Stranded

and stood in front of them as if to make his case.
    “It’s not going do much good if all three of us get blown up. Seriously, I’m not questioning your authority or jurisdiction. I’m just saying I have a better idea of what to look for if the place is rigged.”
    Creed’s eyes went from Tully to Maggie, back to Tully. If he were being cocky this would be easier, but he was sincere. He made it sound like this was just another part of his job. But Maggiedidn’t like it. She was more comfortable taking a risk than letting someone else do it. Most of all, she hated that she and Tully hadn’t thought about this killer ambushing them. After all, he’d left them a map. They had gone by the premise that he simply wanted to show off his talent and his dumping ground. But they knew plenty of killers who enjoyed setting up his pursuers, of besting them just to make them squirm, or worse—to watch them die.
    She found herself looking around the property again, glancing back at the house, studying the windows and watching for movement. Beyond the grove of trees she couldn’t even see the deputies Sheriff Uniss had stationed. It would be easy for someone to hole up in one of the other buildings and keep an eye on them without ever being detected.
    “Maybe we should call in experts to check all the buildings,” she said to Tully.
    “That construction crew was ripping down and digging up stuff all last week,” Tully said, but now he was looking around, too. “Chances are pretty slim that he’d rig one structure and none of the others.”
    “It’s probably fine,” Creed said. “I’m always overly cautious. But I need to protect my dogs from as many unforeseen hazards as possible. Sometimes farmers put down rat traps. So let me just do a check.”
    Maggie could feel Tully’s eyes on her. She knew he’d made his decision to let Creed go ahead but he wouldn’t say so unless they were in agreement. Maggie was watching Creed, waiting for him to meet her eyes. When he did, he didn’t blink. There was an intensity, a maturity beyond his young age, but there was something else—a reckless disregard for his own safety. That realization jolted her. Usually in risky situations she was used to seeing the kick of adrenaline, sometimes a healthy dose of fear or passion.But in Ryder Creed’s eyes Maggie saw a hint of resolve, that if he happened to get blown up in the next few minutes, so be it.
    She hated that the two men had put her in this position. She wanted to believe that Tully was right. If the killer had wanted to blow them up he’d already had a half dozen chances. Then she thought about him planting the orange socks. He wanted his handiwork to be found, not destroyed, not blown up.
    Without taking her eyes away from him, she said to Creed, “If you see anything at all that doesn’t look right you back out immediately and we get the experts.”
    “Absolutely,” he agreed.
    He started to turn but stopped as if he’d forgotten something. He dug in his jeans pocket and handed his Jeep keys to Tully.
    “Just in case,” he said with that subtle smile that hitched up the corner of his mouth and painfully reminded Maggie how right she was about what she had seen in his eyes. And it also surprised her how much she didn’t want something bad to happen to this man.
    They watched him instruct a wiggling, excited Grace to sit outside the open doorway. Then he went inside holding the collapsible rod-turned-into-spear.
    “We’ve got nothing that says this killer would set up booby traps, do we?” Tully asked, still needing reassurance.
    “He strung up Zach Lester’s intestines in a tree. He left us a map.” Maggie was thinking her way through it. “But the orange socks,” she told him, “he put them on a victim who was already dead just for our benefit. If there’s another body inside, I’m hoping he wants us to find it and not join it.”
    She stared at the barn’s doorway and only then did she realize that she had unsnapped her holster and her right hand was now inside her jacket, gripping her revolver.

CHAPTER 31

    Noah’s mother had brought him a clean set of clothes. The detectives had confiscated his overnight bag with Ethan’s car and everything else that was inside. It had been towed in to their crime lab. He was told that they were going through it right now, examining every single thing for clues. Detective Lopez told Noah this in a tone that sounded like a threat. But Noah knew they