Waking the Dead Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  About the Author

  Praise for

  WAKING NIGHTMARE

  “Vivid and strong. . . . Brant does an excellent job of building the partnership and attraction between Abbie and Ryne. . . . Suspense fans will love the unexpected twist and pulse-pounding climax.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Sharper, I want you to meet Caitlin Fleming, a consultant for the sheriff’s department. She’s with Raiker Forensics.”

  The inflection in the man’s voice imbued his last words with meaning. But it was his earlier words that had Zach halting in disbelief. Tipping his Julbo sunglasses down he looked—really looked—at the woman approaching.

  The mile-long legs could be right. And she was tall enough; only a few inches shorter than his six-three height. The kiss-my-ass cheekbones were familiar. But it was the thick black hair that clinched it, though shorter now than it’d been all those years ago. He didn’t need her to remove her tinted glasses to know the eyes behind them were moss green and guaranteed to turn any breathing male into an instant walking hard-on.

  His voice terse, he turned his attention to the deputy and said, “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  Barnes blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He’s talking about me.” The voice was smoke, pure sex. He’d never heard her speak before, but he’d imagined it often enough years ago in his adolescent fantasies. “Probably recognizes me from some of my modeling work, isn’t that right, Sharper? A long time ago. If you want me to believe you’ve changed from a sweaty hormone-ridden teenage boy who undoubtedly used one of my posters to fuel your juvenile wet dreams, then you’ll have to credit that I too grew up and moved on. I want a firsthand look at that cave. You’re going to take me there.”

  Berkley Sensation Titles by Kylie Brant

  WAKING NIGHTMARE

  WAKING EVIL

  WAKING THE DEAD

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  WAKING THE DEAD

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / November 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Kim Bahnsen.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15121-1

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Carly, who already felt like a member of the family

  even before it became official. We love you!

  Acknowledgments

  One of the most intriguing parts of writing a novel is the research that goes into it, and many people contributed to this book. First off, thanks are owed to Alan Mayer, for describing the cave you found on the face of Castle Rock. It turned out to be perfect for my villain’s needs.

  For all things bone related, much is owed to Alison Galloway, Ph.D., D-ABFA F-AAFS, and Laura C. Ful giniti, Ph.D., D-ABFA. Your information was as fascinating as it was appreciated!

  Thanks to Bud Jillett for the details on the care and feeding of dermestid beetles. Your book was a big help, too!

  A big thank you is owed to Wally Campbell, Laboratory Manager of the GBI-DOFS Coastal Regional Crime Lab in Savannah and Tammy Jergovich, Trace Evidence Section Manager, GBI, Division of Forensic Sciences, Decatur, Georgia, for your help regarding collection and analysis of trace evidence, comparison and reference samples, and infinite other nagging problems I sent your way. As usual, all mistakes are mine and mine alone.

  A very special note of thanks goes to Kelcie and Guy Santiago for hauling me around to the Oregon caves and through the forest, and answering my endless questions. I had a blast! The area around McKenzie Bridge, Oregon, is one of the loveliest I’ve seen and is unlikely to house the sort of criminal activity found in this story. The beauty of writing fiction is the ability to change anything that doesn’t fit into the plot. Hence some site names, directions, and distances between points, among other things, have been altered to suit the needs of the story.

  Prologue

  The way through the forest was familiar, so the lack of a moon didn’t bother him. With the aid of the flashlight he made his way surely, avoiding fallen logs and low-hanging branches from memory. The large bag he carried on his back added nearly another twenty pounds, but that didn’t slow him either. His strength was as sure as his sense of direction.

  He carried a shotgun in his free hand and a machete hung from his belt. Not because he expected trouble, but because he’d lived in and around the Oregon wilderness long enough to be prepared for it. There were elk, bears, and cougars in the forest. Any number of poisonous snakes. And sometimes there was danger of a two-legged variety. It didn’t pay to leave anything to chance.

  His Sweetie would say once he had an idea he implemented it with the precision of a storm trooper. But for a long time now, it’d been Sweetie with the ideas and he who carried them out. That was all
right with him.

