“Used to getting sliced?” he asked, frowning more.
“No, um…used to getting hurt.” I hesitated, then gave him a tight and humorless smile. “Mom used to smack me around. That’s how my arm got broke,” I explained, even as I wondered why the hell I was telling him this. “She went to jail for it.” And died there, I thought. Killed herself on my sixteenth birthday. Luckily I had enough self-control to keep from sharing that lovely tidbit of family history.
But he didn’t comment on my little revelation. He wrapped up the suture kit, dropped the needle into a sharps-disposal container, stripped the gloves and placed them in a biohazard trash can. “You’re all done,” he told me curtly, sounding almost harsh after the gentler tone of before. “I’ll check it in a couple of days, but I don’t anticipate any issues with it. Keep it clean.”
“Sure thing,” I said. The old Allen was back. “Thanks for saving me a trip to the ER.”
“Don’t make a habit of it,” he replied, then left the room without a glance back.
I sat silently for another couple of minutes. Why the hell had I told him about my mom and her abuse? Because for a short time he’d been almost nice to me? Great. He treated me like a normal person, so of course I had to make sure he knew I wasn’t normal.
Taking a deep breath, I stood and returned to the morgue. After pulling gloves on over the gauze, I finished getting everything ready for the autopsy.
Dr. Leblanc returned as I was getting the body of Brenda Barnes onto the table. I hid a smile as I noted he was deliberately noisy as he walked.
“Everything go all right?” he asked.
“Went great,” I said brightly. “All put back together.”
He glanced down at my hand. “Does it bother you? We can postpone until the morning, or I can get someone else to assist if it hurts too much.”
“Oh, no, I’m cool,” I assured him. “Allen did it in four stitches. Hardly aches at all.”
Dr. Leblanc gave an approving nod. “He’s good. I know you have your differences, but anything is better than the emergency room for such a minor wound.”
I got the body stripped of clothing and shoved the block under her shoulder blades so that her back was arched, making it easier for Dr. Leblanc to do the Y-incision and examine her organs. With her head dropped back I could see remnants of the zombie makeup—green, grey, and beige grease paint along her jawline, and square patches of lingering adhesive on her neck.
I stepped back and looked over at the pathologist.
“Why doesn’t he like me?” It bothered me now. It had never bothered me before, at least not like this. But now Allen was someone I could actually respect, and suddenly his opinion of me mattered. And that bothered me as well.
A grimace flickered across his face as he shook his head. “I don’t know, Angel. It’s been like that since day one.”
Taking a deep breath, I did my best to throw off the stupid desire to give a shit about Allen’s opinion of me. “Oh, well,” I said. “Brenda’s been waiting long enough. Let’s get to cutting.”
Chapter 7
The autopsy of Brenda Barnes went quickly, though Dr. Leblanc remained puzzled about the cause of death despite knowing what had killed her: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which was a condition where the heart muscle got too thick to pump blood properly, he’d explained. What he couldn’t figure out was how the heck she could’ve had that condition, since her medical records showed absolutely no sign of any thickening whatsoever in a full physical she had right before being laid off only a year earlier.
Muttering about misread test results and sloppy record keeping, he returned to the main building in the late afternoon, leaving me free to finally scarf down some brains to appease the insistent waves of hunger. I peeled up the gauze and tugged the sutures out of my healed flesh since they itched like crazy now, then taped the gauze back down. Later I’d figure out how to keep Allen from wanting to check it in a few days. Oh yeah, and figure out some way to explain why it healed without a scar. Maybe I could buy some miracle scar cream and claim it did the trick. I groaned and resisted the urge to beat my head against the cooler wall.
After making absolutely sure I was alone in the morgue, I retrieved an empty container from my cooler and “harvested” the brain of Ms. Barnes. During an autopsy the organs—including the brain—were removed, examined, and samples taken to be stored in formalin. Yet afterward, the organs weren’t returned to their former body cavity but instead ended up in a big plastic bag that was set between the body’s legs for its trip to the funeral home. Therefore, once the autopsy was complete, I snagged the brains out of the bags for my own consumption.
