Chapter 95

INT. - DESERT'S EDGE MOTEL - NIGHT

Ray stood from testing the liver of the dead man, her thermometer reading higher than she expected. The depth of humidity in the room, the oppressive heat of the California night, was going to make assessing time of death more difficult this way.

Gerri's energy was so fiery she almost felt her friend coming, though it was the steady thud of cowboy boots on the worn linoleum floor that was the real precursor. Ray clenched against the redhead's temper and met stormy green eyes.

Eyes that glanced away from her with a guilty flash, settling on the body of someone who shouldn't have been lying across the desk in the back office of the abandoned motel, his body spread-eagled, wrists and ankles tied, nakedness all the more horrible for the lack of skin on any part of what remained.