When he’d seen her picture in the lobby, he’d made a few inquiries about her in general. She enjoyed a solid standing as a forensic pathologist, had a curious mind, and had a reputation for being tenacious. He wasn’t sure why the likes of Jack Crow and Faith McIntyre were on the same list, but it wasn’t for him to question, only to execute orders.

He still didn’t know how much she did or didn’t know about the package, but that didn’t really matter. She was on the list, so he would make the time to have a chat with her.

His phone vibrated with an alert from the camera he’d posted at the country ranch. As he glanced at the screen, he wasn’t sure what he expected. A random coyote. A sagebrush’s prickly arms reaching up toward a moonlit sky.

He sure had not expected to see a woman walking toward the stones in the dark. She knelt, ran her hand over the rock, and then looked to the other two as if she’d recognized them for what they were.

He stared at her face for a long moment. Then did a double take in the direction of the car that had just carried Faith away. The woman at the ranch looked exactly like Faith. Jack had been so mutinously silent during their chat, and now he knew why. There’d not been one baby on that night in 1988, but two. Twins.

When the phone vibrated with a text, he cursed until he saw the number.

He perched a cigarette on his lips and flicked the flint wheel of a gold-plated lighter until a flame appeared. He inhaled deeply, savoring the burn as the smoke flowed out of his nose and mouth.

Are we on track with our project?

He stared at the glowing tip of his cigarette and then typed. All is going according to plan.

Have you found it?

He hesitated. Not yet. But I will.

Watching the woman walk back to the truck that he knew belonged to Jack Crow, he could feel the skin on the back of his neck prickle the way it did when there was a problem. Who the hell was she? And then it hit him. She was Jack’s kid. Macy Crow. She was the little kid in all the photos he’d smashed. When she had looked up at the camera, her gaze had been defiant and annoyed.

You need to wrap this up, his employer typed.

So you’ve told me. He was a professional and didn’t need coaching.

All this needs to go away quietly and quickly.

The tone of the text reminded him that no matter how far he’d climbed, there would always be someone adding their two cents. Very annoying, and he had his limits. I’m on it.

Macy had been to the ranch, no doubt tipped off by Crow. If she was curious enough to go to the ranch at night alone, she was tenacious like her old man. He admired her grit.

Where would he send Macy next, if he were Crow?

When the answer came, he almost laughed.

CHAPTER SIX

Monday, June 25, 11:50 p.m.

Macy checked into a local, nondescript hotel that looked exactly like every other in the chain. With a pizza and diet soda and her backpack on her shoulder, she quietly slipped into a room near the staircase. Since she’d become an agent, she’d gotten more careful about knowing her exits and always having a retreat strategy mapped out in her head.

She tossed the pizza box on the bureau and her backpack on the bed. She grabbed a slice of pizza and turned on the shower. As she pulled off her hair tie, she bit into the pizza and toed off her boots. The first bite reminded her she’d not eaten in almost a day, and she polished off the slice in seconds. She stripped off her jacket, weapon and holster, shirt, and jeans and kicked her dusty clothes to the side as the steam rose up in the bathroom.

She stepped under the steaming spray, letting the heat sink into her muscles, and thought about what needed to be done. It was a given she would have to contact local police and let them know about the house and suspected old graves.

It would be easy to stay in the shower and drain every last bit of hot water from the hotel boiler, but that wasn’t going to help Jack.

“Get it together, Macy.” She shut off the water, toweled dry, and wrapped her hair and body in new towels. She grabbed two more slices of pizza, sat on her bed, and opened her computer. She went directly to YouTube and searched “Faith McIntyre, Travis County.”

Several results appeared immediately. The top one was a news report from earlier in the summer titled SAN MARCOS’S BODY RANCH. She took another bite of pizza and clicked on the link.

The first camera shots were of a metal fence enclosing land covered by tall grass and grazing goats. A young reporter stood at the entrance by a crude gate and started spouting statistics about the Texas State University Forensic Anthropology Center in San Marcos. It was a research facility stocked with donated bodies, stripped of all their clothing and laid out on their backs so that scientists could study decomposition rates. The camera panned over several bodies protected by wire cages.

The reporter cut to a woman inspecting a sun-bleached skull as she began to speak in a husky voice tinged with a Texas accent. The voice Macy had heard on her voicemail.

