So far, none of the skeletons showed trauma. No nicks on bones from knives nor broken hyoids from strangulation. No gunshots in the skulls. Overall, they were a clean group of women. Two skeletons had well-healed breaks and all were of a normal size, no evidence of malnutrition or disease.

These should have been women who’d gone on to raise families and live normal lives. Not end it on the forest floor.

“Let’s go check her out again.” Lacey straightened and looked to Victoria.

Victoria recognized the focus in her eyes and the tilt of the jaw. Lacey was a woman on a mission to find answers. Victoria suspected she often appeared the same way. It was the facial expression that made cops move out of her way and techs listen carefully to what she had to say. She followed Lacey to her lab.

The women didn’t talk as they strode down the halls. Lacey wasn’t prone to useless chatter, and Victoria liked that about her. The two focused on work when they were together, and had found they fostered a similar drive for finding answers. When she’d first met Lacey Campbell, she’d immediately misjudged the dentist to be a blonde bimbo. It’d been a reflexive action. The blonde hair and brown eyes had reminded her of Seth’s wife.

Lacey wasn’t like that. She was honest, direct, and sharp, with a high level of sensitivity and a bit too much fondness for cats. She didn’t seem as intimidated by Victoria as some of her coworkers. They’d discovered they shared an interest in Edwardian English history before it became a trend and a love of Greek food, and both owned television’s single season of Firefly and mourned its cancellation.

Lacey was the closest thing she had to a tight female friend. Didn’t most women have hordes of close friends and run in packs? Victoria had always been the type to have a few intimate friends, usually male. Right now that list included only her neighbor, Jeremy. He knew more about her than anyone.

Except for Seth. Even though they hadn’t been around each other in years, he looked at her as if he knew all her private thoughts. He’d always been that way. He’d always been able to read her perfectly. She thought she’d mastered a mask to hide the thoughts in her head, but it’d fallen away when Seth looked at her in the woods.

Her ex-husband, Rory, said she always wore a façade. He claimed he never knew how she was feeling or what she was thinking. She’d said she’d let him know if she was upset, but it wasn’t enough. To him, she never looked happy, and he took that as a failing on his part.

What a bunch of bull.

Her happiness didn’t rely on her husband’s actions. And just because she didn’t walk around being ecstatic, it didn’t mean she was unhappy. He didn’t seem to understand that a person can function in the space between happy and unhappy. That space offered a level of calm and balance. It held an evenness, a place of moderation that allowed her to do her job and go home to forget some of the horrors she’d experienced that day. Some people might drink to forget or seek relief; she preferred to simply exist and accept it.

Rory wanted to party. When they’d first met, he was a breath of fresh air. A stimulant to the life of books and studying and old bones. Rory was fun and outgoing and made her feel important. She fell under the popular college professor of English’s spell and married him ten months after they’d met.

Then reality struck. Their oil and water didn’t blend. She’d thought she could bring him down to earth, and he’d thought she would lighten up. Deep down, they’d both hoped for a bit of change in themselves and believed the other person could make it happen. Their five-year marriage ended two years ago.

She’d learned a lesson. An obvious facts-of-life lesson. You can’t change a person.

You can only change yourself.

“So, how’ve you been getting along with Seth?”

Victoria fought to not break her stride. “What?”

“Dr. Rutledge. How is it to be working in the same building with him after all these years?” Lacey tried to give an innocent making-conversation look but failed miserably.

“It’s fine.”

“Fine? That’s all you’re going to tell me? You haven’t seen him in eons, and all you can say is it’s fine?” Lacey shot her a sideways look. “Sparks blaze when you two are in the same room. It’s distracting when I’m trying to chart teeth.”

“Sparks?”

“Denying it?”

Victoria felt ambushed. Her mind went into protection mode, and she kept her mouth shut.

Sparks?

Lacey pushed open the door to the lab and headed straight to the shelf with number three’s remains. The first skeleton was laid out on a table. Lacey set box number three on a table and removed the lid. “I don’t know your history with Dr. Rutledge, but there are a lot of rumors circulating. Why don’t you talk about it so people will stop speculating?”

“It’s none of their business.”

“That’s true. Is it an ugly past?”

“It’s also none of your business,” Victoria said pertly.

Lacey grinned. “You need to talk to someone. Your eyes go all puppy-dog when he walks in the room. I swear you’re about to melt when you look at him.”

“They do not.” Victoria stared at her in shock. Puppy-dog? Her?

“How’d you meet?”

“We met in college.”

“And?”

“We dated in college. We broke up.”

Lacey had a disappointed look. “Why did you break up?”