out when you’re lying, which is going to be very useful. The bone.”

“Yeah, well, tug-of-war isn’t my favorite game. Too much growling. And his teeth are too close to me. I’ll throw him a ball if you want.”

“No, Jem. The bone. Whoever killed Joy also amputated her limbs to hide the cause of death.”

“Ok.”

“So we find the limbs, find the cause of death, and prove someone else killed Joy.”

“Ok.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not trying to give you a look, I just don’t know how we’re going to find the limbs. Oh God, I can’t even believe that sentence came out of my mouth.”

“Coyotes,” Tean said. He sprinted to the desk, with Scipio bounding after him in case Tean had suddenly remembered a treat- or toy-related emergency, and came back with his laptop. Pulling his chair next to Jem, he said, “I’ve been reading about them nonstop because of this outbreak. Coyotes are omnivores, which means they’ll eat anything—kind of like you.”

“I wouldn’t eat that weird two-layer dip you made that was just sour cream and navy beans.”

“It was seven-layer dip. I just made alterations.”

“It’s only seven-layer dip if it has seven layers.”

“And they’ll travel over a hundred miles to find food if they can’t find it in their current territory. Kind of like you finding a McDonald’s.”

“Jesus Christ. Does the doc have jokes?”

And coyotes always hang around farms and ranches. Not just because they want to eat the animals, but also because there are a lot of animal byproducts—afterbirth, sometimes even the droppings of newborn animals—that they love to eat. That explains why they hang around the pig farm. And they’re not above scavenging, which is why we saw one of them trying to dig Joy’s body out of the gravel.”

“Is your brain like a giant Wikipedia?”

“Isn’t everyone’s brain kind of like a giant Wikipedia?”

“Yeah, but mine only has the parts on sex stuff and the 90s.”

“I’m not even sure about the 90s.”

“Jesus Christ! When did you decide you’ve got jokes?”

“Here’s the important thing about coyotes: they carry food away from humans, so they can eat without being disturbed, and they’re well known for caching food. Storing it for later. Usually they’ll loosely bury it and then mark it with urine.”

“You know what? This is good material. This is grade-A material. You should talk about this with Orion.”

The doc was a sneaky little bastard, and he got Jem in the gut with his elbow.

While Jem doubled over and gasped for air—making a big show of it, and enjoying the huge grin on Tean’s face—Tean clicked and typed, navigating to a satellite mapping program.

“Uh, I hate to break it to you,” Jem said, “but those images can be years old. There’s no way you’re going to be able to see where a coyote has been digging recently. Unless you’re hacking into a military satellite? Are you hacking into a military satellite?”

“I cannot believe I told Hannah she should pay you for this.” Tean zoomed in on a small home with several outbuildings. Farther out, a quilt of pasture and crops—he couldn’t tell what they were from the image—were broken up by dirt roads and two small creeks. “Look familiar?” Tean asked.

“That’s the pig farm.”

“Yep.”

“And, like I said, the picture is old.”

“Right. This is definitely not current. But it’s relatively current, which should be all we need.”

“Time-traveling coyotes.”

“What?”

“Like the Terminator.”

“Sometimes it’s like a horrible game of Mad Libs with you.”

“I’ll be back.”

“From where?”

“Oh my God,” Jem groaned, dropping his face onto the dinette table. “I don’t know if I can even help you at this point. We might just have to put