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MORE PRAISE FOR A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

“Sinister and chilling. In Tempe Brennan’s riveting return to the investigative trail, she suddenly finds herself caught in a tangled web. Whom can she trust? Maybe not even herself. Bones is back and better than ever.”

—Lisa Gardner, author of Never Tell, Look for Me , and Right Behind You

“Tempe Brennan is back, dealing with health issues, career setbacks, and the nagging—and driving—fear of inadequacy that is the flipside of her talent. Reichs’s fast-paced, tightly constructed, and very contemporary story dives underground here, both literally and virtually, as she follows the thinnest of threads deeper and deeper into a shocking conspiracy. You will find it hard to put down.”

—Mark Bowden, author of The Last Stone and Black Hawk Down

“It’s a pleasure to see Temperance returning to what she does best, peeling back the layers and using her forensic brilliance to expose a shocking cover-up.… A Conspiracy of Bones offers page-turning proof that Kathy Reichs won’t be giving up her forensic-anthropologist-in-distress throne anytime soon.”

—David Morrell, author of Murder as a Fine Art

“Don’t miss this one! The corpse is ghastly. The investigation is intense. So many pulse-pounding twists and surprises—it kept me guessing till the end!”

—R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps and Fear Street series

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For Carolyn Reidy and Kevin Hanson

You never stopped believing in me

“It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”

—Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays

1

FRIDAY, JUNE 22

Reactions to pressure vary. Some people are ductile, able to stretch. Others are brittle, powerless to bend. Physicists talk of stress-strain curves. One thing is certain. If the burden is too great, or the loading too rapid, anyone can snap.

I know. I reached my breaking point the summer after my boss was murdered. Moi . The igneous rock of emotion. And I’m not talking about just the nightmares.

To be fair, Larabee’s death wasn’t the immediate or sole trigger. There was Andrew Ryan, my longtime lover and cop-partner in investigating homicides in Quebec. Succumbing to pressure, I’d agreed to cohabitate with Ryan on both the Montreal and Charlotte ends of our geographically complex relationship. There was Katy’s posting in Afghanistan. Mama’s cancer. Pete’s news about Boyd. My diagnosis, then surgery. The migraines. A world of stressors was chafing my personal curve.

Looking back, I admit I spun out of orbit. Perhaps going rogue was an attempt to steer unsteerable forces. A bird-flip to aging. To the renegade vessel threatening havoc in my brain. Perhaps it was a cry for Ryan’s attention. A subconscious effort to drive him away? Or maybe it was just the goddamn Carolina heat.

Who knows? I was holding my own until the faceless man sent me over the edge. His remains and the subsequent investigation punched a black hole in my smug little world.

My mother spotted the changes long before the enigmatic corpse turned up. The distractedness. The agitation. The short temper. She blamed it all on the aneurysm. From the moment of its discovery, Mama was convinced the little bubble would burst and my own blood would take me out. I scoffed at her critique of my behavior, knowing she was right. I was ignoring emails, the phone. Declining invitations in favor of solo bingeing on old Hollywood flicks. Hell, I’d watched my favorite, Annie Hall , four times.

I didn’t tell Mama about the nighttime visitations. Twisting montages filled with dark figures and vague dangers. Or frustrating tasks I couldn’t complete. Anxiety? Hormones? The headache meds I was forced to ingest? Irrelevant the root of my irritability. I was sleeping little, constantly restless, and exhausted.

It didn’t take Freud to recognize I was in a bad place.

So there I was, wide awake in the wee hours, talking myself down from a dream about a storm and snakes and Larabee sealed in a body bag. Ole Sigmund might have offered a comment on that.

I tried deep breathing. A relaxation exercise starting with my toes.

No sale.

Nerves on edge, I got up and crossed to the window. Two floors below, the grounds spread out around my townhouse, dark and still save for the lank twisting of a leaf in the occasional half-hearted breeze. I was turning away when my eyes caught a flicker of movement beside the pine on my neighbor’s front lawn.

Peering hard, I made out a silhouette. Bulky. Male?

On the grounds of Sharon Hall at midnight?

Heart pumping a bit faster, I blinked to refocus.

The silhouette had blended into the shadows.

Had someone actually been there?

Curious, I pulled on a pair of discarded shorts and my Nikes and went downstairs. I wasn’t planning to confront the guy, if there was a guy; I just wanted to determine his reason for being outside my home at that hour.

In the kitchen, I switched off the alarm and slipped out the back door onto my terrace. The weather was beyond Dixie summer-night warm, the air hot and muggy, the leaves as droopy and discouraged as they’d appeared from upstairs. Spotting no prowler, I circled the building. Still no one. I set off on one of the paths crisscrossing the estate.

It had rained as I’d eaten my microwave-pizza dinner at ten, and moisture still hung thick in the air. Puddles glistened black on the gravel, went yellow as my fuzzy shadow and I passed under quaint-as-hell carriage lights blurred by mist.

The tiny pond was a dark void, woolly where the water met the bank. Murky shapes glided its surface, silent, aware of their tenuous state. The homeowners’ association fights an endless, often creative battle. No matter the deterrent, the geese always return.

I was passing a black Lego form I knew to be a small gazebo when I sensed more than heard another presence. I stopped. Stared.

A man was standing in the smear of shadow within the gazebo. His face was down, his features obscured. Medium height and build. I could tell little else about him. Except two things.

First, I didn’t know him. He wasn’t a resident, and I’d never seen him visit.

Second, despite the stifling heat, the man was wearing a trench coat. When he raised an arm, perhaps to check a watch, the fabric flashed pale in the gloom enveloping him.

I glanced nervously over my shoulder.

Crap. Why hadn’t I brought my phone? Easy one there. Because the damn thing was dead. Again.

Fine. Why hadn’t I at least lit the porch light? Go home and call 311 to report a prowler? 911?

I turned back. The gazebo was empty. I checked in both directions along the path. To the right, the left. The man wasn’t on it.

The mist began to morph back into rain. Listless drops tested for foothold on my face and hair. Time to head in.

Suddenly, beyond the circle drive, I caught a wink of gray. There, then gone.

Shot of adrenaline. Was Trench Coat targeting me? Casing the layout of Sharon Hall? If not, what was he doing here in the rain in the middle of the night? And why so elusive?

Or was my wariness a product of paranoia, another gift from my overburdened stress-strain curve. Either way, I was glad I’d left pepper spray in my shorts pocket after my previous run.