Give It All by Cara McKenna

Author:Cara McKenna [McKenna, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Adult, Romance, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780349406183
Google: vPo2BAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00PW3EUME
Barnesnoble: B00PW3EUME
Publisher: Piatkus
Published: 2015-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

They reached the abandoned bikes without another word, and once Casey’s was secured in the bed of the truck, Duncan bade Vince and Miah good night. As soon as he recovered his rhythm with the BMW, his mind began wandering in earnest. He turned Casey’s spacey words over, feeling like a hound who’d caught some curious, unshakable scent on the wind.

You find that coyote yet? Utter nonsense, yet it nagged at him. He was seeking something as grisly as carrion, after all. He wished he possessed the primitive scavenger’s instincts necessary to catch the scent.

Off-road was tricky, to be sure, and Duncan tipped over a good half dozen times as he edged deeper into the badlands, too slow at dodging rocks, misjudging the softness of the earth. The dust was brutal at low speed, but he found that the closer he edged toward the creek, the harder the packed clay became under his tires, making for a more stable ride. The sun began its descent in earnest, the wind biting more sharply and the blue above him deepening to indigo in the east.

The scrub grass grew denser, and then stubby trees began to appear, announcing his arrival at Dead Creek. The stream was currently shirking its moniker, a thin but steady trickle snaking along the pebbled creek bed.

Everywhere Duncan looked, he saw bones. He imagined the hands capable of sifting through dirt and burying those charred remains. Or pulverizing them. Just touching those dry black sticks, maybe knowing what they’d looked like when they were still clad in flesh.

Duncan normally shied from morbid thoughts, from reminders of the frailty of the human condition—his own frailty—but they came to him unbidden now, notions and images like tugging hands. Like swarming, buzzing insects, impossible to disperse. He . . . felt them somehow. Nearly as if they were calling to him, the way a couple of stray notes taunt as you try to recall a forgotten song.

That was all insanity, of course. Duncan possessed no sixth sense—he operated on facts alone. And lust, it would seem, though that impulse was new. He’d followed his instincts with Raina, against his brain’s better judgment, and he couldn’t say he had any regrets. And it was in that spirit—or with that breed of surrender—that he let the landscape call to him, taking its direction, angling the bike without thought or expectation.

As the creek made a sharp curve, a pumpkin-colored box appeared beyond the scrubby trees—an ancient camper van. Duncan slowed.

The thing belonged in the dictionary beside the passage for sketchy. Straight out of the seventies, the vehicle promised to be housing a cook operation, or a load of illegal immigrants, or perhaps a pregnant runaway.

Still, if one was looking for evidence, one might be well advised to make the acquaintance of criminals. Duncan killed his engine and knocked down the kickstand. He’d hoped the motor would’ve made his arrival known, but the van showed no signs of life, despite the rear door hanging wide open.

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