Free Skye Cree 03: The Bones Will Tell by Vickie McKeehan

commercial docks, past downtown in the distance, and the busy railroad yards.
    By the time they reached the turnoff for Lakewold Gardens with its Georgian-style mansion and stately Japanese maples, Skye began to feel ill.
    She suddenly felt a chill move down her spine. Looking to the left, she spotted the line of vehicles waiting to get into what was now, Joint Base Lewis-McChord. A sense of déjà vu hit her so strong it caused her breath to hitch, her pulse to race. Her heart seemed as if it stuttered in her chest.
    “ I know this area around Fort Lewis,” she blurted out.
    From the driver’s seat, Josh ’s instincts kicked in. He could hear her heartbeat quicken, picked up on the fear emanating from her body. “What’s the matter, Skye? You look pale. Are you okay?”
    “No. This is the same way I felt every time I’d come out here to look for Ronny Whitfield in Tacoma.” She flipped down the visor, studied her reflection in the mirror, felt her own forehead. Just look at me. My face is white as a sheet. All of a sudden I’m perspiring like I ran up four flights of stairs. My palms are even clammy.”
    “ Skye, there’s no reason to be alarmed, nothing to be afraid of. Ronny Whitfield’s dead. He can’t hurt you,” Josh reminded her.
    “ I know that. I’m not a child,” she snapped. “But she had to admit she was reacting like one—more specifically, a five-year-old scared of the dark. “There’s something here, Josh, something malevolent maybe. Don’t you feel it, too? It’s a feeling of old souls and they’re pissed off about—not being around anymore.”
    Josh frowned and shook his head. “ Most of this land used to belong to the Nisqually Indian tribe. Eminent domain confiscated more than three thousand acres in 1917 for the military installation, which turned into Fort Lewis. Over the years the place has seen a lot of soldiers come through its gates. It has a lot of history, which I’m sure includes violent deaths over the years. So yeah, I guess it could feel like old souls wanting a few answers.”
    She wasn’t sure the way she felt now could be attributed to anything that took place a hundred years in the past. “My father spent years working here as a civilian contractor. He had an apartment near here. I used to go there to visit him on weekends. Sometimes there was a woman with him. They might’ve been living together.”
    “You act as though you just thought of that, like a childhood memory or something.”
    “It’s so vivid. The picture of the apartment, the two of them like a couple. A childhood memory, huh? Yes, that’s exactly what it seems like. Strange.”
    “ How so?”
    “That I would feel this strongly about something so insignificant from that time of my life when I’d never thought of it before today. Why do I remember it in such detail?”
    “You want to talk about it?”
    “She was the woman my father spent time with after he and my mother separated, after he found out about her affair with Travis.”
    “Why would you remember that now, today?”
    “I have no idea. Now you tell me something. Why are we really out here driving around the military base? We didn’t drive all this way past Tacoma to look for the perfect home in the country.”
    “I keep getting pulled here , Skye. Since the day you received that box of bones I keep getting images from right here. Since this is the only base in the area, and since you’re getting weird vibes from the past, too, we might have a link to this place—you and I. Put it all together—I think there’s a chance you might have a connection to this guy. What exactly it is, I don’t know, could be nothing.”
    “Interesting. What kinds of images? What kind of connection?”
    “ Images of soldiers on maneuvers, typical training exercises that sort of thing. They may not mean much at all. As to the link, I’m picking up on ties through your father.”
    “ So the way I’m feeling right now might be an indication I