Ghosts of July (Shamans of the Divide, Book 1)

Chapter Ten

I spent the entire night reading through the first book. It was a history of the Wyoming tribes and gave me a quick history of the Shoshone, the Bannock, and the Arapaho. Other tribes had existed closer to the state boundaries as they had drifted in from other areas, but the big three had reservations and centuries of history in Wyoming.

Concentrating on the Shoshone because of the conversation I'd had with Renn, I'd made it through most of the animal-related legends that first night before falling asleep in a pile of books. I didn't hear my e-mail alert pinging off and on mostly because I never pulled my laptop out of the backpack before tossing it into the empty laundry basket in the corner.

The shrill of the house phone woke me up the next morning and I fumbled with the handset Nana had left on my pillow before she left in the early hours.

"Hello?" My voice cracked with sleep.

"Hi Buttercup," it was Nana. "I know it's your day off, but Sherilee called in sick with the flu. Do you think you could work the afternoon shift for me? I'll give you Saturday off as a trade."

My eyes were heavy and I had a hard time keeping them open.

"Sure, Nana," I said. "What time?"

"Ten. See you then."

She hung up quickly and I glanced at the alarm clock near my dresser. It was nine. I heaved myself out of bed with a groan and stumbled to the bathroom to get myself ready. My hair had dried in a frizzy mess after last night's post-research shower so I shoved it in a French braid and smoothed it down with hair spray. I thought about putting one of the bright flower clips in my hair but went with the "why bother?" look. Seriously. Why bother?

My laptop stayed in the empty laundry basket as I got myself dressed. Partly because I was in a rush but mostly because I didn't want to hear from Renn about why he'd stood me up. Or worse, to realize he hadn't cared enough to try to offer some lame excuse. And Taylor? Well, I couldn't have cared less what Taylor had to say. He'd said enough on the phone to last me a good two or three years of radio silence from him.

Thirty minutes and a quick breakfast later, I was driving the five miles to work. It was a hot day already and the fact that I'd given up my day off and gotten dumped and stood up the day before made me pretty salty by the time I pulled into the parking lot. Normally I tried to park reasonably far from the front door of the diner to allow customers to park close, but today I really didn't care and had no intention of leaving my car near the dumpsters.

An hour into my shift, a new driver came in and sat down. Older, with wiry gray hair that desperately needed a good trim and wire-rimmed glasses, he didn't greet any of the other drivers and simply sat at the counter in my section.  He didn't have much to say and ordered himself a cup of coffee and an egg salad sandwich before setting himself to reading a Field & Stream magazine in silence. Normally, the regulars were a friendly bunch and would strike up a conversation with a newcomer. But not today. Earl was a former Marine who'd served in Vietnam (his hat told me so) and he'd hardly looked up to acknowledge the stranger. Ronnie was the chattiest man in the diner and he hadn't said more than three or four words to the men sitting on both sides of him. The atmosphere was off in here somehow.

I asked Nana about it after serving the new guy his sandwich and topping his coffee.

"Details are starting to come out about the bodies on the 80," she said. "None of them come from the town they've been found in."

It meant someone was driving them up and down the interstate and dumping them in dumpsters along the way.

"Do they think it's the same killer?"