  The path he took wasn’t an easy one as there was no trail to where he was going. Just across his backyard and into the forest that fringed it. Walking miles through brambles, salal, and thickets of blackberry bushes. Over outcroppings of lichen-slicked rocks and down through a creek that changed from a trickle in the summer to a rushing torrent when the mountain snows melted in the spring. Then the real test would begin at the base of Castle Rock. He’d have to stow the flashlight and shotgun. Switch on the camper’s light he wore over his Oregon Ducks cap. And climb eight hundred feet to his hidey-hole.

  He always fasted for a couple weeks before he made this trek. The first time he’d found the chamber in the small cave on the face of Castle Rock had been over ten years ago. He’d bulked up since then. Each time he belly crawled through it there were a few bad moments when he’d get stuck and have to work himself loose. He wanted to make damn sure he was able to do so.

  But when he got close enough to see the lights, he slowed. Taking shelter behind the trunk of a large fir, he reached for the night vision binoculars he wore on a strap around his neck and held them up for closer observation. What he saw sent a jolt through him. Looked like he wasn’t going to be making the climb tonight after all.

  The place was flooded with cops.

  There were spotlights illuminating the edge of Castle Rock like a rooftop at Christmastime. Plenty more at the base, shining upward. Dotting its face. His initial thought that the locals had busted a meth lab was quickly banished when he saw that some of the lights came from climbers hanging like spiders in front of his hidey-hole.

  Well, fuck.

  Sweetie might be the brainy one, but he was smart enough to figure out that his secret hiding place was no longer a secret.

  As if to underscore that thought, one figure on a line leaned forward to the cave’s mouth to grasp at something coming out of it. Something long and black. Something not so different from what he carried on his back right this moment.

  He continued to watch as he pondered his options. He’d been busy with preparations for the last couple days and hadn’t left his place. And Sweetie was on that trip with the kids, so there hadn’t been any warning of the discovery, the news of which must be sweeping the area. Their dump site might have been found, but there was no way anything in it led back to them. They’d made sure of that.

  He watched for a while longer, wishing he dared get closer. CSI was his favorite show. It was the worst kind of luck that he didn’t dare hang around and watch the cops work. Not that the locals would be much to see. Hell, most of the deputies were dickheads. With a force like that, Sheriff Andrews was going to be chasing her tail from now until doomsday.

  Grinning, he lowered the binoculars and faded back into the forest. Nope, he had absolutely nothing to worry about.

  Nothing except finding a new hiding place for the bag of bones he was carrying on his back.

  Chapter 1

  Seven stainless steel gurneys were lined up in the morgue, each occupied by a partially assembled skeleton and a large garbage bag. The bones gleamed under the florescent lights. At the base of the last gurney was a heap of stray bones that had been found lying separately. Caitlin Fleming’s first thought was that they looked forlorn. Deprived of their dignity, until they could be rejoined to form the remnant of the person they’d once belonged to.

  Her second thought was that without the skulls, the chances of identifying those persons decreased dramatically.

  “What do you think?” Sheriff Marin Andrews demanded. Her booted feet sounded heavily as she walked from one gurney to the next. “The bones were pretty much loose in the bags, but the medical examiner made an attempt to reassemble them. We brought out the bones scattered on the bottom of the cave floor in a separate body bag. Recovery operation was a bitch, I’m telling you. The cave branches off from the original vein, gets wider and higher. Then it drops off to a steep chamber about seven feet down. These were probably dumped from above into that chamber.” She must have caught Cait’s wince, because she added, “We had an anthropologist from the university supervise the removal process.”

  Cait nodded. She was rarely brought onto a case in time to help process the crime scene. But that didn’t stop her from questioning what might have been destroyed or overlooked in the recovery. “I’ll want to see the cave.”

  Andrews’s expression first revealed shock, then amusement. “Fortunately for you, that won’t be necessary. It’s on the face of Castle Rock and not easily accessible. Either you climb down from the top, or you scale upwards nearly eight hundred feet. There are trails, of course, but they could be tricky for an inexperienced climber. We don’t need an injury on our hands before we even get started.”

