It was one of two privately owned properties Eve trained her dogs at. Pete Oswald owned the other property. He had forty acres with an abandoned auto shop, and Eve went there whenever she felt like having some quiet time to herself to work the dogs without worrying about bothering anyone else. Sophia’s ranch was nice because it was right next door to her friend Alice’s house, and the other woman often came over to help with chores. All three of them had become close over the months, and some of Eve’s favorite evenings were the ones spent helping Sophia and Alice clean out stalls or repair fences. Sophia’s husband was in prison, which meant the bulk of the work to keep up with the property and the animals fell on her.

  As Eve pulled up the driveway, she spotted Sophia in the outdoor arena, giving a riding lesson. She waved as she drove by, then continued down the driveway to park near the house. Lucas’s car was already there, but he wasn’t in it. Eve would have been surprised if he was—his job was to hide.

  Today, Willow, her nine and a half-year-old stable German Shepherd, was going to practice her live finds. She was getting close to retiring, but that time hadn’t come yet, and she still needed to keep up with her training.

  Besides, she absolutely loved it. Though she was normally more reserved than Atlas, who was young and enthusiastic about everything, as soon as she realized where they were, her tail started smacking into the side of the car and she shoved her cold nose into Eve’s neck.

  “I know, I know,” Eve said. “This is the best day ever, isn’t it? I came home early from work, and now we’re going to go find Lucas.”

  While she felt bad for her bosses, Willow had no idea that anything was wrong—she was just thrilled to be doing something with Eve. Like most dogs, she loved having a job to do, and wanted nothing more than to spend her time doing it. She took her duty seriously, but at the same time, she was spared the anxiety and worry Eve often felt on searches since she couldn’t fully comprehend the reasons behind what they did. To her, being a search and rescue dog was nothing but a whole lot of fun.

  Eve had a lot of reasons for volunteering with Michigan Mutts Search and Aid. She felt a debt to the organization as a whole for finding her when she was scared and lost, and she enjoyed socializing with the team and giving her dogs something meaningful to do. She liked the exercise she got from all of the training, and of course it was a fun hobby to talk about when she was with her friends.

  But more than anything, she liked knowing she was doing something good. That was what got her out of bed to train even in bad weather, and that was what kept her going to the meetings even on summer weekends when Tiana and Levi wanted her to go to the beach with them instead. She wanted to help people, and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to be a firefighter or smart and dedicated enough to be a doctor. But this? This was something she could do, and it mattered.

  She and Willow looked for Lucas twice. The first time, they found him hidden in the loft of the old barn and the second time, he hid in a valley between two low hills in the woods, and it was only through sheer luck that the wind turned at the right moment for Willow to get his sent.

  Eve hated training in this sort of weather because the wind messed with Willow’s perception of scent. It would be wonderful if people only got lost in perfect weather, but of course, that didn’t happen. Rain or snow, day or night, she and her dogs had to be ready to answer a call if someone needed them.

  All in all, it was a satisfying day, and she was glad she had taken the opportunity to train instead of going back home to watch TV. As she walked back to the car with Lucas after finding him for the second time, she caught him up on what had happened that morning.

  “There’s someone out there stealing teeth?” he said, squinting at her. “I don’t get it. Why would they break into the dental clinic for that?”

  “I have no idea,” Eve said, shaking her head with a guilty laugh. The broken door and the theft weren’t funny, exactly, but it was so absurd it was hard not to find humor in it. The missing teeth were weird, but she couldn’t think of anything malicious that could be done with them.

  “You’ve got the weirdest life,” Lucas said. “Well, whatever. At least you get the day off. Willow did pretty well today, didn’t she?”

  Before she could answer him, someone called her name, and she turned to see Sophia and Alice approaching from the stable. The people who had been here for the riding lesson had left at some point in the past couple of hours.

  “Hey, there,” Sophia said. “I’m glad I caught you. Are you two done for the day?”

  “Yeah, it’s miserable in the wind, and Willow’s already found him twice, so we’re calling it quits.”

  “Do you want to go riding with us?” Sophia asked. “I canceled the rest of the lessons for the day due to the weather—a few of the horses got spooked from things blowing around, and I don’t want someone to get hurt if it happens again. There’s a couple horses that need the exercise, though. Alice said she’d help me, and I think you mentioned you used to take lessons, so if you’re up for it, you’re welcome to join us.”

  Eve hesitated. It had been ages since she’d ridden a horse, and going riding with Alice and Sophia sounded like a lot of fun. But she had Willow with her, and she didn’t want to leave her dog in the car for that long. Plus, she didn’t want Lucas to feel left out.

  Lucas made the choice easy when he said, “If you want, I can take Willow on a walk while you ride.”

  It only took a second for her to think over his offer. Lucas had been helping her with the dogs for a while now. She trusted him with them, and in fact had been thinking about asking him if he could watch them while she went out of town over the holidays in a few months. Willow knew him and liked him well enough to listen to him, and he already knew the property and all the places the dogs were and weren’t allowed to go.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t know how long it will take.”