In fact, that’s how I’d met Kang. He’d confronted me after he noticed that the brains were missing from the body bags when they arrived at his funeral home.
I got the container safely tucked away in my cooler and back in my car without incident. The rest of my shift was blissfully dull with only one other body pickup—an apparently natural death of a man with a history of heart disease who showed all the signs of a heart attack. Once he was in the cooler and logged into the system, Derrel and I grabbed a bite to eat at Paco’s Tacos, then I returned to the morgue and managed to squeeze in several hours of studying. When midnight finally rolled around, I clocked out, left the van keys in the box by the door, and got the heck out of there.
Lightning followed by a tooth-rattling crash of thunder heralded the start of another goddamn downpour. I dashed to my scrappy little Honda, yanked the door open and clambered in. It sure as hell wasn’t worth much on the open market, but it ran—most of the time—and right now it scored points for being dry.
I jammed my keys into the ignition and cranked the car. Hunger—the normal human kind—reminded me that, though I’d gorged on tacos at seven, it was now after midnight. What the hell. A late night snack never hurt anyone. There wasn’t a whole lot open at this hour, but the flickering neon of Double D’s Diner promised destressifying pie and hot chocolate, plus the parking lot had only three other cars in it. Score.
The rain still pelted down in torrential sheets. I clutched my dorky raincoat around me, pulled down my hood, and made a dash for the slim awning over the door, then scowled blackly as the rain abruptly eased to a mere drizzle.
“Really?” I snarled up at the sky. “You couldn’t ease up thirty seconds earlier?”
I shook the worst of the water off and entered the diner, hung my raincoat on a peg beside two normal-yellow ones and a bedraggled umbrella, then headed to the counter. The waitress slid a mug of hot chocolate and a plate full of apple pie to me as soon as I sat down.
“You know me too damn well, Lurline,” I said with a laugh.
The rangy, well-worn woman grinned. “I know how you are when you get off work in the middle of the night.” She leaned her elbows on the counter. “Anything good today?” she asked with a gleam in her eye.
“Sorry,” I told her. “Only one today and there was no mess or yuck of any sort. Very ordinary natural death.”
She heaved a disappointed sigh and pushed off the counter. “How’m I supposed to live vay-car-ee-us-lee through you if you don’t got any good stories?”
I laughed. “I’ll make up something good and gory for the next time I come in here.”
“You better!” she announced, then sauntered away to check on another customer.
Grinning, I dug into my pie and allowed the loving embrace of sugar and fat to shield me from my worries. I glanced around idly as I ate. The old, bald guy at the far end of the counter was another regular, and a young couple nestled in a booth, laughing and whispering as they shared a heaping plate of blueberry pancakes.
Through the broad windows of the diner I saw a Jeep pull into the lot and park, angled with the passenger side toward me. But the headlights remained on, and no one made a move to get out for almost a full minute. Finally the driver exited and moved to the back. Though she wore a light jacket with the hood up, I could tell it was a woma
n by the general build and grace of movement. She opened the hatch, huddling beneath it to stay out of the light drizzle as she rummaged through the contents as if looking for something.
But my heart did a weird little flip when she straightened and pushed the hood back from her face. It was her. The stalker blonde.
She didn’t have a camera in her hands, however, and after a few seconds of frantic thought I decided she probably hadn’t followed me here. First off, I figured she’d be a little more sneaky about it if she had. Plus, the expression on her face was a far cry from the calm focus I saw earlier today. Even from this distance it was tough to mistake the expression of worry and anxiety.
She’d parked on the other side of the diner from my car, so there was a damn good chance she had no idea I was here. Perfect time to find out what the hell’s going on. I dropped a ten on the counter to more than cover my coffee and pie, slung my purse across my chest and headed out, grabbing my obnoxious raincoat on the way. Sure, without it I’d probably have an easier time getting close before she realized it was me, but I really didn’t want to get wet. Yeah, I was a weenie.
