No Mercy

PROLOGUE

In the arid summer heat on prairie rangeland, a dead body doesn’t so much rot as it becomes petrified. The blazing sun and dry wind burn the most resilient flesh into dried meat.

What the sun hadn’t cooked the animals had feasted on. A sunken hollow where the stomach had been. Shriveled flaps of skin resembling jerky hung from the jaw and cheekbones. The eye sockets were empty holes. The final indignity? The crotch of the athletic shorts were ripped away to reach the soft meat of the sex organs.

Poor son of a bitch had been emasculated before he’d had a chance to become a man.

A hot breeze swirled chalky dust motes and scents of decay.

Black Air Jordan athletic shoes saved the boy’s toes the fate of his fingers: gnawed off clean down to the bone. Reddish-black hair floated loose around his skull, bits of leaves and insects trapped in the dulled strands. Without lips to hide behind, the crooked teeth stuck out like yellowed piano keys. The body hadn’t been exposed long enough to bleach the bones white, but it’d been out here long enough to disintegrate into just another forgotten animal carcass.

Dust to dust.

Pine-tree-dotted hills and valleys of grayish gumbo made up the barren landscape. Heat mirages shimmered in the distance-a cruel illusion. There’d been no standing water in these parts for years.

The spinal column listed to the left. Like the kid’s neck had been snapped.

Despite the sun beating down, a chill rippled through the air.

So how had Albert Yellow Boy ended up in the middle of nowhere? What were the odds a couple of busy ranch hands would stumble over his body in this remote section of fallow grazing land?

Slim.

Had that been the intention?

More voices buzzed like angry gnats. Whispering. Arguing. Accusing.

Eerily loud caws echoed from the canyon. Bickering ceased, returning focus to tending the rituals of the dead.