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A low growl escaped before I could clamp down on it. Oh god, Derrel, please leave before I eat you!
“Call me if you need anything,” he said, releasing me.
“Will do,” I choked out and covered my dismay by pretending to push my nose back into place. He chuckled then grabbed his jacket and departed, leaving me alone in the morgue.
My hunger thrashed like a bobcat in a trap, yowling at me to chase Derrel down before my meal could escape. I tightened my hands into fists and breathed through clenched teeth until the monster within me settled. Now that Derrel was finally gone, I’d give it what it wanted.
I held my breath and listened for any hint of another living soul in the morgue.
The drip of the sink in the cutting room. The low hum of the cooler behind me. But no voices or footsteps. Not even the tiniest fart. I relaxed and exhaled, slipped back inside the cooler and tugged the heavy door closed. The cold air lifted goosebumps along my arms, and an underlying stench tickled the back of my throat—blood and rot and antiseptic. The morgue cooler had shelf space for ten bodies, but at the moment the only resident was the one on the gurney Derrel and I had rolled in here a few minutes ago.
Blood pounded in my ears, and a chill swept through me that had nothing to do with temperature. Even though I’d raided corpses more times than I could count, the fear-of-discovery adrenaline rush still hit me every single time.
“Get it done and get out, Angel,” I muttered as I gave the zipper a tug. It slithered open to once again reveal Noah Granger, dull eyes half-closed and lips parted. White male, fifty-nine years old, dead of a heart attack—confirmed by the clot that Dr. Leblanc had found in his left anterior descending coronary artery.
Sucked for Noah, but good for me. The faulty heart rested in the clear plastic bag between his knees along with his kidneys, liver, lungs—and the brain I was after.
My mouth watered as I unknotted the bag. I snatched a chunk of frontal lobe and shoved it into my mouth. It slid down my throat with the consistency of a raw oyster but tasted a thousand times better. A warm tingle like life itself rippled through me. The tear in my finger closed, healing without a trace, and I breathed a sigh of deep pleasure. A second brain chunk settled the hunger enough that I wouldn’t try to eat the next person I ran into.
It used to freak me out that human brains tasted so damn good, but I got over that in no time. The guilt was harder to shrug off, but the unpleasant truth was that I needed to eat human brains to stay alive and in one piece. Moping about it was nothing more than a waste of time and energy. At least I wasn’t killing people for brains.
Not unless they tried to kill me first.
I scooped the rest of the brain pieces into a plastic freezer baggie then retied the organ bag and tucked it back between Mr. Granger’s knees. Hunger urged me to scarf down another chunk, but my tattered self-control told the hunger to sit its ass down and wait until I was in a safer place. That settled, I sealed the baggie nice and tight then wiped a dribble of bloody yuck off its side.
The clunk of the cooler door handle sent my heart spasming like an electrified frog. I whirled to face the doorway, jerked the baggie behind me and shoved it into the back of my pants even as the Chief Investigator—my supervisor—stepped in.
“Allen!” I forced out a laugh and put on my best I’m-so-innocent face. “You, uh, scared the crap out of me.”
He regarded me for an endless second then frowned at the body. Holy shit, was I ever glad I’d already closed the organ bag.
Allen flicked his eyes back to me. “What are you doing, Angel?”
“I was double-checking that all the property had been logged.” I tried for an easy smile but it felt more like a freaked-out grimace. I’d rehearsed clever lies for this sort of thing a hundred times, and here I’d managed to blurt out the worst one to use on Allen. Ever since an incident last year involving missing property, Allen checked and logged each case personally. Shitfuckgoddamn.
Mouth tightening, Allen stepped to the gurney. I shifted away to give him space, and the baggie slipped down the back of my pants to t
he bottom of my scrawny butt. I froze as I envisioned the baggie sliding down my pant leg to flop onto the floor. That would be epic.
Allen pulled the zipper open all the way to Mr. Granger’s feet. With his attention off me, I arched my lower back to stick my butt out, trapping the baggie between my pants and the crack of my ass, then edged back against a steel cadaver shelf until the baggie squished, pinned in place. Except now I was equally trapped, since I couldn’t move without risking the baggie going plop. I also couldn’t lean back and chill, since all I needed to make the day perfect would be for the bag to bust open and spill brain splooge down my legs. I doubted Allen would believe I was having the Worst Period Ever.
“Did you find anything amiss?” Allen asked.
My pulse stumbled. “With the, uh, property?”
“That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, no, I didn’t find anything. Looks like everything got inventoried.” God almighty, I hoped nothing had been left on the body. I’d been so focused on the brains, Mr. Granger could’ve been wearing the Hope Diamond as a nose ring, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Allen’s eyes lingered on the organ bag, and my gut did a somersault. If he noticed the missing brains, I’d be fired and charged with . . . hell, I didn’t know what I’d be charged with, but I had no doubt that stealing organs was illegal. And I knew that Chief Asshole Allen Prejean would demand full prosecution. The pathologist, Dr. Leblanc, had my back for most on-the-job issues, but I couldn’t see him stepping in to save me on this one. What was the punishment for corpse desecration anyway?
Damn it, why hadn’t I made absolutely sure everyone was gone from the whole back of the building before doing something so risky? Hey, maybe for my next trick I could munch on a brain in the break room and hope no one noticed. Moron.
Allen zipped the body bag without checking the organs. My heart finally descended from my throat.
“I need to see you in my office after lunch,” he said, words crashing over me like a wave of ice water.
“Is something wrong?” I squeaked out.
