~ Ace ~
Pulling in behind the van, Ace quickly realized they were in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but pristine wilderness, as far as the eye could see, in every direction. Being a guy who loved the outdoors, it was a nice reprieve from the hustle of his everyday life. Barbara’s dig was today, and Tiffany’s little get-together was next Saturday. Truth be told, this was as full as his social calendar had ever been.
“This is the GEO coordinate. He said we’d be able to see where the ground had been disturbed near the tractor, which we aren’t supposed to touch.”
Walking over to her, Ace commented dryly, “It looks expensive, so I’m not surprised.”
Hipster chick waved from about twenty yards away. “I found it. There’s something here all right.”
Opening the back of the van, she began handing out canvas rolls of what appeared to be tools. Ace walked over and grabbed some shovels. Sure enough, area had been dozed, revealing some partially crumbled indentations in the dry, sandy soil.
“We need to work around the perimeter of the site and make our way inward. Be careful where you step. Toss the shovels. This find is too fragile for anything but hand tools.”
Taking out a brush, Barbara kneeled down and began gently brushing the dirt away. Everyone crowded around to see what she was doing. Ace watched her carefully brush away the shale to reveal an indentation in the soft rock.
“This is called Pierre Shale and was deposited around seventy-five million years ago. This area was probably a shallow inlet linked to an inland sea that covered most of the Great Plains.”
Pausing to explain, she seemed so content. “Then sediment in the seawater formed a black sludge on the seafloor and eventually hardened into shale. I know it seems strange to see these little crustaceans in an area we don’t normally associate with the ocean, but that’s exactly how it happened.”
One of her students asked curiously, “How many fossils do you think we’ll find?”
She pursed her lips. “I’m uncertain of the number or the viability at this point.” Gesturing toward the hill in front of them, she stood. “I believe we will find most of the fossils concentrated in the shallow crescent around this side of the hill.”
Hipster chic responded excitedly, “This is way cooler than I thought it was going to be.”
“Archeology always is, and the late Cretaceous period is absolutely fascinating. Let’s begin by inspecting the area around the hill to be sure my theory about location is accurate.”
“This area is pretty dry.”
Glancing at the student who spoke, she nodded. “The limited vegetation actually works in our favor. There isn’t as much debris to remove.”
As they walked around to the other side of the hill, Ace’s Spidey senses started going off like crazy. It was something about the terrain. Stooping down, he noticed the ground seemed worn. Touching the arid soil, he saw tire tracks moving around the side of the hill. It was strange, since the farmer was clearly using his tractor and not a truck or jeep, by the look of the tracks.
Suddenly, Barbara was at his side. “Did you find a fossil?”
“Something’s not right. We should load up and get out of here.”
“What do you mean…”
Hipster chick shouted out ahead of them. “Holy shit, what is that awful smell!”
That was the moment Ace recognized the extremely faint scent in the air. “Stop. Don’t go any farther.”
The scent of death was something a person never forgot. Leaping to his feet, he ran in the direction of the young student. Barbara rushed after him, shooting the other three students a firm command.
“Stay right where you are, and don’t follow,” he instructed.
They found the girl standing at the entrance of a washed-out cave. The young blonde had apparently run right up to the entrance before freezing in horror. A partially decomposed body and a few other body parts had washed out of the entrance, and she was practically standing on some of it.
Ace had to hand it to the young lady. She was in the midst of a total freak-out, but she was keeping her lips zipped. Both of her hands were covering her mouth and nose. The professor’s hands flew to her face as well. Ace knew it was because of the stench.
Approaching the mouth of the cave, he suddenly remembered the girl’s name. “Jennifer, everything’s going to be okay. Take a step back. You don’t want to get any of that on your nice sneakers.”
She jerked slightly and slowly turned her head in his direction. Tears squeezed out of her eyes, and she gave a slight shake of her head. Fucking hell, she was close to checking out.
“I’m gonna reach out and pull you back out of there. Don’t freak out, okay?”
Her eyes were glazing over, and she looked like she was about to faint. Ace grabbed her and lifted her off the ground. Taking a couple of steps back, he sat her back down. Rather than running or fainting, she wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his shirt. Shooting Barbara a worried look, he found her shaking her head.
“I can’t believe someone got injured out here and nobody came to look…”
“That ain’t what’s going on here, angel. You’ve both wandered into my wheelhouse, and you need to listen up. That’s not a single person.”
Gesturing wildly at the corpse, Barbara insisted stubbornly, “It is.”
