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“Jesus, Angel!” He straightened to his full five and a half feet and gave me a mild glare. He was a nice-looking guy, with dark brown hair and green eyes, though it was only in the last six months or so that he smiled more than he sneered—at least with me.
“You’d better not be giving me more paperwork to do,” I said with a teasing smile.
“Nope.” He snatched a gaudy flier from the desk and jerked it behind his back like a kid hiding candy.
I moved toward him and tried to peer around him. “What’s that?”
“Nothing.” He shifted away, scowling when I refused to give up so easily.
“You came in here to put nothing on my desk?” I snatched for the flier, but he was a hair too fast for me. “C’mon, Nick. Let me see.”
“It’s stupid.”
I folded my arms over my chest and leveled my fiercest look at him. “Cough it up.”
His shoulders drooped as he accepted defeat and handed the flier over. “It’s for the Zombie Fest.” Color crept up his face. “I have an extra VIP pass. And . . . I thought you could use it tomorrow. You know. With me.”
Awwwww. There was nothing in the world cuter than Nick the Prick squirming like a teenager. “Sounds fun,” I said, then winced. “But I’m supposed to join up with one of the hunter teams.”
“The hunters suck,” he snapped, mouth turning down as if he’d swallowed sour milk.
“Couldn’t agree with you more,” I said, though I doubted my reasons were the same as his, whatever they were. “Look, my plans aren’t firm, but no way in hell will I dress up like a hunter. Promise to go zombie, and we’ve got a date.”
His eyes widened in a priceless look of denial. “It’s not a date!” he sputtered. “I just didn’t want the ticket to go to waste.”
“I’m messing with you, dude,” I said, grinning at his reaction. “I’m totally cool with no strings.”
The whisper of panic faded from his eyes. “Good. Sure. Okay. As long as we understand each other.” He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “We can meet here tomorrow at one-thirty.”
He was all Nickitude and business now, but I knew that was a mask he put on when he felt out of his depth. “Only if you dress up for real,” I said. “No half-ass dollar store outfit. I need to believe you’re undead.”
He gave a prim sniff. “That’s a done deal. You need help with a costume?”
I smiled for reasons he’d never know. Let me go without brains for a while, and I’d show him a costume that would send him screaming for his mommy. Rotten flesh, a dangling eyeball, maybe even a bone-grating broken arm that flopped with every move. Of course, he’d have reason to run if I got hungry enough to be in that state, since prying his brain from his skull would be at the top of my to-do list. “I could use help with the makeup.”
He relaxed into a smile, genuine and open. “I have a kit. I’ll fix you up when you get here tomorrow.”
I dropped the flier onto the desk, fidgeted. “Allen wants to see me. I, uh, better get going.”
“Yeah, me too. I need to write up the report on the hospice death from this morning.”
Neither one of us moved. An awkward silence threatened.
I scrambled for something neutral to say. “Have you heard back about your med school application yet?”
To my surprise, Nick stiffened. “No. Nothing yet,” he said, curt and sharp, then turned his back on me and stalked out of the office without another word.
Baffled, I stared at the empty doorway. What the hell? I hadn’t even been trying to rattle his cage. For as long as I’d been working with Nick, he’d bragged nonstop about being pre-med. It seemed only natural to ask how everything was going. Grimacing, I tugged a hand through my hair. Crap. What if he’d been rejected and was too embarrassed to admit it? It’d be like him to get all defensive if he had to eat crow. He could be a dick, but most times it was all bluster and no bite.
Aggravated at the both of us, I kicked the wastebasket then had to scramble and pick up the crumpled paper that spilled across the floor. If not for Nick’s relentless and patient tutoring, I never would have passed the GED and would currently be up shit creek in Biology 101. Nick was a solid friend, and it bugged me that I might have said something thoughtless. At least I’d be seeing him tomorrow. I’d try and find out then what bug crawled up his butt.
I dutifully checked my email then had no choice but to amble to the office marked Chief Investigator. Allen was on the phone when I poked my head in. I mouthed and gestured I can come back later along with what was no doubt a desperately hopeful look, but he shook his head and waved me in. Crap. My last hope of escape, gone.
He finished an irate conversation about a missing shipment of formalin and replaced the phone in its cradle with force. “Idiots.” He yanked an invoice out of a folder and made some angry notes on it. “Close the door and sit down.”
My stomach dropped. The only other time he’d told me to close the door was after I accidentally dumped a gurney and body bag into a rain-swollen ditch. The street had been dark and slick, and I never saw the pothole that grabbed the gurney wheel. All I could think was that I’d be written up or fired for losing the body, so I jumped right on into the ditch to grab it since I figured at the worst I’d get my pants wet.
Except it was a pretty deep ditch to begin with, and not only had I failed to take flash flood rainwater into account, but I’d also neglected to consider that there’d be a fierce little current. Could’ve been bad news if I was human but, after the first few seconds of panic, I stopped worrying about drowning, got hold of the body bag and dragged it out of the water.
