Jaime Hardee pelted through Beacon Hills Preserve, continually risking glances over his shoulder. In between ‘44 is too old for this’ and ‘I’m too young to die’, he tried to figure out if he was being chased for some personal reason or just because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was just starting down the list of people he might have offended, throwing another glance over his shoulder, when his time ran out.
~~~
Summer Rainault crouched by the side of the massive stump, sleeves shoved up her arms. The wind blew a strand of red hair into her face, and absently she stripped it back behind one ear. The body was laid across the wood in a way that was clearly deliberate, the wide-legged ‘Vitruvian Man’ pose, eerily reminiscent of crucifixion.
She swallowed hard, trying to breathe carefully. It wasn’t the scent — there was very little of that — so much as the lingering aura of absolute terror. She pulled the camera from its slung position behind her back and focused in on the slit wrists — cuts that were utterly clean of blood, yet ran nearly the length of the forearm. She had to steel herself for a long minute before she could snap any shots of the face.
The man’s face was seamed with wrinkles, the skin age-soft and hair nearly pure white. Every visible joint was knobby with arthritis. Except for the cuts, and the positioning of the body, he could easily have died of old age.
“I don’t think you did,” she muttered to the body. “Something killed you. What was it?” Standing back up, she slung the camera back again, and held a hand out over the body. His personal effects were already spread out to one side, where she’d been through them.
A flame flickered up from the fabric of the pants, under her fingers.