And she laughed again, even though it hurt and even though these guys were completely ridiculous. Shane was hers now. She wasn’t giving him back.

Thank you for reading Cold Silence. I hope you enjoyed Shane and Yael’s story. For more of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team check out Cold Deceit today!

When forensic anthropologist Zoe Miller stumbles across a murder victim in the blisteringly hostile Sonoran Desert, she sets off a chain of events that puts her in the crosshairs of a ruthless killer. And it’s FBI HRT operator Seth Hopper’s job to keep her safe.

Zoe Miller crouched in the dirt under a hot Arizona sun, gently cradling a bleached human cranium. She wiped sweat off her forehead onto the sleeve of her shirt, grateful for her old floppy hat which protected her from the fiercest of the sun’s rays. At first glance, the skull looked like that of an adult male. The bone was heavier, thicker, the forehead sloping rather than rounded in the way of most females.

Zoe ran her gloved forefinger over the prominent supraorbital ridge that would have once shaped this person’s brow as she considered the empty orbital sockets. More square than rounded—again a male characteristic—but the edge of bone at the upper margin was sharper than she would have expected and more like that of a female. The lower mandible was missing but the mastoid process was large and distinct, again pointing to a male.

Few forensic anthropologists would make a definitive statement of sex based on the cranium alone. Unfortunately, the pelvis was absent from the scene. Perhaps this cranium belonged to the human remains her friends had found a little distance away, scattered by scavengers.

The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner would obtain DNA from the bones and compare it to family reference samples of known missing migrants taken by the Colibrí Center as part of the Missing Migrant Program. If they were lucky, they’d find a match.

Zoe carefully placed the cranium in a box beside the small number of other human bones she’d already collected at this site in the hopes there would be enough to build a meaningful biological profile. Estimates of stature, age, sex, population ancestry of this person would be made, which might lead to a positive ID.

All profiles had to be treated with a degree of caution though. Human populations didn’t have fixed morphological boundaries, instead they graded into one another. Even within a known population, morphometrics fell upon a spectrum at both population and individual levels. It meant forensic anthropologists had to be mindful of the limitations of the databases they referenced and their own personal experience.

Still, Zoe’s gut was telling her this was part of the skull of an adult male.