The reporter introduced Dr. Faith McIntyre, and Macy leaned in and watched closely as the woman looked up toward the camera. Macy hit pause and stared at the face that could have been her own. Same blue eyes. Same cheekbones. Lips. Ears. Same everything.

She opened a new window and quickly searched social media sites, but found no trace of Faith. Like her, Faith had no presence. She did another search and found a reference to Faith, who had appeared in the paper yesterday promoting an upcoming fundraiser for a youth shelter.

If she wasn’t this woman’s identical twin, then she was related in some way. After all these years of not resembling anyone in her family, she’d found someone who looked exactly like her. That elicited a bone-deep satisfaction.

She brushed a tear from her eye—along with any temptation to call Faith right now. First, Jack.

Focusing, Macy searched the last address Jack had visited after he’d been to the ranch. The address matched a local bar in East Austin called Second Chances. On the bar’s website she learned the place had been owned for almost thirty years by a guy named Danny Garnet. Garnet didn’t look familiar to her, and she guessed his age to be a few years younger than Jack’s. One of the postings on Garnet’s social media page promoted a Memorial Day celebration at the bar where all veterans drank for free.

“Why did Jack visit you, Garnet?”

Maybe the two had served together back in the day. Maybe they were friends. There was only one way to find out.

She rose and redressed in a fresh pair of jeans and shirt she’d crammed in her backpack very early that morning, dried her hair, and reapplied some makeup. Staring at her reflection, she realized her hands were shaking slightly as she brushed on her mascara. She flexed her fingers, willing them to settle.

“Sure, the foundation of your life might have been shot to shit,” she said to her reflection. “But you will deal like you always do.”

What had Jack used to say to her? “Toughen up, buttercup.” The last time he’d told her that, she’d called him during her FBI training at Quantico. The O-course was kicking her ass, and she’d wanted Pop to lend a sympathetic ear. When he’d uttered the words, she’d told him to shut up. He’d laughed, and then she’d started laughing. The next day she had made it through under the six-minute deadline.

She snapped a picture of her driver’s license, as well as her FBI identification, and then for good measure a selfie. She sent all three to her computer. She opened an email, dragged in the pictures, and typed in Faith’s business email address.

My name is Macy Crow. I’m Jack Crow’s daughter. We’ve spoken only through voicemail, but we need to talk in person.

This might seem out of left field, but I believe we’re related. I’m adopted and have been searching for my biological roots for several years. My adoptive father, Jack Crow, passed away on Sunday, and ironically, you were the pathologist who took care of him.

I’ve attached two addresses that Jack left me on a prepaid phone I found at his trailer. I’ve been to the one in the country, and I’ve got a gut feeling something very wrong happened there.

Macy Crow

P.S. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ve enclosed a few of mine.

Instead of sending the email now, she scheduled it for five p.m. tomorrow. The delay gave her an out in case she got cold feet or had a chance to have this conversation with Faith in person. And given she just might have found three graves, she had to at least make contact with Faith in case it went sideways at Garnet’s.

She tugged her boots back on, but opted to leave her computer behind on her desk, along with Jack’s keys and the phone he’d left her. Again, if it all went bad at the bar or the email failed to send or whatever else could go wrong, because Murphy’s Law always bit hard, the cops would have the addresses.

Macy checked her service weapon before settling it back in its holster on her hip and pulling on her jacket. She checked her backpack for her wallet and ID as she always did and left the room. She placed the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob.

At one in the morning, she stood in the lobby and ordered a car, knowing the credit card purchase would create a digital trail that, God willing, any rookie cop could follow. The car arrived five minutes later, and she settled in the back seat, her backpack beside her. She watched the lights of the city race past as they drove east and toward the bar on Third Street.

When the driver pulled up, she found Second Chances to be fairly unimpressive from the outside. The windows were small, the front door solid, and a red neon OPEN sign flashed above the entrance.

Out of the car, she drew in a breath, crossed the street to the tavern’s entrance, and pulled open its heavy wooden door.

It was a classic Austin bar featuring a funky decor that included local art. The ceiling was painted a deep blue and covered in white clouds and stars. The round tables were painted different colors, and the chairs looked as if they had been sourced from multiple locations. Every stick of furniture in the bar looked as if it had been repurposed. What might have looked shabby in the daylight passed for charming at night.

A country western song rumbled from a jukebox as the heavy scents of cigarette smoke and whiskey mingled. Conversation buzzed as a flat-screen television broadcast a boxing match as she crossed to the bar made of white oak and covered in a thick laminate.