Page 5 of Protected By Duval
She put it in his hand and Duval didn’t have to look at it for long before he realized what he was looking at.
“Where is this?”
Katie hesitated, looking down so he couldn’t see her eyes.
“Katie?”
When she looked up at him, her jaw was hard set.
”Those rains that we’ve been having?” She didn’t wait for him to agree. “It wasn’t out some of the high roll of dirt behind the barn.”
He lifted an eyebrow at her words. “That hilly area where the horses won’t go?”
She nodded. “The horses, the chickens, hell, anything not human on the property stays away from that area.”
Duval sighed. “You didn’t call 911?”
Katie smiled at him, a nervous little grin. “It wasn’t an emergency?”
“Okay… okay.”
Duval wrapped an arm around his sister’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze and a peck of a kiss on the top of her head.
“Okay, Katie. Let’s head over to Mama’s and I’ll take a look at the site.”
Katie leaned into his embrace. “Thanks, McCrae.”
He sighed and started walking her to her car.
His long shift was just about to be a lot longer, even though he’d be off the clock.
* * *
NOELLE
It just the right place for Noelle Garcia to relax. The Dia De Los Muertos was like a playground for her brain. The fact that most of the skulls there weren’t even shaped anatomically was enough to turn off the parts of her brain that saw things differently than most, made it an ideal place to unwind.
There was a room that was lit in black lights that made everything look even more fanciful.
Standing there in the center of the room, she let the colors and the imagery wash over her and she smiled.
Her mother, Patricia, had pushed her out of the house and told her to relax.
So she’d gone where she always went at times like this, somewhere beautiful and filled with history.
Some may think she was crazy.
More believed it, but that had been the case since she was a little girl who seemed permanently stuck on Halloween.
At least that’s what her teachers thought.
Draw your family.
Skeletons.
Draw this historical figure.
Skeletons.
