“Hey! Is anyone down there? Anyone hurt?”

Her voice echoed, but there was no answer.

She walked parallel to the tracks, hands free where she could grab her gun if needed.

Yeah, she was weird—she ran with a gun in a fanny pack. Better safe than dead was her motto. It was probably nothing, but something was down by the lake, and neon was a favorite color of bikers and hikers, especially in rural areas where you didn’t want to get mistaken for a deer during hunting season.

She hadn’t heard anything but nature’s sounds since she arrived at the lake for her run—no trucks or ATVs or snowmobiles, so these tracks were likely more than an hour old. But they were relatively fresh, the peaks of the melting snow still sharp. That told her the sun hadn’t hit the tracks, so they were made after sunset last night.

The tracks led almost directly to what Kara had thought was a neon vest. But as she got closer she realized it was much smaller—a bright pink stethoscope. A stethoscope that was wrapped around the neck of a dead woman dressed in green scrubs.

The woman lay faceup, eyes open and glassy, on the rocky ground near the water’s edge. Her stomach had been flayed, and blood soaked into the damp earth beneath her. Her face was so pale, so young, so lifeless, that Kara hesitated. A shiver ran through her body before she locked down her emotions and focused on the crime scene. She realized she’d drawn her gun. She hadn’t consciously remembered, but seeing a dead body did that to a cop—muscle memory took over. Murder victim equals murderer; he might still be around.

She stood silently and assessed the surroundings. Making sure the killer wasn’t somewhere, watching her. She heard nothing except birds happily chirping even as this woman lay dead. Everything else was still. Not even a breeze to rustle the leaves or stir the water. More blood was on the ground to her right, opposite the ATV tracks. How did she come to notice it? How had she picked up on its subtlety?

It’s your instinct. You’re a cop.

But she was more than a cop. She was also a con artist. And being a con artist meant you had to read every person, every situation, every landscape perfectly.

She looked back at the dead woman. From the visible injuries, blood, and lack of bruising around the neck, she was likely exsanguinated. A nurse, by the look of her clothing, as if the stethoscope wasn’t the giveaway. Probably too young to be a doctor.

Too young to be dead.

Kara walked back the way she’d come, retracing her footprints to avoid further contamination of the crime scene, until she reached a spot on the trail where she had a cell signal. She called 911.

“This is LAPD Detective Kara Quinn. I’m about a quarter mile past the four-mile marker on Liberty Lake Trail. I have a DB, adult white female. You’ll want to call in Spokane’s crime scene unit. She’s been murdered, and it ain’t pretty.”