I strode toward the Jeep with my hood up and purpose in my step. With the way she was parked I came up on the driver’s side, which was fine with me. Hopefully that would make it easier to stop her if she tried to make a run for it.
She was still doing something in the back, but the sound of crunching gravel beneath my boots alerted her to my approach. She ducked her head around the side of the Jeep, eyes widening in surprise at the sight of me.
“Hey! You! I wanna talk to you!” I snarled.
Alarm flashed across her features, then in a smooth move she stepped from behind the Jeep, pulled a shotgun from the back and brought it up to hip level to point at me.
I jerked to a stop, still about a dozen feet from her. Well shit, I thought in surprise and a bit of annoyance. This escalated quickly. With the way her Jeep was angled, no one inside the diner could see the shotgun. They’d certainly hear the blast, though that wouldn’t do me much good.
“Just back off,” the blond woman said, tension roiling through her voice. Yet even though the barrel of the shotgun didn’t waver, she really didn’t look as if she wanted to shoot me. At all. On the other hand, she also looked scared and freaked and a little desperate, and I knew that sort of emotion-soup could easily overcome any reluctance to pull the trigger. Her left hand steadied the barrel, and my eyes narrowed. She had a splint on that hand that I was pretty damn sure hadn’t been there when I saw her earlier today.
I shook my head slowly. “I’m not gonna back off until you tell me what the hell’s going on, and why you’re following me and taking pictures.”
“Because it was my job,” she said, voice tight and full of desperate intensity. “But I’m not taking any more pics. I’m leaving.” Her grip on the shotgun tightened. “So…back off.”
I remained exactly where I was. “No. Not backing off.” I kept my own voice as calm as I could manage. “What job do you have that includes stalking me?”
She edged toward the driver’s side door. “One I quit,” she said. “And I have to get out of here.”
Watching her carefully, I took a slow step forward. “I’m not afraid of getting shot,” I told her. Which wasn’t entirely true. Getting shot hurt, and I had a feeling getting shot by a shotgun would hurt a lot. But I knew damn well something more was going on. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Please. I don’t want to shoot you!” she said, desperation thickening her voice now. “I have to go.” Her eyes flicked toward the highway and back to me. Was someone after her?
“Look, are you into something fucked up?” I asked, easing forward another step. Probably a stupid question, now that I thought about it, since she was holding a shotgun on me. “Maybe I can help,” I added. Hell, I knew that I’m so screwed look on her face. I’d seen it on my own a time or two.
A brief spark of hope flickered in her eyes, but then she shook her head and it died. “Yeah, really a twisted mess,” she said. To my relief she lowered the shotgun. “I…won’t shoot you. But, please, I have to go.” Her voice quavered. “The people I worked for, they’ll be coming after me. And you don’t want to be around when that happens.”
Was she concerned for me? Or for what I might see or find out? “First, tell me who you work for,” I said.
“Worked for,” she replied, emphasizing the past tense. She edged closer to the driver’s door. I knew damn well she was about to make a break for it, and I tensed in expectation.
“Yeah, fine, who did you work for?” I shot back, allowing my annoyance to color my tone.
As expected, she made an absolutely desperate attempt to yank the door open and get into the Jeep. I poured on the speed and closed the distance between us, grabbed the door handle as she slid into the seat, and blocked the door with my own body.
“For fuck’s sake!” I snapped. “Would you chill? I want some answers, and I’m not letting you go until you give them!”
She breathed raggedly, seeming on the verge of tears and, with the fierce strength that burned behind her hazel eyes, it looked utterly unnatural on her. She tugged futilely on the door a few times as if it would somehow convince me to move, then gave up and let her hand drop. “Shit. Shit.”
I swept a quick glance around. No one inside the diner seemed to notice our little altercation—helped no doubt by the fact it was all happening on the side away from the broad windows. And the highway remained deserted.
“Can we please talk?” I asked, returning my attention to her.
She sagged. “Sure. Why the hell not.”