  “I spent all morning playing video games, so getting some exercise won’t hurt,” he said. “I’ve got the day off, so I might as well spend it out here instead of cooped up in my apartment.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said handing over Willow’s leash. She stroked Willow’s forehead and told her to be good for Lucas, then turned to Sophia. “Well, it looks like I’m all yours.”

  Twenty minutes later, Eve eyed the bay mare Sophia had selected for her to ride. Her name was Cherry Strudel, Strudel for short, and far from being spooked by the wind, it seemed to be giving her extra energy. She kept tossing her head and snorting, but her ears were up and her brown eyes were soft.

  Eve was a little rusty but had groomed her and tacked her up mostly by herself. Once Sophia had given the bridle and saddle a once over to make sure they were on right, she gave Eve the all clear to lead the mare to the outdoor arena. Alice followed her with the paint horse she was going to ride, and Sophia took up the rear with her horse.

  Sophia gestured for her to mount up first, and after one false start in which Strudel sidled away from the mounting block before she could get on, she made it into the saddle and felt a surge of happiness as she adjusted to being on horseback again. She shifted her weight, and Strudel started walking. She spent some time getting to know the mare as they walked around the arena while the others mounted their own horses.

  Before long, Sophia started putting them through their paces, occasionally stopping to ride alongside Eve and give her pointers. Eve was embarrassed at just how rusty she was, but Sophia seemed to pick up on it because after the fifth time, she slowed to talk to Eve, she said, “Don’t worry, you’re doing well. You’ll get back into form in no time.”

  She hoped that meant Sophia would invite her to ride horses with her more often, because this was a lot of fun.

  About fifteen minutes into the ride, she heard a car door slam and turned to see that Lucas had put Willow back in her station wagon. She felt a surge of disappointment. Did that mean he needed to go? Of course, he had already done her a huge favor by helping as much as he had, but she was having fun.

  He made a beeline for the arena, and she slowed Strudel down so she could speak to him over the fence. As she got closer, she saw a worried expression on his face that made her stomach twist.

  “Is everything all right?” she called out as he drew nearer.

  “Your friend Tiana called me,” he said. “I don’t know how she got my number, but she’s looking for you.”

  “What happened?”

  “She says someone named Jan has been trying to get in touch with you and called her when she couldn’t reach you. Then Tiana called me because she knew we were training the dogs. I don’t know what she needs, but it sounds important.”

  Eve’s eyes widened. Jan was the vice president of Michigan Mutts. If Jan needed to contact her urgently enough that she had reached out to Tiana when she couldn’t reach Eve, then it had to be something urgent.

  Sophia came over to hold Strudel’s reins for her while she dismounted and hopped the fence to hurry to her car, where she had left her phone. Sure enough, there were multiple missed calls from both Jan and Tiana. She quickly dialed her mentor’s number, and Jan picked up before the call rang twice.

  “Eve, thank goodness. You really need to keep your phone on you. I hope you’re not busy today, because we just got a call in from the sheriff’s department. They need a team just outside of Granite.”

  “I’m already out with Willow, and I’ve got my stuff in the car. Just tell me where to go.”

  “No, not Willow,” Jan said. “We need you and Atlas. We’re looking for a body. This is going to be his first official search as a cadaver dog.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Eve’s heart was in her throat as she pulled into the access drive for the field she was supposed to meet Jan at. It had taken her nearly an hour from receiving the call to get here because she had to stop at home to switch dogs. At least she knew there wasn’t a lost person desperately waiting for her help, but the knowledge that she was out here to find a body wasn’t much better.

  This wouldn’t be the first body Atlas found, but it would be the first time she was expecting it, and she felt a sort of dread in the pit of her stomach that she never felt during the live finds she had taken part in with Willow.

  Atlas must have picked up on it because he whined uncertainly as she stopped her car next to Jan’s SUV. The sheriff’s patrol vehicle was parked on the other side of it.

  She took a moment to just breathe and tried to find some deeply buried source of inner peace to cling to. While she sat there, she examined the field. It looked like it used to be used for crops but had been left fallow for a couple of years and had turned into scrubland. It was bordered by the road on one side, and by recently harvested fields on two sides. The fourth side bordered a forest. She wasn’t sure if it was state land or private property but was sure she would find out soon enough.

  As she got out of the car, an acrid scent of smoke assaulted her senses. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from because the wind had picked up. It seemed to switch directions every few seconds, and she knew it was going to make Atlas’s first search an especially difficult one.

  “All right, buddy,” she said, trying to be calm for his sake. “This is it, are you ready?”

  As she strapped his harness on and gave him a pep talk, he relaxed into his usual, exuberant self. She clipped his leather leash onto his matching collar, strapped her backpack on, then jogged the short distance to join Jan, who had a map of the area on the hood of her SUV, pinned down in each corner with magnets.

  “Good, you made it,” Jan said, glancing at her. “Mary and I have been searching on foot, but you know as well as I do how easy it can be to miss a body, especially in terrain like this. We already got permission from the landowner to go into the forest if we need to. He leases it out to a few hunters, but he already called to make sure no one’s hunting in there today, so you should be safe.”

