Blood in the Ozarks

13. Jalen Clark

I found myself staring down at the same y-shaped crack as I'd mentally traced the night before. But the quiet chilled night was long gone and replaced with an all too bright sun. Emergency responders buzzed about like a colony of bees around their hive and not one of them had noticed me since I showed up.

Before I'd even shut my eyes after Cian's morning phone call, my phone started ringing again. Sheriff Dinah was on the other end in a panic. Something about a body in a parking lot and could I come take a look. Half asleep I wrote down the address on my hand and promised her I'd be there in the next hour.

And there I was an hour later standing in the same diner parking lot I'd left only a few hours earlier. A deputy greeted me and held up a strip of yellow tape for me to cross.

He gave a polite smile as I ducked under the barrier.

"Agent Ortega is already here, ma'am," he informed me, nodding toward the people gathered around the body.

Three giant yellow letters emblazoned on the broad back of a dark-haired man stuck out like a beacon among dull beige uniforms. After berating me for bringing up the past and pretending he'd never left, Tommy Ortega was standing in front of me in the same FBI jacket that matched my own. The same one he never wanted to wear from the moment the jacket was issued.

Amazing that the jacket wasn't turned in along with the badge. He burned a lot of bridges that day. And at the time I thought he'd never look back. Yet here he was ripping up old memories like deep-rooted weeds and asking me to drop my life for him. Again.

Was that what he was doing? Trying to remind me of his offer to run away together into the past? As much as I wanted that, to feel the same contentment and ease I did back then, everything had changed the day he threw down his badge and walked out. There was no going back. Only forward.

As I approached Ortega turned around. Seeing me, his expression transformed from professional stoic straight into amusement.

"Nice of you to join us, Agent Ross." The frost-laced bite from the night before was gone. He had always been quick to shove any whiff of emotion aside, but the jacket made me think twice about his care-free demeanor.

"Is this really necessary?" I pointed at the bold letters on the front continuing to glare at me with their bright yellow sheen.

He shrugged. "Probably not, but this was easier than explaining to each person why I'm here."

Staring up at him, I crossed my arms. "They know why you're here. I'm the one that told them you could be here."

"And you weren't around this morning. Ergo--" he flourished his arms to present the jacket.

A piece of me wondered if he'd decided to wear that damn jacket today in spite. Forcing me to face our conversation from the night before and challenging me to question why I'm not letting go.

Shaking my head, I drug my eyes away from the yellow siren and retrained them on his overconfident mug. "So who's the new body? One for us?"

In answer Ortega moved his large frame and I finally got a full view of the new victim.

A small gasp escaped my lips.

"Jalen Clark," Ortega said softly as we both stared. "19-years-old. College student."

All I could do was nod.

This time the victim was a young male. Not that it mattered because now his body was reduced to shreds of flesh and meat. Although there was minimal blood pooled around the gaping wound through his abdomen, shades of crimson dominated the scene.