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“And that’s exactly what I did,” she grits out. “I picked up after him. Because that was my job. I stayed home, and I got to be the best damn mother I could be. And even if I didn’t like his attitude, I still cooked his meals, washed his clothes, and did as he wanted.”
“You were a slave,” Fletch argues. “He didn’t treat you with respect. He abused you! And you wanna sit here with his blood on your hands and pretend you wouldn’t want that abuse to go away?” He shakes his head. Disappointed. “Don’t insult our intelligence, Adrianna. Be straight with us, and we’ll go to bat for you with the DA.”
“You wanna cut me a deal?” She scoffs. She actually laughs, so the cop assigned to watch her widens her eyes. “You want me to admit to murder in the first. Within five minutes of meeting me. And in exchange, we can discuss a way to reduce my sentence from, what? Twenty-five to life, down to, maybe fifteen?”
“Add fifteen to your twenty-four,” Fletch bargains, “and you’re still a young woman. Not yet forty. You come out, you get on with your life, and your husband’s case has been closed.”
“And my daughters? Add fifteen to five and seven, and I’ve missed their entire childhoods. I’ve gone away for murdering their daddy, so they grow up with a dead father and a mom in prison. They would hate me. And whether I do ten, or twenty, or fifty years behind bars, I don’t get them back when I’m done anyway.”
I open my mouth to speak. To argue, but she cuts me off with an expression of rage that brings me up short. “I didn’t kill my husband, Detectives. And I won’t admit to it just to make your jobs easier. Find who entered my home while we slept. Find the person who did this to us.”
MINKA
Islide William Alves’ body back inside the sub-zero-temperature fridge and turn away as Aubree shuts and secures the door. Hunger rumbles in my stomach, and an additional twenty-four hours without Factor being added to my blood makes me tired.
My eyes burn with exhaustion, and my hands shake, though I hide the latter by slipping them into my coat pockets. “Chief Medical Examiner, Minka Mayet,” I announce for the record. “And Doctor Aubree Emeri. William Alves’ body has been secured in fridge 3-2-5. It is,” I pause as Aubree turns away from the fridge, and glance up at the clock on the wall. “Eighteen-oh-eight. We’ll pick this up again tomorrow. Shut the recorder off, please, Aubs.”
“Sure.” Aubree is younger than me. Springier. Where I walk from point A to point B like a normal, measured human being, the loud and bubbly Aubree Emeri bounces. Her smile never abates, and her enthusiasm, somehow, endless, even with the work week limping towards Friday. She snatches up the small recording device we cart everywhere we go, flicks it off, and drops it into her white lab coat pocket. “You wanna get burgers at the bar?”
I stroll out of the massive fridge—it’s a whole room, literally, of fridges inside a fridge—and move to the check-in desk, where an old computer perches, a sentry security center that runs slow and may need to be the next line item in our facility budget. Typing in my passcodes and signing William’s body back into his fridge, I enter my digital signature and take full responsibility for the dead man who’ll stay the night and wait for Aubs and me to get back to work again tomorrow.
When I’m done, I look at my colleague, my best friend, and realize she asked me a question. “Huh?”
“Burgers.” She wraps her arm around mine and starts us toward the big glass doors. And though I try to unlink us, she’s strong for a small, pink-haired doctor. “At Tim’s. You know he makes the best food on this side of the city, and he gets antsy if we don’t stop in regularly to assure him we’re eating.”
“Or…” I reach out when we’re close enough and hit the button for the elevator. “You could just admit you’d like to see him. Because he’s sexy and possessive and has that lumberjack look that Archer could never pull off.”
“Does your husband know you consider his brother sexy?” She beams as the elevator opens and two technicians step off. I’m the chief inside this facility. The boss. But my team is like a well-oiled machine, and my need to question each member on their workload is basically non-existent. My first month inside the George Stanely was fraught with imbeciles, incels, and little man syndrome. Middle-aged medical examiners who preferred the old boys’ club and considered women beneath them.
A woman becoming their boss? Worse, a younger woman?
It was intolerable to some.
But the trash has been taken out, and the team we have now—male and female—is what I could consider elite. Case close rates are higher than ever. Budgets are being spent well. Cases are being reported properly. And morale is up.
Though I don’t dance throughout my building the way Aubree does and flaunt our success. Instead, I return head nods as technicians pass, and I step into the elevator and turn back to face the front while she hits the button for the ninth floor.
“Maybe Archer does know I have a thing for his brother,” I tease, watching Aubree in my peripherals as the elevator ascends and she grabs my arm again. “He’s tall. He’s muscular.” I work to keep my lips flat as Aubree’s grip grows tighter around mine. “He’s single and available. And Archer can be kind of annoying sometimes.”
“You’re messing with me.” The moment the silver doors open and reveal to us the ninth floor, Aubree bounds out, her white lab coat billowing as she speeds to her desk. “You’re trying to get me to say I like him.”
“You do like him!” I follow her out and stride into my office, the sun still beating against the floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s going to be hot outside. Painfully so. But the idea of a burger and home is enough to have me shrugging out of my white coat and hanging it on the rack by my door. I don’t switch it for another. I merely make my way to my desk, grab my briefcase from the deep bottom drawer, and, checking inside, confirm my keys are there.
Though everyone knows how to enter my apartment without them, it would seem.
“This has been a back and forth for months now, Aubs.” Closing my drawer and switching my computer screen off, I slip my bag to the crook of my elbow and head back toward my office door. “You liked him, but he was dating someone else. He stopped dating that someone else—” or, well, Felix Malone killed her, but that’s a small detail in the grand scheme of this conversation, “—which makes him a single man. But instead of shooting your shot, you try your hand at dating someone else. A cop. Inside Tim’s bar. Tim kicks the guy out, says he wants you, but you tell him to move on.” I come to a stop beside her desk and lift a brow in challenge. “You’re the problem here, Aubs. And you’re the only one who thinks your act is convincing.”
“It’s not an act.” She tosses her white coat over the back of her chair and stands tall, lifting her chin in defiance. “And me upholding boundaries is not a problem. I can like him but know he’s not good for me.”
“Why isn’t he good for you? Personally, I think he’s one of the best men I know. Top three, for sure.”
“He’s possessive.” She grabs her phone and starts toward the elevator now that we’re ready to leave. “He thinks it’s appropriate to kick my dates out of a bar.”
“And you think it’s appropriate to take your dates to his bar.”
“He wants to send me to his apartment like a child being scolded for breaking some bullshit rule.”
“And you literally glued his remote to the television, released stray cats into his home, and tried to stage a break-in to cover your tracks.” Remembering the last, my chest bounces with muted laughter as Aubree huffs and slaps the elevator call button for the final time today. “Your behavior was childish.”
