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Dammit. When it came to Dash, I was unable to take the high road and set aside my anger. I was acting like a bitch on wheels and worse, I couldn’t stop myself. I regretted how harshly I came across, and then added to my remorse by regretting the pain that darkened his eyes. Crap. I was a mess, a regretful, tangled, emotional mess. I needed to get a grip.
“I suspected you were up to no good.” I nudged my chin toward his cane, hoping he’d put my worries to rest. “What happened? Are you in pain?”
“I’m fine,” he lied, then propped the cane against the side table. “The only thing you need to know at this point is that I work for BB and that I’ve recently accepted a position to lead a new team. Our outfit has invested in top talent.”
“I see.” He wasn’t going to admit to pain or tell me what I wanted to know. He was also not going to get personal with me. Fine. Neither would I. “Is this your way of telling me that this ‘outfit’ you work for has a morgue?”
“We deal with complex cases and in-depth investigations,” he explained. “We have access to a specialized team of top-tier, forensic pathologists. It was this team that conducted your father’s second autopsy.”
“Uponyourrequest.” I couldn’t suppress the frustration that sharpened my voice.
“Uponmyrequest.” He owned up to it. “The team gave your father’s remains the respect and dignity he would’ve expected.”
My chest squeezed. “You were there?”
“I accompanied Richard’s body from the moment it was exhumed to the moment he was reinterred.”
The breath caught in my throat. “Why did you do that?”
His gaze lingered over me conveying a deep sadness I couldn’t quite understand. For an instant, his stare slid down to my lips, sending prickles of awareness to tickle parts of me that shouldn’t be in play. He looked away before he returned his attention to me.
“I did it for Nix,” he allowed softly.
I gave myself a mental kick in the ass when I wished he’d done it for me.
Holy hell. Things were heading in the wrong direction. Incensed with myself, I ripped the page out of the envelope, and with a yank, unfolded the paper. Skimming through the report, I read the cold analytical descriptions of my dead father’s organs,muscles, and blood tests. My stomach turned into a raging hell of flames, but the tears that burned in my eyes remained unshed. In the last three years, I’d learned how to close myself to the world, and yet a gasp escaped me when I got to the line titled “cause of death.”
“Father was injected with potassium chloride?”
Dash dipped his chin. “He was.”
I inhaled all the air in the room. “Isn’t that what they use to execute death row inmates?”
“It is,” he acknowledged with his trademark brevity, which had always driven me insane.
“Then this is wrong.” I waved the paper in Dash’s direction. “The coroner would’ve detected it in his post-mortem exam. It would’ve shown up in the blood tests.”
“Potassium chloride is almost impossible to detect when circumstantial evidence of its use is not available,” Dash said. “There were no needles or IVs found in your father’s office—”
“How do you know this?” I interrupted him.
“I read the internal report.”
“How did you get it?” I frowned and felt my face ignite. “Did you have someone from your outfit hack my security division?”
“I did no such thing. I obtained the report legally.” He squared his shoulders, aiming the full power of his dignity at me, but it didn’t escape me that he didn’t fully answer my question.
“The coroner who performed your father’s first autopsy had no evidence or reason to believe foul play was involved,” he went on. “Potassium chloride is virtually undetectable at post-mortem, which is also why covert assassins use it for murder.”
“Then how did your people find it?” I asked, setting my hand over my aching middle, coaxing my body to manage, at least until Dash left.
“Our forensic pathology team has developed a test thatmeasures excess levels of potassium chloride in the eye’s vitreous humor.” As he spoke, he retrieved his cane, rose from his chair, and ambled to the drink station. “The test is not commercially available.” He poured a glass of water, walked over, and offered it to me.
Given that my mouth had turned to sand and my throat had gone into draught, I accepted the glass. When our fingers briefly brushed, my heart sped up. His touch surged through me like ripples on a pond.
I held an autopsy report in my hand. We were discussing murder. My father’s murder. And yet all I could feel were those very intimate ripples lingering in my private pond, getting bigger and wider by the second. What the hell was wrong with me?
Dash returned to his seat across from me. He turned the cane between his fingers, observing me closely. Fighting my internal meltdown, I took tiny sips, testing my stomach’s fortitude. When the water didn’t come up right away, I claimed a small victory.
