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liked it or not. Her vision was simply so much better than his that she had to go first. There. Something roughly human in size and shape lay on a limestone outcrop. She slowed abruptly and Gray slammed into her nearly knocking her off her feet.
    “Ooomph,” she grunted as his arms went around her to steady her. Oh, boy. He was as strong as she’d imagined.
    “Sorry,” he muttered in her ear.
    “About a hundred yards ahead,” she breathed.
    “What direction?”
    Usually, when she went out in the field, the men she was with had night-vision equipment. She’d forgotten he was as blind as a kitten out here. She stepped around behind him, turned his shoulders slightly to the left and gave him a little push.
    He walked forward cautiously, his arms out in front of him. He looked like a zombie, and an urge to laugh might have claimed her if she wasn’t scared to death of whatever was ahead.
    They walked for maybe a minute, and then Gray made a sound in his throat. “It’s a body. Looks like animals have been at it. You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.”
    But that was kind of the whole point of her being out here, wasn’t it? She took a deep breath and stepped out from behind him.

Chapter 3
    G ray stared in dismay at what had once been a human being but was now an eviscerated mess. Fido whined eagerly, obviously sensing a tasty snack. He tied the dog’s makeshift leash to a tree and approached the gory remains cautiously. The guy’s face was intact enough for him to murmur, “That’s Zimmer.”
    It could not be good for their investigation that Jeff’s undercover cult infiltrator was lying in pieces on the ground. What in the hell was going on around here? What had poor Luke stumbled into the middle of? What were he and Sam in the middle of?
    “Uhh, Gray,” Sammie Jo replied, “you might want to take a closer look at the body with a light. I’ll cover my eyes for a second.”
    Her tone of voice warned him that he wasn’t going to like what he saw. He flashed the light down at Luke’s head, which was just about the only intact part of him, and reeled back, shocked. The guy’s bloody mouth was frozen in a silent scream of terror and agony.
    “His wounds don’t look like the tearing a snacking predator might cause.” Sam swallowed thickly and continued, “The edges are clean. Smooth.”
    “Like a knife cut?” he asked, startled.
    “Exactly.”
    “I need to photograph this. If you need to move away while I use the camera flash, feel free.”
    She stumbled away in the dark while he got to work snapping pictures from every angle. His hands shook as he wielded the camera. This grisly scene was all too much like another one, years ago—
    Violently, he forced the memory from his mind. This was work. He’d seen plenty of blood and guts before. He could do this, dammit. Besides, how would he explain himself to Sammie Jo if he freaked out and ran screaming?
    Clenching his jaw with all his strength, he lifted a flap of skin to examine it. Sammie Jo was right. A blade—a sharp one—had made that cut. Luke had been sliced open from rib to rib and hip to hip, then the two horizontal cuts joined with a vertical slash. He’d been laid open like a book. A methodical killer, then. Possible torture. Not a fight or self-defense.
    It looked like a lot of the poor guy’s intestines and other organs were missing. Unless Fido or some other critter had eaten them, it would mean Zimmer had been gutted elsewhere. As Gray photographed the ground around the corpse, nowhere near enough blood was present to go along with the crime. Definitely killed elsewhere and dumped here.
    The violence of the murder staggered him. Who felt such rage toward Luke Zimmer? Or worse, who would send such a vicious message to others with this killing? Who could the target of such a message be? Zimmer’s boss, maybe? Gray’s alarm ratcheted up another notch. What in the hell had he and Sammie Jo walked into? Who was Proctor?
    He