The Sinner. Amanda Stevens

      Nonconformity aside, my heightened senses warned me that he was no ordinary “cop.”

      “You say you’ve been working here since the end of May.” His voice was deep and lilting with the barest hint of an accent that I couldn’t place. But the nagging familiarity of some of his inflections made me curious about his background. Where had he come from and what had brought him to this part of the world? And how had he ended up as a detective with the Ascension Police Department?

      “Miss Gray?”

      I started at the sound of my name, dragging my focus from the brand snaking up over his shirt collar to lock gazes with him. “I’m sorry. What was the question?”

      His gaze zeroed in on my cheek. “Are you all right?”

      “What? Oh, that. It’s just a scratch. A hazard of my profession, I’m afraid.”

      “I know all about those,” he murmured. “You should put something on it. You don’t want to risk infection.”

      I lifted my head in a small act of defiance. The detective’s caution had sounded strangely like a threat. Which was absurd, of course, and overly defensive. “I’ll take care of it later. Right now, I’d rather answer all your questions and be on my way.”

      He nodded, his gaze cool and assessing. “I understand you’ve been working in the cemetery since late May.”

      “Yes, that’s right.”

      “What time do you usually get to work in the morning?”

      “Just after sunrise.”

      “That early every day?”

      “I like to get the more strenuous tasks accomplished before the heat of the day sets in.”

      “That would put your arrival this morning around six-thirty, correct?” Another quirk of his eyebrow, another bold stare.

      I swallowed hard. “Thereabouts.”

      “You didn’t notice any suspicious activity? Dogs barking? Strange vehicles parked on the side of the road? Anybody going into or coming out of these woods?” He searched my face. “Anything at all unusual?”

      “No, nothing. There’s very little traffic on Cemetery Road, especially at that hour. If there had been anyone about, I’m certain I would have noticed. I haven’t seen anyone all day except for a group of kids with fishing poles and crab traps heading toward the marsh.”

      He paused as if carefully evaluating everything I’d told him. “So you worked in the cemetery until around three when you decided to take a walk. I’m surprised. That’s generally when the heat of the day sets in,” he said, throwing my own words back at me. “Why not rest in the shade?”

      “I’d been kneeling and bending for hours cleaning headstones. I needed to work out the kinks.” The half-truth slipped out easily because I’d spent a lifetime keeping secrets. Concealment and discretion had become second nature to me.

      “And the reason you came all the way back here? The trail from the cemetery is rugged and overgrown. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been this way in years.” His gaze slid to the cages. “Until recently, of course.”

      I gave another shrug. “No particular reason. I just like exploring new places.”

      “Well, I guess that was a lucky break for us. What can you tell me about these cages?”

      There was an odd note in his voice that set off another alarm. My guard came up instantly and now I did take a step back from him as I turned toward the circle. “They’re called mortsafes. As I explained to Officer Malloy, such devices are uncommon in this part of the world. In fact, I’ve only ever seen similar cages in Edinburgh, Scotland.”

      “And yet here they are, a dozen of them in Ascension, South Carolina.”

      “As I said, it’s an unusual find.”

      Our gazes collided once more before he glanced away. He knew something about the mortsafes, I thought. Maybe not the ones in the circle, but he’d seen something like them before, I was certain of it.

      I tried to empty my mind again, but before I could absorb any of the detective’s thoughts or emotions, he spun back to face me as if sensing my tentative probe. For a split second only, I heard the chanting in the woods. That same indistinguishable word repeated over and over. I cocked my head, trying to decipher the mantra, but the sound was either too far away or buried too deep in Kendrick’s memory.

      I resisted the urge to try and push past his defenses. For some reason, I felt it important that I not give that particular ability away to him.

      “This is a small town so word tends to travel fast,” he said. “You can expect a lot of gawkers over the next few days. Since the quickest and easiest way to get a look at those cages is through the cemetery, you’ll need to keep the gates locked.”

      “I will.”

      Shadows crisscrossed over us as more vultures circled. I didn’t glance skyward, but instead put a hand to my eyes as I scanned the treetops where the sun would soon start to slide.

      Kendrick handed me a card. “You think of anything else, here’s my number. Call any time, day or night. Whatever happened here...” His gaze lifted, tracking the buzzards. “I don’t like the feel of it.”

      “It’s disturbing,” I agreed. Beyond disturbing. It was the stuff of nightmares. Arms rising up out of a fresh grave. Hands clinging to the locked grid of a mortsafe that was designed to keep grave robbers out, not the dead in.

      “We’ll begin the excavation once we get the cage opened. It won’t be pleasant,” he warned as he nodded to the trail behind me. “You may want to head back up to the cemetery before we get started.”

      “Don’t worry about me. I used to work for the state archaeologist’s office in Columbia. We were sometimes called in to move whole cemeteries. If there are older remains beneath the victim, it’s very important to preserve the integrity of the original grave site.”

      “Are you offering your services?”

      “I wouldn’t be so presumptuous,” I said, once again startled by the intensity of his focus. I suddenly realized that I could no longer sense the presence in the woods and I had to wonder if Detective Kendrick had somehow scared away the watcher. The notion that he possessed that kind of power was hardly reassuring. “I recommend you call in the state archaeologist,” I rushed to add. “Her name is Temple Lee. If she doesn’t have time to come herself, she can suggest someone locally to assist you.”

      “I’ve heard the name,” Kendrick said. “She was on the news during those Charleston excavations sometime back. As I recall, a torture chamber was uncovered beneath a mausoleum in an old cemetery connected to Emerson University.”

      His expression never wavered but I knew that he was gauging my response. Either he’d recognized my name or he’d done his research on the way to the scene.

      “You’re referring to Oak Grove Cemetery,” I said easily. “I was involved with that case, as well. I’d just been commissioned to restore the cemetery when the first body was found.”

      His gaze moved over my features, searching my eyes, my pulse points, the corners of my mouth for a flicker or twitch or some other guilty tell. I didn’t so much as flinch. If I could hold myself steady in the presence of ghosts, I could surely keep my cool with Detective Kendrick.

      “Seems an odd coincidence. Another body found buried in an old grave near a cemetery you’ve been hired to restore.” His accent had vanished in the cool delivery of what I considered an accusation.

      “I can see how you’d think so, but it was pure chance that I decided to take a walk down here to stretch my cramped muscles. And if I’d never left the cemetery, the body and those cages may have remained undiscovered for decades.”

      “You