  “I’m not inexperienced.” Cait knew exactly what the sheriff saw when she looked at her. It was, after all, the appearance she’d cultivated for well over a decade. But her days on the runways of New York, Milan, and Paris were long behind her. She was as comfortable these days in a room exactly like this one as she was hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  The other woman shrugged. She was probably about fifteen years Cait’s senior. Her looks were nondescript. A sturdy build filling out a beige uniform. Close-cropped light brown hair and hazel eyes. But Cait knew better than anyone that appearances could be deceiving. Marin Andrews had a reputation for being an excellent, if ambitious cop. And that ambition, along with her father’s millions, were rumored to be priming her for a chase to the governor’s mansion.

  Cait’s help in solving this case would provide a stepping-stone to that end.

  “Figured you’d want to see the area, anyway. That forest fire in the eastern Cascades has depleted the personnel at the forestry stations, but we’ve hired Zach Sharper to stay available during the course of the investigation. He’s the outdoors guide who found the bodies. Said he was preparing for a client who wanted to spelunk some out-of-the-way caves, so Zach explored a few off the beaten path. Thought he’d discovered a new one when he stumbled on this.” Andrews waved a hand at the skeletons. “He runs an outfitting company. Raft ing, kayaking, mountain climbing, hiking, that sort of thing.” The assessing look in her eyes said better than words that she didn’t believe Cait’s assertion of her outdoor experience. “He’s also on the search and rescue team when campers and hikers go missing. He’s got some rough edges, but he’s supposed to be the best in the state.”

  “I can handle rough edges.” Cait walked around the gurneys to peer more closely at the nearly identical junctures where the skulls had been separated from each skeleton. She looked around then, spotted a magnifying loupe on a set of metal shelves in the corner, and retrieved it before continuing her examination.

  “The guy from the university said it looked like a knife or saw was used to decapitate them.”

  Cait moved to another gurney to peer at the vertebra. “I’d say a saw. With luck I may be able to narrow the type down for you.” Straightening, she scanned the remains lined up on the stainless steel tables. “You’ve got four men and three women, but I suspect the medical examiner told you that.”

  “He did. He also tried, and failed, to find a cause of death for any of them. But this thing is way out of his league and he knows it. He’s a pathologist, not a forensic anthropologist. When I saw what we had here, I immediately thought of Raiker Forensics. Adam Raiker assures me you’re the best in this field.”

  Cait used the loupe to take a close look at the femur of the second skeleton. The guy had suffered a fracture to it at some point in his life. It had knit cleanly, suggesting certain medical attention. “I am,” she responded absently. She looked up then to arrow a look at Andrews. “My assistant will be arriving at dawn tomorrow with our equipment. Will this facility remain available to us?”

  “It will. The building is less than a year old and state of the art.” The look of satisfaction stamping the sheriff’s face told Cait better than words that the other woman had been a driving force behind the new morgue
. “Anything you need, talk to the Lane County medical examiner. His name is Steve Michaels. You’ll have to meet him tomorrow.” Cait followed the direction of the woman’s gaze to the clock on the wall. Eight P.M. And she’d left home at six in the morning in order to catch her flight from Dulles. Weariness was edging in, warring with hunger.

  “I’ve arranged two rooms for you and your assistant at the Landview Suites here in Eugene. You’ve rented a vehicle?”

  “Picked it up at the airport.” The compact SUV looked perfect for the ground she’d be covering in the course of this investigation. “I’d like all the maps you can provide for the area. Roads, forests, surrounding towns . . .” A thought struck her then and she looked at the other woman. “And thanks for arranging for the weapon permit so quickly.” Raiker refused to let any of his consultants work without one.

  Andrews lifted a shoulder. “Your boss made it clear that condition wasn’t up for discussion. I doubt you’ll need it. These bones may have been in that cave for decades. Even if foul play is determined, the unknown subject is probably long gone by now. The threat should be minimal.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It certainly doesn’t take decades for a corpse to be reduced to a skeleton. In some climates it’d be a week if the body were left out in the elements. In Oregon it’d take several weeks or months, depending on where the body’s dumped, the season, the temperature, insect and animal access. Maybe you’re right and these bones have been there for that long. But not necessarily.”