Free Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell by Vickie McKeehan

to flip the catch on the sliding glass door.
    Frank shook his head, grinning. Some nights it wasn’t even a challenge. It didn’t appear Julie or Tracy had caught the evening news. Nor did either of the women seem overly concerned about Seattle’s latest serial killer.
    He had to wait another fifteen minutes before he saw the lights go out in Julie’s bedroom. She would be first, he decided. It took another ten minutes for Tracy’s bedroom to go dark.
    From that point, Frank inched open the unlocked patio door and walked into blackness. Since his eyes had already adjusted to the dark while in a holding pattern outside, he set his bag down on the floor, unzipped it. He removed the penlight dangling from his neck and stuffed it down inside the bag. He took off his running shoes and socks first. His shirt came off next, then his jeans. Once he’d stripped down to skin, he reached for his larger flashlight. Searching his bag, he gathered up the pre-cut nylon ropes he’d brought, pulled out his mask and grabbed the seven-inch knife.
    With the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson he’d stolen last winter, he had his hands full. But not for long. He slipped the fabric of the mask over his head, adjusted the eyeholes so he could see, and headed down the hall to the bedrooms.
    He reached Julie’s room first and turned the knob. Once he saw her begin to stir, he rushed over to the side of the bed to cover her mouth with his hand.
    “Hello, Julie. Shhh, now don’t worry,” he whispered in her ear. “I won’t hurt you as long as you do what I say, okay? Nod if you understand me.”
    Julie blinked at the brown eyes behind the mask. Realization dawned that he was naked and that meant he was here for only one thing.
    Julie nodded.
    He crawled on top of the bed so he could roll Julie over onto her stomach. He put the nine-mil down while he began to bind her hands and feet with the nylon rope. Once that was done, he went to the dresser, took a pair of her panties out, balled them up, and stuffed them into her mouth.
    “Stay right there, sweetheart. I’ll be back in a flash. Don’t you move now, hear?”
    He picked up the pistol from the bed and went next door to Tracy’s room knowing Julie would do exactly what he told her to do.
    When he stepped into Tracy’s personal space he found her snoring softly. As he tried to straddle her though to tie her hands, it proved to be more difficult. Tracy’s arm came up swinging. The punch she threw at him barely missed his nose. It pissed him off. He flipped her over on her stomach, jerked her hair and pulled backward. “Listen to me, bitch. You do that again and I’ll make you pay. Do you understand?” Frank yelled as he tugged harder on her hair, making her head bob up and down in response.
    “Get off me you stupid jerk!” Tracy screamed. With that, she came out of her daze doing her best to buck and fight back as best she could with her entire body.
    Fuck this, Frank decided. He turned her over onto her back—picked up the gun and used it to bash her in the face—hard. Blood sprayed his hands, which infuriated him. When Tracy fell back, he grappled with her hands, secured them as tightly as he could. When she kicked out with her legs, he whacked her across one knee, then the other, hard enough that he heard bone crack.
    He took another length of rope, wrapped it around her throat. With everything he had, he pulled tighter until she stopped struggling. He flipped her to her stomach. Unbridled rage had him entering her from the rear.
    He’d told the bitch she would pay.
    And Frank De Palo always kept his word.
     

     
    Vivid images came to Josh in sleep. Deep red for all the blood. The black and brown gore was almost too much to bear. He saw tissue and flesh separating from bone as the man kept up a brutal attack with precision blows to the face and skull.
    It didn’t matter because even in sleep, Josh knew the woman was already dead. She’d been strangled by a piece of white