  “Who are we looking for?” Eve asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Jan said.

  She gave her mentor a puzzled look. “Did someone find remains from a John Doe?” If she was only looking for part of a body, that might be easier. At least she would have more of an idea where to start.

  “No,” Sheriff Mary Larson said as she joined them. “We got a call from someone who said he saw a man burning a body in this field. He’s got a hunting blind in those trees, and he was heading out to it early this morning when he saw smoke and a fire. He got close enough to see what was going on, then hightailed it out of here.”

  Eve winced. She was looking for a burned body? That was a lot more gruesome than she had expected for her first cadaver search. It was also unusual enough that she wasn’t sure what Atlas would do. They’d done a tiny bit of training with burned remains thanks to a friend of Jan’s who worked at a teaching hospital, but that had been months ago. That, combined with the wind, was beginning to make her wonder if he would be able to find anything at all.

  “Was the body not where he said he saw it?”

  “He didn’t give us an exact location,” the sheriff said. “He was shaken, as you can imagine, and it was still dark out. He just said it was somewhere before the tree line. The field’s a hundred twenty acres and we’ve got rain coming in about an hour. If there’s something out here, I want it found before the rain hits. Can you do it?”

  “I can try,” Eve said, trying to muster up the dregs of her confidence. The sheriff nodded and clapped her on the shoulder before walking away to mutter something into her radio. Eve knew and liked Sheriff Larson, and she really hoped she and Atlas were able to do what was required of them today. Not only did she want his first search to go well, but she wanted to make a good impression on both Jan and Sheriff Larson. If he couldn’t find the body, that would reflect on her skills as his handler.

  She perused the map, noted the sheriff’s markings about where they had already looked, then found the downwind side of the field. Of course, with how often the wind was changing directions, “downwind” was more of a suggestion than a fact, but it gave her an idea of where to begin.

  Finally, she clipped Atlas’s leash to his bright orange harness and looked down at him. This was going to be hard, but she had to have faith in him. She touched the soft black fur on his head.

  “All right, buddy. Search.”

  At first, Atlas wandered seemingly at random as he tried to catch a scent. She directed him to move in a rough grid pattern and tried to focus only on the mechanics of the search, not on what they were going to find—if they found anything at all.

  Nearly forty minutes in, his body language changed, and he started pulling hard at the leash. She jogged behind him until he stopped and sat suddenly, letting out a single bark. He had little burrs all over his fur from the dry plants and bushes in the field, but none of that bothered him. He looked proud of himself.

  Eve looked around. They were standing in a patch of tall, dry grass without a body in sight. Still, he was alerting on something.

  After pulling on a pair of latex gloves, she knelt and carefully searched the ground. She was close to giving up when she saw it.

  A tooth.

  A human tooth. Both her work as a dental assistant and her training in search and rescue told her what it was beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was a molar. As she picked it up and examined it, she even spotted a cavity in it.

  Carefully, she slipped the molar into a plastic bag and took out a little orange flag to mark the spot where she had found it. Then, she used her radio to report the find to Jan and played a very brief game of tug with Atlas before telling him to search again. She had no idea if the tooth was related to the body they were supposed to be finding, but having found something made her feel a little better.

  She was surprised when Atlas only made it another few steps before he alerted again. This time, she spotted something right away – a boot print in a bare patch of soil. As she knelt by it, she spotted another tooth, this one half-buried in the boot print, as if it had been stepped on. She marked the spot with another flag but didn’t extract the tooth from the ground so as not to disturb the print in case it was evidence.

  Not sure what to think, she rose to her feet and reported the find to Jan through her radio.

  “Okay, Atlas. Let’s keep going. Search.”

  He set off again, passing by a cluster of evergreen bushes before suddenly swinging around and heading directly toward them. He pushed through the bushes and Eve had to fight back branches to follow him. On the other side, he sat and barked for a third time, but this time, Eve didn’t need to kneel down and squint at the ground to spot what he had found.

  They had come out into a blackened patch of tall grass. In the center of the patch of blackened grass was a body, as burnt and blackened as the plants that surrounded it. Horrified, she took a step closer to it and felt something roll under her foot. She looked down.

  Another molar. Looking up, she spotted more teeth on the body and scattered through the ashes around it, as if someone had thrown a handful of human teeth at it after the fire had gone out.

  The charred corpse’s skeletal grin told her that whoever this victim was, his own teeth were all still intact.

  Swallowing against a wave of nausea, she reached for her handheld radio to report the find … and to tell Jan and the sheriff about what else she had found.

  There was no doubt about it anymore. These teeth had come from somewhere, and after the break-in at the dental clinic this morning, she was pretty sure she knew where. Was the victim their thief, or had the killer planted the teeth around the body on purpose?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “How are you feeling, Eve?”

  Sheriff Mary Larson paused on her way past Eve’s station wagon. Eve was sitting on the hood, her head between her knees as her mind whirled. She couldn’t get the gruesome image of the body out of her head.