Free Purebred by Patricia Rosemoor Page A

fuss.
    Now Cat looked concerned as she focused on a spot ahead and halfway down the ravine. “What are they doing, going way down there?” She gave them another sharp whistle but they didn’t stop. “Smokey! Topaz! Come back, now!”
    The dogs ignored her. They didn’t slow until they reached the bottom of the ravine. The barking took a more frantic tone.
    If he wasn’t mistaken, it sounded as if they were calling Cat, Aidan thought, concentrating and tuning out everything but their high-pitched voices. Though he mostly had experience communicating with horses, it wasn’t all that hard to read the dogs. They were telling her to come look at what they’d found, and it wasn’t anything good.
    “Probably a dead animal,” Cat said, then whistled for the dogs again.
    For a moment, Aidan thought they would come, but they stood their ground. Topaz started whining. Smokey started digging.
    “All right, I’m going have to go see what big discovery they made.” She groaned. “I’m sure it’ll be something disgusting.”
    Cat edged her mount off the path and zigzagged down the ravine. Feeling oddly tense, Aidan followed. Something about the tone of the dogs’ voices got to him deep in his core. Remembering the night’s dream that had kept him awake until dawn, he knew this wasn’t good.
    Both dogs were digging now, making whining noises that made it sound as if they were crying. This wasn’t a fun find for them. The dogs were freaked out and, his gut clenching, Aidan was certain he knew why.
    When they got to the bottom of the ravine, Aidan felt as if he was experiencing this for the second time.
    As if last night’s rain had bloated the creek to overflow its banks and wash away the earth to expose it, a man’s booted foot stuck out of the ground.
    Then Cat yelped and jumped off her horse and ran to the dogs, who were digging furiously. Aidan dismounted and joined her, put an arm around her back to support her as they got a better look at what Smokey and Topaz uncovered—a bloated face, skin tinged a green-blue and blistered, tongue protruding, fluid oozing from the mouth and nostrils, maggots eating their way through the side of the dead man’s head where it had been opened by some heavy object.
    Cat let out a horrific cry and clung to him. His instinct to protect her made Aidan hold her close as he said a silent prayer for the dead man at their feet.
    “I knew it,” she said, her tone ripe with horror. Her fingers dug into the flesh of his arms, as if she needed to anchor herself to him. “I knew something was wrong, but no one believed me.”
    “I don’t understand. You recognize the man?”
    “This is my missing barn manager.” She choked out the words. “George Odell.”

Chapter
Eight
    “He would have been in
a state of deterioration that would have made him unrecognizable if whoever
killed him hadn’t buried him,” Detective Wade Pierce said when they convened
in Cat’s kitchen two hours later. “Three weeks exposed to the air
and—”
    “Please. What we saw was
horrific enough,” Aidan said.
    Guilt crept up Cat’s spine. Not
the guilt of having sex with a man she hardly knew, but having it within a
hundred yards of a dead man she’d known all her life. She made fists in her
lap as she thought about what they’d been doing when the dogs had made the
initial discovery. Not exactly a way she would have chosen to honor George.
Her eyes stung with unshed tears. She couldn’t have known, of course, but
that didn’t make her feel any better.
    All these weeks…she should have
suspected her barn manager was dead…should have investigated herself…should
have found his remains before anything happened between her and Aidan.
Seeing him that way right after having exciting, heart-pounding
sex…
    Cat swallowed hard.
    She’d thought having sex with
another man would obliterate any memories of Jack from her mind. And now she
didn’t know if she could ever have sex again.
    “Who could have