AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PROLOGUE
“Fletch?” I grip the handle of my police-issued weapon and slam my back against the weeping brick wall in the belly of a long alleyway. November cold beats through the air, and what was a decent midday warmth earlier makes for a scientific collision of temperatures that has the bricks almost in mourning.
“Fletcher!” My heart thunders in my chest, hampering my hearing and leaving me damn near useless as I try to listen for my perp. “Dammit, Fletch? Are you okay? Speak!”
“Not so fucking slick now, are you, Malone?” Our killer’s smug voice hits me first. His breath feathers against my flesh next, as I step to the corner of the alley and move directly into the barrel of a pistol that has killed three others before me. Gulping, I follow the length of steel and glance along his arms. Then our gazes meet and his lips curl into a taunting grin. “This city is going to hell. Whether you like it or not. It’s smart business to become friends with the devil.”
MINKA
EARLIER THAT WEEK
Istride through the George Stanley building with my second in charge and best friend in the whole wide world—her description, not mine—by my side. The clock reads eleven in the morning, which means my team waits, again, as I start rounds late.
It’s a failing on my part. Never hitting my morning obligations at the time I say I will. But it’s not because I’m frolicking around the office, gossiping, and fluffing about while everyone else works. As chief medical examiner and director of my own facility, I’m busy from the moment I walk through our doors, dealing with everyone else’s incessant needs.
Questions.
Discussions.
In fact, my team undermines the very purpose of daily rounds by lassoing me as I pass their autopsy suites, dragging me in and asking for my opinion, which then leads to me being late for rounds.
Which, of course, is the reason they grab me when they can.
It’s a nasty, unforgiving cycle I’m determined to remedy.
“Let’s go!” I wave for Doctor Kirk—not of the Star Trek fandom—and lift my chin when he glances up from his desk. Then I stalk into Autopsy Room Three and snag Doctor Flynn’s attention. “I want everyone in my office for rounds. I have a meeting at noon, so if you’re late, you miss out.”
“You’re being a little…” Aubree clears her throat, quick-stepping when I turn away from the door. “Well, harsh seems like the appropriate word. The team is whispering about you behind your back.”
“I have no interest in what people whisper about me. If it’s not saidtome, it’s not meantforme.”
“They’re calling you mean.” She strides ahead and pushes another suite door open. “Rounds, Nick. And can you please grab Jen on the way?”
Doctor Nick Torres is heading toward his mid-forties, married, and clearly experienced withmeanwomen. Yet, his brows pop high on his forehead as he studies me in silence.Silence, I’m certain, is the lesson he’s learned from married life.
I spin away from his autopsy room and start back toward my office. “Don’t act as my filter, Doctor Emeri. If I wish to summon my staff to a meeting, I can do so without you beating me to their doors and using words likepleaseandthank you.”
“God forbid we use our manners,” she drawls, one of the few people inside this buildingnotafraid of the big, bad chief and her foul moods. “I’m not naming names, Mayet, but someone mentioned a long, phallic type stick lodged so deep in your ass, it’s tickling your brainstem.”
“Name names,” I glance across and meet her electric blue eyes, “and I’ll deal with their immaturity the best way I know how.”
“Or.” She races me back to my office, skirting past her desk and slamming her hand on my glass door before I can barge through. “You admit you’re experiencing some very large, particularly painful feelings right now as we deal with the fact that Friday is Fifi’s last day here at the George Stanley.”
“No.” I move into my office and bathe in the middle-of-the-day sun that shines through my floor-to-ceiling windows. That sunlight, as we head into winter, keeps me sane when everything else tempts me toward madness. “I’d prefer to work and revel in my reputation as a viperous bitch with no feelings.”
“But youdohave feelings.” She shuffles in behind me, closing the door despite my team moving closer. They keep their steps slow, though. They know Aubree can handle the brunt of my bad mood and, frankly, they’re too cowardly to do the same. “You’re sad right now, because Fifi’s leaving us. It’s okay to admit it.”
“I’m not sad!” I stride all the way to the glass wall, then I spin again, pressing my back to the pane and surveying the doctors who watch me the way humans watch apes at the zoo. The glass is there for the spectator’s safety. Only those trained and brave dare breach the barrier. “She’s a grownwoman, Aubree. She handed in her resignation. She’s leaving. Becauseshelet her feelings interfere with her job. Had she remained the same stuck-up, prickly jerk she started as, then none of this would have happened. Had her feelings remained unscathed, she wouldn’t have resigned to go work at some other, undisclosed office filled with people who probably suck.”
I glimpse the elevator opening outside my office, and Doctors Raquel and Campbell stepping out to join our meeting.
Raquel is another Aubree, in a sense. Not only isn’t she afraid of my wrath, but she seems to preen under the deadly spotlight. So although the rest of my techs wait outside, she moves past the crowd and barges through the door with a wide smile.
“Why do I get the feeling they’ve,” she jerks a thumb over her shoulder, “paid their admission and you,” she points my way, “are the dangerous beast at the zoo?”
See!?
“Because people bring emotions to the office,” I growl. “We’re educated, grown people who come here to do a job. We autopsy dead people, we write reports, and at the end of the week, we take home just enough money to pay rent and buy a little protein.They,” I point at Aubree, “think we can all be friends and sing Kumbaya. Yet somehow,I’mthe weird one for wanting to maintain a level of professionalism inside this building.”