Ace’s chest ached to have to deliver the bad news. “There are more than two arms and legs. This is likely a dump site for either a serial killer or a gang of some sort.”
“Are you saying the farmer is a killer?”
“Hell no. If he was killing people and dumping bodies here, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to call you up and invite you out here, now would he?”
“I suppose not.”
“He probably was working on the other side of the hill before the last storm. I doubt he knows anything about this situation.”
“We should have left when you told us to.”
“Well we sure as hell can’t leave now. You gotta call this in.”
“I’ll call once I get home. I don’t want to be here anymore,” she insisted. The women in their group were being kind of girly about the whole thing. Then again, Ace supposed that they’d probably never seen anything like this in their entire lives.
“I might be able to tell by looking what’s going on here. It might be that I can recognize one of bodies or something,” he mused.
“Are you crazy? You can’t go in there,” Barbara protested.
“As of right now, you’re no longer in charge,” Ace told her firmly. “Take Jennifer and give me a minute.”
The young woman’s hands flew off him at the speed of light. She turned on her heel and took off running back around to the where the other students were waiting. Ace moved toward the entrance, carefully stepping around the mess that had washed out. Though the area was always pretty dry, every now and then, the sky opened up and dumped a tremendous amount of rain all at once. When that happened, sometimes gullies got washed out and things like this happened.
Taking a quick peek inside, a sick feeling began to churn in the pit of his stomach. There were three bodies with seven-six tattooed on their necks and one black man wearing colors from a club he didn’t recognize.
Ace quickly snapped some pictures with his cell phone, unsure if his flash would be strong enough to ensure any kind of decent picture quality. This was some seriously fucked-up shit.
Making his way out of the cave, he joined Barbara, who was waiting rather impatiently. It was irritating that the other three students had come to gawk, even though she’d asked them to stay away. He imagined their curiosity got the better of them when Jennifer told them what was going on.
“Dude, you’re totally fierce. I can’t believe you went in there.”
Ignoring the idle hero worship, Ace cut to the chase and broke it down for them. “We’re all in some pretty deep shit. From the little I could make out inside, this looks like a dump site for some Aryan gang.”
Barbara gasped. “You can’t know that.”
“Well there are three dead guys from the seven-six and a black gang banger. When I was in lockdown, the Aryan gangs used to stomp on a man’s back as a sign of disrespect. Word had it that on the outside, they would chalk the sole of their shoe first to leave a white imprint. It’s a calling card of sorts. The only body with his back showing had the imprint of a boot on his jacket.”
One of the students spoke up. “You were in the joint? That’s epic.”
Shooting him an annoyed look, Ace advised, “If you keep wasting your time getting distracted by stupid shit, you ain’t gonna last long in this world, kid.”
Another of the students spoke up. Ace recognized him as a nerd by the name of Dylan. “Forget about Jack and his fascination with morbid shit. What I want to know is why they’d leave a mark telling everyone who’s been dumping bodies here. That don’t hardly make no sense to me.”
“You have shitty grammar, kid. Also, stop expecting gang members to make sense. When dangerous people are drunk or high, they’re ten times more likely to get violent. When that happens, sometimes people get killed. They’re not thinking straight when they do shit like that.”
“This is way too crazy for me to get my head around.” The small kid who always hung back was acting true to form today as well. Ethan barely spoke at all, so for him to do so in this situation told Ace the kid was having a hard time coping.
Letting out a tired sigh, Ace tried to explain as quickly as possible. “There were at least a dozen bodies in there, and some were really old. They’ve probably been dumping here for ten or fifteen years, at least. I’m a hundred percent sure they never dreamed anyone would find this spot. This is in the middle of nowhere, even for South Dakota. Besides, they’d have to go through a lot of boots to match the killer up with that print.”
“Can’t you call it in?” Barbara asked.
“I could, but don’t you think the probability is pretty high that they’d try to pin this one on me? I’m the biker with a criminal record and a shitty attitude, remember?”
Pulling out her cell phone, she spoke sternly to her students. “You’ve all had your little look-see. Now let’s get back around the other side of the hill.”
Jack walked beside Ace. “You don’t seem quite as freaked out as the rest of us.”
“I’m a grown-up,” Ace said bluntly.
“Don’t get snarky with me, dude. I’m just trying to be polite.”
Looking down at the scrawny kid, Ace tried not to smile. “I can probably break you in two with one hand. You know that, right?”
The kid lifted his chin, all bravado. “I have a magenta belt in taekwondo. What do you think of that?”
