Prologue
564 Words
Prologue
JAVIER
“Tell me again, Mr. Mondello… Where were you when you found her body behind the tree?”
The branches beneath my foot snap. My patience is about to do the same. The March weather is frigid—icy even. The cold hard dirt beneath our feet only reminds us that even on the first day of spring, nothing has sprung, the forest floor barren from a long merciless winter.
I can feel the death in the air.
Nothing lives in these woods. Not even the roses. And the leaf-less trees hanging overhead show me that the winter’s reaper is only a breath away, its harsh wind a prickly whisper. I look into the eyes of the FBI agent, staring down their forest green depths, and notice how pretty the agent actually is, how delicate her face and how she has no idea who the f**k she’s talking to.
I smile. “Agent Lisa?”
“Leslie,” she corrects me. “Sarah Leslie.”
“Okay,” I inhale the cold air through my nose, blowing it out over my now dry lips. “Agent Sarah Leslie, I don’t mean to be a prick when I say this, but I, uh…I was actually, you know…behind the tree when I found the woman’s body…” I place my hands in my pockets. “You know, behind the tree.”
She glares at the dirt floor. “Oh…” she comments, a hint of blush hitting her cheeks. “Right. Sorry about that.”
The blush deepens, and I stare at her face. She isn’t stupid. Far from it, actually. The agent—albeit, beautiful, in front of me is simply a rookie, and, like all rookies, she’s wavering a bit in the face of the spotlight, the anticipation actually nothing compared to the bitter, hard reality that the field is much harder than “practice” ever could be.
The Academy hadn’t prepared her for this. For the shock of seeing her first dead body.
Most recruits aren’t prepared for this sort of morbid s**t, so when her hands tremble slightly, when the pen between her fingers flicks against the clipboard just a little too fast, I try not to judge her. In fact, I feel sorry for her. Truth is, you don’t have to be a dumb agent to wind up a dead one; I’d seen enough of those. Hell, I’d held a dying few in my own blood-covered hands.
Her fear was the least of her problems. Her biggest one right now?
Well, that was me.
She hadn’t asked me the right questions, hadn’t delved far enough. Like, “Had I seen this woman before? Did I visit these woods often? Did I have a record of violence?”
Maybe if she had asked the right way, she might have found the answer to all three…which was “yes.” Of course. You had to have spilled at least a gallon of blood in my line of what I liked to call “work” to get this far. Unscathed. And still breathing.
And yes, I had known this woman. I had met her before. I was actually the one who put her body there.
And in the midst of the woods, among the dying trees and silent animals, I shift on my feet, my head hung with the knowledge there’s an even bigger beast among the flora and fauna out there. And that beast is me.
My mentor once told me that an animal exists inside every man. And it comes out the day he holds another’s life in his hands.
For me, today is that day.
- Writer
