On Spine of Death by Tamara Berry

Author:Tamara Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“I’ve decided where we should go on our hike.”

Instead of waylaying Jared at the bookstore, Tess skipped the middleman and went straight to his hotel room. Like so many of the other buildings—and people—in this town, the hotel was dressed up in full Western-themed decor. Pictures of horses bucking well-shaped cowboys, more animal horns than were seemly, and golden-hued wood paneling greeted Tess’s eye no matter which way she turned.

Jared himself was no exception. Although he was dressed casually in tight-fitting jeans and an even tighter-fitting T-shirt, the shirt boasted that he’d been a finalist in the 2017 Rodeo of Kings. It even had strategic holes and paint spatters that made it seem as though he’d worn it every day since.

Noticing her noticing it, he grinned and tugged ruefully at the sleeve. “It’s better if you don’t ask.”

As if she could help herself now. “Because you stole it from a rodeo cowboy who’s bent on vengeance, or because you were actually there?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets.” He held up his palms for her inspection. “Look. I also finally got some of those calluses you wanted. Real ones and everything.”

To be honest, they looked more like deeply painful and possibly infected blisters than anything else, but that wasn’t what Tess came here to talk about. She held up the map, now covered in a series of inky, blue blots that showcased every spot where a person had touched it. Since all five of them had handled it last night, there was no shortage of blots.

Even with their cross contamination, however, there was no mistaking where the map had been traced the most. A random spot in the wilderness, remarkable only for how unremarkable it looked, had been the focal point.

The whole process had been fascinating, and Tess was definitely going to have Detective Gonzales whip out a survival kit in the wilderness to make use of her newfound knowledge. She’d expected some kind of chemical extravagance, but all they’d done was pour a few iodine crystals out into the bottom of the Tupperware, unfold the map on top, seal the container tightly, and then apply gentle heat to the bottom. Within seconds, the blue fingerprints started to appear.

Tess would have been hard-pressed to say whether she or Gertrude had been more excited by the findings. Even Sylvia and Nicki had allowed themselves to be beguiled into enthusiasm.

Peter, however, had only looked knowingly on.

“You want to go here?” Jared asked as he took the map from her hands and studied it. He stabbed a finger at the blue smudge. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Tess admitted. Neither had anyone else last night, although conjectures had run wild. Since she’d refused to say where she got the map—or why she cared so much about where it led—those conjectures had run the gamut from murder-related destinations to a wild-goose chase that would only end up with someone being eaten by a bear. “With any luck, it’s where we’ll find the missing bones. Or the third body.

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