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“She’s Malone’s wife.” I bring the car to a stop, the sound of me pulling on the brake falls in sync with Rory’s shocked intake of air. “I’d say she’s known about us every step of this investigation. As Chief Medical Examiner in Charge of Lombardo and wife to the primary detective, I doubt she’s been excluded from any information since this began.”
“So we trust by association?” Nervous, Rory unsnaps her seatbelt and looks around the dark parking lot. “She hasn’t messed up yet. So we just…” Stress makes her brows wrinkle. “We trust.”
“We trust.” I push my door open and feel my weapons, strapped to my chest where they always are. They’re an extension of my body now. A third and fourth hand.
Damn Rory for making today feel like we fucked.
She squeezed the trigger and used a weapon I’ve never shared with anyone else in my life. I got the frustration and wanting, but walked away without the satisfaction of completion.
“Come on.” I open her door and place my hand beneath her arm, and though she had the option to bring her crutches tonight, she chose not to. Which is good, I suppose. Means she’s healing. She’s stronger. I bring her to her feet and look down into her kaleidoscope eyes, her lips too plump for her own good, and the complete and utter faith she has in me to keep her alive, bad for us both. “You need to watch your surroundings more, Aurora.” Closing her door, I hold her up with an arm wrapped around her torso and anchored around her hips. “You keep looking at me, and not at the guns that could be pointed at you.”
“That’s becauseyou’realways looking,” she mumbles.Like I said, complete and utter faith.“You’re gonna keep me safe. I can relax.”
I choke out a laugh that is neither fun nor relaxed. “And when I’m not around?” I demand, stepping to the side and bringing her with me so we start toward the elevator. “When I’m not looking?”
“You’re always gonna be around.” Her certainty makes my stomach jump. Her conviction, nerve-wracking. “I mean,” she continues, “where will you go?”
“I could be shot and killed.” As soon as we’re close enough, I hit the call button for the elevator and watch as the numbers move from the ninth floor and head down. “I could be arrested, considering I’ve walked onto a case I have no jurisdiction over.” When the elevator stops on our level and opens to reveal a small woman with blonde hair, pink highlights, and a wide smile, I draw my gun and stare into her arctic blue eyes.
She doesn’t even lift her hands. “I’m Doctor Emeri.” She scoots to the left and welcomes us in. “I don’t know your names, I don’t see your faces. I do, however, understand the gravity and need for privacy. So consider me the guy in the Titanic’s elevator.”
I raise a brow in question and bring Rory in, making damn sure she stands on my other side and nowhere near the bubbly doctor in sparkling high tops and a crisp white coat. “The Titanic?”
“Ya know: he doesn’t speak or have independent thoughts.” She hits the button for the doors to close, then the number nine to take us back to where she came from. “He just controls the big, silver cube and escorts those who ride in it.”
“Were you not afraid of being shot?” Rory leans around me to the woman who was probably in the same graduating year as she. “Your statement about not seeing me or knowing my name says you know exactly who I am. Which means you know the danger surrounding me. What if gunmen had followed us into the parking lot and you were caught up in all that?”
Casually, she drops her hands in her pockets and bounces on her heels. “I guess I could simply say that certain men work hard to keep me safe, too. You may not see those who surround this building tonight. But I know they’re there.”
“Cops?” Rory looks at me in question, then back to Emeri. “Police guards?”
“Worse.” Her smile grows larger, but before she can elaborate, the doors slide open and reveal Detectives Malone, Fletcher, and another woman in a white coat. The fact she stands with Malone and their little fingers hook together where they think I don’t notice, says all I need to know about her.
“Chief Mayet.” I bring Rory out and look the other woman up and down. She’s thirty.Maybe, at a stretch. Smooth skin, cat-like eyes, dark hair, and a dimple dug into her cheek. She has Egyptian roots, I think, and a brain on her shoulders considering the building she controls. “Thanks for staying after hours for this.”
Her lips curl into a small smile as she takes a step forward, leaving Malone behind, and offers her hand to me. “I don’t keep regular hours. I’ve had my entire building emptied of live bodies tonight except those you see in this room.” Shaking my hand, she drops it and moves to Rory next. “I have something to show you both, and I wanted to do it in person. Thank you for coming down.”
“Y-you’re welcome.” Rory stammers when she’s nervous, and being surrounded by successful women doctors is, I think, where she’s most nervous of all. “I’m Rory.”
“I’m Minka.” She drops Rory’s hand and nods over our shoulders. “That’s Aubree. I really appreciate you not shooting her.”
Stunned, I look down at the gun I still hold, quickly holstering it when I remember it’s not polite to have it out inside this building. Or, well, any building, really.
“She’s always a little loud,” Mayet continues, “and rarely takes a solid warning serious. She’s comfortable knowing she’s protected. So she takes risks she shouldn’t and expects other folks to clean up the mess.”
I look down at Rory and pin her with a glare. “I feel like I know someone with a similar personality trait. Lacks self-preservation,” I bring my gaze up again, “because she knows someone else has her back.”
“Yeah, that’s our Aubs.” Minka extends a hand and gestures toward an office surrounded by glass. “Will you come in? We don’t have long before the city notices our lockdown. If someone becomes suspicious, it wouldn’t take a man long to connect the dots and wonder if you’re here.”
She turns on her heels and strides toward her office, white coat billowing from the stream of air her speed creates. She stalks inside and holds the door until Archer takes over. He waits for the rest of us to pass, while Mayet circles her desk and takes a chair.
“I did not exhume Gregory Vallejo’s body today,” she starts, steepling her fingers as I pull out the single visitor’s chair and lower Rory into it. “It’s not my city, not my case, not my jurisdiction. However,” she adds when my eyes narrow. “I had a friend do it for me. I expressed our concerns that the man buried in Vallejo’s grave may not be Vallejo himself, so I spoke to the mayor, who secured me a warrant through contacts of his own relatively quickly. My colleague exhumed the body this afternoon and ran diagnostics immediately.”
“Is it Vallejo?” I skip over the fancy talk and demand the bottom line. “Is he alive?”
She looks to Archer, as though requesting permission to tell me. So when he inclines his head and gives her the go ahead, she brings her eyes back to me and firms her lips. “The body we exhumed today was not Gregory Vallejo.”
“Fuck!” I shove away from Rory’s chair and stalk toward the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking a dark city. “He’s not dead. Fuck.”
