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I felt self-conscious as all hell, but I went ahead and stood in front of him. I didn’t ask him to pretend to hold a gun on me though. That would have just been weird as shit.
“Not quite as tall as him,” I told Ben, returning to my side of the table. “About somewhere in between.”
“All right then,” he said with a smile. “It’s a start.”
I didn’t think it was much of a start, but I wasn’t about to say anything.
Pierson leaned forward and clicked the recorder off. I looked up at him warily.
“Thank you, Angel,” he said, surprising me with the use of my first name. “We appreciate your help.”
“Do you believe me?” I asked him bluntly.
He pushed his chair back in. “I do not believe you are attempting to deceive me,” he said with a tight smile, then gave Ben a nod before moving to the door. But he stopped with his hand on the doorknob and turned back to me. “One more question, if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t say anything about being afraid that he would shoot you,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “Why is that?”
“I, um, was just shocked more than anything.” A cold hard knot began to form in my belly. I wasn’t stupid—I could see how my apparent lack of fear could possibly be read as my being somehow involved.
“Of course,” he said. He gave me an understanding smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a good thing you were able to keep calm. The last thing any of us want is another body.”
I gave a stiff nod. I didn’t really trust my voice at the moment.
Pierson opened the door, but before he could exit Marcus slipped in and made a beeline for me. “You okay?” he said, gaze sweeping over me as if to check for himself that I was free of pesky bullet holes. “I just heard about the holdup.”
“I’m fine,” I said, feeling absurdly self-conscious. I thought for an instant he was going to lean in and kiss me, but he apparently thought better of doing so in front of the others. Instead he simply gave my arm a squeeze. Over his shoulder I could see the Captain eyeing him with a slightly narrowed gaze. But to my relief, Pierson continued on out, with Ben right behind him. “I’m fine,” I repeated as the door swung shut. “It’s cool.”
“Good to know,” Marcus said. He gave a sigh of relief, then pulled me into a hug. I allowed myself to relax against him. “You need to eat more,” he murmured. “Weird shit is going on, and now’s not the time to be at less than full strength.” He pulled back and held my shoulders while he looked intently into my face. “I know you’re trying to ration your supply, but I can always help you out if you get into a bind.”
“I know. I was just about to. And you’re right.” He’d always been more than willing to share, but I’d decided shortly after we started seeing each other that I would only hit him up for brains if I had no other choice. I didn’t want to be dependent on him—or anyone. “Look,” I said, “there was something weird about that dead security guard.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, he had a fractured skull, and I was pretty hungry, but I couldn’t smell his brains.”
A frowned tugged at his mouth. “Are you sure? Maybe it wasn’t fractured enough for you to be able to tell.”
I shook my head. “It was fractured. Trust me. I could see pieces moving around under the scalp. And back at the lab I was hungry enough to smell brains in living people.” Hell, I still was. The little bit that I’d chugged in the van had been more than used up during this whole incident.
The troubled expression on his face deepened. “I don’t know, Angel. You shouldn’t let yourself get so hungry—it affects your thinking and judgment.”
I tamped down my growing irritation. “Yeah, I know that, but it wasn’t so bad before the holdup. I had some in the van on the way over. I think stress burned a bunch up.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “The only reason I can think that you wouldn’t be able to smell the brains is if he was a zombie. But that’s not possible. He was definitely dead-for-real. The paramedics ran a strip on him and everything.”>I swallowed hard, then fixed Allen with a hard look. “How long has the surveillance been messed up?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “A couple of days, to judge by the recorded data.”
“And how many people know about this?”
He flicked a glance around the room. “Probably no one. I do only because we tried to access the recording from tonight and couldn’t.”
A tiny bit of tension left my body. “Then why the hell would I make up a story like this if I knew that the surveillance video would prove me wrong?”
The sour expression on Allen’s face deepened, but I could see I’d scored a point. And to judge by the nods of others in the room, I wasn’t the only one. The mood in the room seemed to shift, to my intense relief.
Ben cleared his throat. “Angel’s not stupid. And right now we have no other information. I say we go on her statement unless and until we get any reason to think otherwise.”
