Read Bad Bones for Free Online

blood, mesmerized by the fact that he was holding something he’d dreamed about. Something he’d seen kill a boy. He was kind of shocked by how it felt, holding it. Having this knife, owning it, made him … he couldn’t quite put into words how it made him feel. Strong, maybeeven untouchable. And he wanted to keep it. Forever. He finally made himself put the knife down and checked his cell. Time to get back to digging. That was what he was here for – he could sit and look at what he’d found back home.
    Some five minutes later, he finished teasing the dirt away from a nine- maybe ten-centimetre high crucifix. He carefully pulled it out, cleaned off the earth and turned it over. It was heavy, a solid chunk of precious metal, and it was different from everything else he’d found. The medallion, the rings and the bracelet were in pretty good condition, as was the knife, but the cross was twisted badly out of shape and the figure of Christ was all battered. And it looked warped, like it might have been in a fire.
    Gabe glanced at the rest of his haul and then back at the crucifix, wondering what this obviously Christian object was doing with a bunch of stuff that was so definitely
not
Christian. Especially the knife. The only word to describe the knife was pagan. Finding the two things together didn’t make sense
    The crucifix, like the knife, also had an almost visible power to it, making him feel as if it needed to be protected, kept safe. It wanted to be held.Gabe shivered. He needed time to take everything in, deal with the wildly conflicting reactions in his head and his gut. A cautious voice was telling him to put the stuff back, insisting that no good would come of having it. But a raw, more feral instinct reacted vehemently to the very idea of leaving the gold behind. And it was winning the argument.
    Gabe turned his attention back to the skeleton. This body, this person, had to have been buried out here in the middle of nowhere, who knew how long ago, for a good reason. And the only one he could think of was that the people who had done it hadn’t wanted him ever to be found. This was a person who was supposed to have disappeared. Gabe shivered again, noticing for the first time how the skeleton’s jaw was wide open, like the person was silently screaming as they drowned in the earth … as if they had been buried alive.
    Unbidden, his imagination began to put layers of flesh back on to the bones, building up an all-too-real picture of what this person might once have looked like. He pushed the image away, an irrational fear of unintended consequences gripping him. If he wasn’t careful, might these remains come back to life?
    Sometimes he hated his brain.
    “Who the hell were you, anyway?” he muttered, frowning as he stood up. “And what are you doing here?”
    They were both good questions, and he was surprised they hadn’t occurred to him before. If there were stories behind how all those things for sale in Cecil LeBarron’s place had ended up there, then there
had
to be a doozy of a one about how this particular body, and everything he’d so far found with it, had come to be here in the canyon. A place that was way off the beaten track now, so must’ve been even more remote back when the body was buried.
    This couldn’t be the grave of someone anybody had cared much for – it wasn’t six feet under in a cemetery and there was no sign of a coffin, for starters. And something was off about this whole thing; he couldn’t ignore the way he was feeling. He looked at the cross again and couldn’t shake the idea that the damage had been done on purpose. He wasn’t religious, but for some reason it made him feel kind of bad. What had happened to it?
    Gabe checked his phone again, surprised to seehow long he’d been so focused on the job; the time had run away and he’d forgotten where he was, forgotten to worry about being found. He should go.
    But there was more to do.
    It was late, though, and he