Free The Lost Brother by Sarah Woodbury

closer he came to it.
    Gwen watched him go and then turned back to
her husband with a rueful smile. “He seems like a good man, a good
priest.”
    “I wish we had more like him.” Gareth held
up one of the woman’s hands. “Look at this.”
    Gwen peered closer. While the body had been
cleaned from head to foot, eliminating whatever dirt, blood, or
skin might have been left under the nails, the condition of the
nails themselves was permanent. And in this case, the nails on the
woman’s right hand were ragged and torn.
    “She marked her killer,” Gwen said.
    “She marked someone. We can’t say yet
whether or not he was her killer. The cut to her throat was clean
and very likely came from behind,” Gareth said. “I wouldn’t have
thought she’d have had the chance to hurt him.”
    “She could have fought him earlier,” Gwen
said. “He might have had to subdue her before he killed her. He
could have tied her to a chair, for example.”
    Gareth grimaced. “I’m torn, cariad. I
don’t want you to have these thoughts in your head, even as I need
you to think them. Worse, I keep seeing you in her. I don’t like
it—but I think you could be right. Her wrists are bruised as
well.”
    “So she was held or tied,” Gwen said.
    “Maybe both,” Gareth said. “Maybe she was
tied when she was brought to the woods and killed there, close to
the grave. We merely haven’t found the spot yet.”
    Gwen shivered. The sense of violence that
hovered above the body was palpable to her, like a miasma in the
air, mixing with the scent of death. When Gwen had first seen the
woman’s throat, she’d viewed this murder as somewhat
straightforward—or as straightforward as murder ever got. But
thinking about the woman struggling against her captors and
fighting for her life before she was murdered had Gwen’s stomach
churning.
    “Go get some air, Gwen,” Gareth said. “I’ll
finish up here.”
    “But—”
    Gareth canted his head towards the door.
“Go.”
    Gratefully, Gwen went. Gareth still had to
see what other damage the killer had done to the woman, even to the
point of undressing her completely. Gwen knew she should stay with
him, but she hurried away anyway, mimicking the quick steps Father
Alun had taken in his last rush to the door. Even so, she resolved
to remain outside only briefly before returning to help.
    Once she crossed the threshold of the
chapel, however, she found Father Alun sitting on a bench outside
the door. The air was even colder than before, and their breath
formed a fog in front of them. Gwen pulled her cloak close around
her body and approached the priest, her boots crunching on the
small stones that made up the pathway.
    “You’re done already?” Father Alun started
to rise to his feet.
    “No. No, we’re not.” Gwen put out a hand in
a request for him to stay seated. “I just needed some air.”
    “I can understand that.” Father Alun
subsided, shaking his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
    “Sometimes I don’t know how either.” Gwen
took in several heaving breaths, trying to expel the smell that
lingered in her nostrils. She knew from experience that it would
remain in her clothes until she scrubbed it out of them. She was
thankful she had a spare dress in her saddlebag. “But it has to be
done, and if not by me, then by whom? And who better?”
    “Some would say investigating murder is no
job for a woman,” Father Alun said.
    “Women deal in life and death every day,”
Gwen said. “Occasionally, the killer is even a woman. Again, who
better than me to discover her?”
    “That is a unique perspective and not one
I’d considered before,” Father Alun said. “Do you believe this to
be your calling?”
    “I could never compare what Gareth and I do
to what you do,” Gwen said, a little embarrassed now. Yet again,
she hadn’t meant to speak so freely.
    “But I could,” Father Alun said.
    There was that self-satisfied look again,
but this time it didn’t