The smell made her stomach churn.

Diana said, “That was some hunch you had. To leave the trail and head in this direction. To come this far. Because otherwise…”

“Otherwise,” Hollis finished, “I doubt anybody would have stumbled onto this body. Recognize the vines?”

“Kudzu. This patch starts farther down the slope. The stuff covers and smothers everything in its path.”

Hollis nodded. “It dries up in winter but comes back stronger than ever in spring and summer. The vines can grow several feet in a single day.” She paused, forcing herself to look down at what was left of, she believed, a woman’s body. “It sure as hell would have hidden her from everything except some predators and small animals.”

“Which raises the question: Is she here by accident or design?”

“Yeah. If she wound up here accidentally, it probably won’t tell us much. But if she was left here deliberately…”

“Then this body, unlike the one by that popular hiking trail, was never meant to be found.”

“That would be my guess. Whether the same killer is responsible is another question entirely.”

Brows raised, Diana said, “I know I’m still pretty new to all this investigative stuff, but isn’t it stretching things a bit to assume there’s a second killer operating at the same time in such a remote area?”

“It’s stretching things a lot. But besides not knowing if both these victims were killed by the same person, we don’t even know if this victim was murdered at all. Natural deaths do occur in terrain like this on a regular basis.”

“Yeah. But you don’t believe there was anything natural about this.” It wasn’t a question.

Hollis shrugged. “I think we’re usually not that lucky. So we assume murder until evidence says otherwise.”

“Gotcha.”

Hollis looked around them with a slight frown and, thinking aloud, said, “The killer we’ve been tracking for more than two months has used dumping sites all over the Southeast, so there’s no way for us to be sure just where his home base is. Maybe near here, maybe not. According to the profile, he may not even have a base and could be completely transient.”