“I walk through the house to confirm it’s all good and then go home.”
“Aubrey,” Jun said again in hisnot happytone. “I don’t want you doing this alone anymore. It’s night, there are valuables in here, and what if someone had actually broken in and you didn’t suspect danger?”
“Jun—”
“I’m serious.” His face was cast in partial shadow, but he was giving me his angry cop expression—something I hadn’t seen since New York. I certainly didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of it either.
“You know I’m not a helpless little wimp, yeah?” I went to the stairs and started up.
“I never said you were.”
I groaned and waved my hands. “I don’t tell you how to do your job, do I?”
“It’s not the same. This is a matter of personal safety.”
“So I’ll buy some mace,” I replied in a half-assed attempt to get Jun to drop it.
“Aubrey,” he said again.
“Oh my God. Jun. Chill out, okay?” I asked, pausing to turn and look down at him. “It’s fine. Everything’sfine. Just stay here and let me do my job so we can go home.” I resisted the bad habit of rolling my eyes and finished going up.
I’d walked the halls of the Smith Home a million and one times, so typically I didn’t bother with lights until I got to the third floor and then worked my way down. Jun’s paranoia wasn’t enough to make me deviate from how I’d conducted myself every time the sensors picked up motion that wasn’t there. I had no reason to suspect some psycho robber/killer/gang boss or whatever Jun felt was hiding in the shadows was, in fact, there at all.
There hadn’t been a cause for alarm in the past, and besides Skelly’s World Famous Disappearing Act, I never expected there to be an issue in the house again. But remember what folks said to me?
“Mr. Aubrey Grant, what a strange life you live.”
Ain’t it the truth.
I tripped on something in the middle of the hall on the second floor, went head over heels, and landed on the other side. I swore a stream of obscenities colorful enough to make my grandmother roll in her grave a dozen times over.
“What was that?” Jun called from downstairs. “Aubrey?”
“I’m fine!” I answered. “Just tripped.”
When I pried my cell phone free from my butt pocket and turned on the flashlight, I realized I was going to have to get used to bodies and add them to the list of strange and unusual circumstances I’d been a part of.
Because there was a dead man in the middle of the hall, a wooden marlinespike protruding from his chest.
Chapter Five
THE LIGHTilluminating the figure shook wildly, and I realized that was because of me. I fumbled with the phone and dropped it. The rubber case hit the wooden floor with a thud and bounced once onto its back, engulfing me in darkness again.
I immediately slumped to the floor. Hello, cataplexy! I’m not sure how long it had me down for the count—it’s usually less than a minute—but sitting up was a struggle, and I felt disoriented and sleepy.
Ugh.
What was I doing…? Oh—the body.
My blood started pounding in my ears, and I felt light-headed. If I jerked too quickly for the light, I was pretty certain I’d throw up.
Fuck me sideways. What was going on? Who the hell wasthisguy?
I slowly picked up the phone again and flashed the light in the body’s direction. The marlinespike was still sticking out of his chest, and I swallowed the bile trying to race up my throat. Okay. So. We could probably assume he didn’t die here alone or by his own hand. And was that Captain Smith’s spike? Oh, so not cool! The integrity of the—fuck, focus.
I took a breath and could smell the blood in the air. I gagged and turned my head away.
Smith’s marlinespike had a dull point. No way he could have driven that into himself. Which meant…. Yeah. Great. Someone else killed him. Jun was right, and now I had to apologize for telling him to chill.