“Cool. Okay, cool.” I glanced around again, then hurried around the front of the Jeep to the passenger side. I fully expected her to start the vehicle and try and take off during those few seconds, but for whatever reason she seemed fairly resigned to my obnoxious desire for information. I slid into the passenger seat, shut the door, then gently pushed aside the barrel of the shotgun that lay across her lap so that it wasn’t pointed straight at me.
“All righty, that’s better,” I said. My gaze dropped to her hand. The pinky and ring finger were heavily splinted, and purplish bruising showed between strips of tape. “Who broke your hand?”
Exhaling, she leaned her head back against the seat. A curious expression of regret and admiration briefly passed over her face. “Brian Archer. Pietro Ivanov’s head of security. He caught me trying to get pictures of Ivanov and Jane Pennington.”
“Oh, wow,” I said, more than a little shocked. Though once I thought about it, I had zero doubt that the ice-calm security guy could break fingers without batting an eyelash.
Her mouth pursed slightly in annoyance, and I got the sense it was at herself. For getting caught? Somehow I could totally believe that would irk this woman. Irked looked a lot more natural on her than the verge-of-tears thing. Whatever was going on had to be huge if it pushed her to that point.
“And your bosses are mad you got caught?” I asked, trying to put the pieces together. Yet I figured they’d have to be really mad for her to be this freaked. Surely there was more to it.
She gave a low snort. “They don’t even know about that. It’s…other stuff I recently discovered about them.” Sighing, she shook her head. “I can’t go back.” Her eyes went to mine. “Please, I really need to go. And you need to be far away from me.”
I stubbornly didn’t get out of the Jeep. “What’s your name?”
A flicker of exasperation lit her eyes. “Heather,” she said, pointedly not giving a last name.
I didn’t bother asking for it. “I’m Angel Crawford, but I guess you know that already.”
“Yeah. I do.” Her gaze dropped from mine.
“Tell me who you work for.” I didn’t make it a question or request.
She grimaced. “Saberton Corporation.”
I didn’t expect that answer. “I don’t understand. Why the hell would Saberton want pictures of me?”
But then my thick-headed brain decided to wake up. “Wait, they do defense contract stuff, don’t they?” A chill swept through me. Did this have anything to do with Kristi Charish’s Zoldiers project? It had to. “Do you know why they wanted pics of me?”
Heather shook her head. “Not just you. Pietro Ivanov and pretty much anyone associated with him.”
“What do you know about Pietro…and me?” I asked warily.
She took a deep breath as if clinging to calm by her fingernails. “I know what you are,” she said, voice cracking slightly. “And I’m leaving because I don’t agree with Saberton’s philosophy, especially when it comes to using your kind.” Her eyes flicked toward me. “Zombies.”
Yikes. I knew Dr. Charish had been dealing with some government or corporate group when she had me as a test subject. Was that Saberton? Were they interested in her zombie-soldier idea? “You know a lot of zombies?” I asked, still watching her.
“Met my first a couple of years ago. John Kang,” she said to my surprise. Kang, the first zombie who I knew was a zombie. “He was my best friend, hands down,” she continued, surprising me even more, especially with the depth of sincerity in her voice. Her mouth tightened. “Saberton wanted him in their pocket because of all his contacts and connections. They wanted me to set him up to, ah, encourage his cooperation.”
“Connections like Dr. Sofia Baldwin?” I asked, cocking my eyebrow in her direction. Before her death, Dr. Baldwin had been working to develop fake brains that zombies could survive on instead of human brains.
Heather gave a little nod, confirming my suspicion. This was getting more and more interesting. If interesting meant holy shit this is seriously messed up.
“I knew Sofia,” I said. “She, uh, did a lot of zombie research.” I paused. “They’re both dead, you know—Kang and Sofia. Murdered.”
Heather’s good hand tightened on the barrel of the shotgun. “I know,” she said, grief slashing across her face. “God, the only possible good thing that came out of Kang’s death was that it happened before Saberton had the chance to get their hooks into him or find out anything he knew.”