“There’s no such thing as a magenta belt, that’s what I think of that.”
“You got me there,” he said with a light laugh. “I have a question.”
“Make it quick, kid.”
“If I was a cold-hearted killer and bunch of college kids accidentally discovered where I hid all my dead bodies, I’d be pretty pissed. Do you think they’ll retaliate against us for this?”
“They’ll probably try,” Ace said, knowing it wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear. “I’d lay low for a while, if I were you.”
“You are me, in this particular situation. If they don’t like being outed, they’ll be just as mad at you as they’ll be at the rest of us.”
“They’d have to be pretty brazen to roll up on me. My club would swarm them,” Ace said confidently. That’s what brothers were for—having each other’s backs.
“Would you adopt me temporarily?” the kid said with a nervous laugh.
Rubbing his temple, Ace nodded. “I can probably talk the brothers into letting you sleep in our garage or something. We’re running out of rooms in the clubhouse. Explain that to the others. I gotta call my club president and alert him to round up our legal counsel.”
“Roger that,” he said with a two-finger salute.
Ace got off the phone about the same time as Barbara. Closing the distance between them, she spoke. “This turned out to be a total cluster muck.”
Feeling the corners of his mouth tilt up, Ace circled one arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “You sure do go the extra mile to keep from say the word fuck.”
Glancing nervously at her students who were all huddled around Jack, she whispered, “I just can’t believe this is happening to us. Accidentally finding a killer’s dump site is the kind of out-in-left-field crap that only happens in the movies. What are the chances that we’d stumble on something like this while digging for fossils?”
“You mean trying to dig for fossils.”
“I suppose that is what I mean,” she agreed. “Our little field trip turned bad before we pulled the first one out of the ground.”
“No matter what the cops say when they get here, you’re coming home with me.”
“It had occurred to me to think whoever did this might be looking to get rid of witnesses,” she said, worrying her teeth across her bottom lip. A lip he wanted to bite and suck on.
“That ain’t it. You didn’t witness anything except a bunch of dead bodies. Soon the cops will be here, along with the county coroner, and there’ll be eyes on you with this whole stinking mess. If whoever did this comes looking for any of you, it will be to send a message about squealing to the cops. But then again, if you didn’t call the cops, they’d ice you for sure to keep their dump site secret.”
“You had me to call because notifying law enforcement is the less dangerous of the two options?”
“Yeah, but reporting it isn’t safer by much.”
Chewing her bottom lip anxiously, she asked timidly, “Does your club have places like this?”
“Hell the fuck no, we do not,” he said fiercely. “This shit feels like stumbling into amateur hour for me.” When she didn’t reply, he reluctantly whispered, “Every now and then, when things turn bad, we either have the person cremated or buried in an actual cemetery. We ain’t barbarians, you know.”
“I didn’t mean to insinuate you were.”
Tilting her head up to look into her eyes, Ace searched Barbara’s face for some indication that she didn’t think he was an out-of-control killer. “We never kill anyone if we can get out of it.”
“You sure about that?”
Shrugging, he replied, “I’ll kill a man if he tries to kill me first, or if he looks like he might… If he bothers me, or if he’s harassing a woman… Or if I’m getting paid. Mostly if I’m getting paid.”
She finally smiled at him, and it hit him square in the chest.
A shocked female voice said, “Jesus, you really kill people for money?”
Jennifer had recovered from her shocking ordeal and answered before Ace could get the words out. “Don’t be a dipshit, Jack. He’s quoting a famous movie. It was a joke to lighten the mood.”
Jack looked sheepishly down at his shoes. “I knew that.”
Within a surprisingly brief period of time, they heard sirens. Ace guessed that Barbra’s report of multiple dead bodies drew them to the sight in record time. She must have done a good job of communicating that this was not a current crisis because the officers approached with their guns holstered, but that didn’t keep them from immediately separating everyone and taking their statements.
Ace told them exactly what happened, just the way it happened. He had nothing to gain in this particular situation by not fully cooperating, especially since his footprints were tracked all through what they would consider their crime scene.
By the time law enforcement loaded them to take them back to the precinct for yet more questioning, their crime lab was just pulling in with even more officers, along with the property owner.
Ace stuck close to the woman he was growing more attached to by the moment. He was protective by nature, but now that she’d drawn the notice of dangerous men, his protective instincts had multiplied exponentially.
Come hell or high water, he was going to ensure that not a single strand of hair on her pretty head was harmed.