dangerous looking with ribbons of steel glistening in the overhead fluorescent lights. She slid it onto her hand. It looked like a medieval gauntlet turned into a torture device.
“I’ll need juice.” She dangled an electrical cord from her fingers.
“Let’s get the body first.” Dutch grabbed onto Andy’s lab coat lapels and dragged him out of the corner. Andy didn’t even try to resist; it was obvious the other man could easily out-muscle him. Better to wait for an opening to escape. “Check the one he brought us.”
Syrene laid her steel torture implement onto the table and trotted over to the gurney Andy had transported down from the ER. She seemed giddy. Probably high on something. Like this was a fricking party. Whisking the sheet off as if she was Vanna White, she tried to unlatch the body box. “I can’t open it.”
Dutch shoved Andy forward. “You do it, Goldilocks.”
Andy straightened and turned to face Dutch. “Stop calling me those names.”
“I’ll call you what ever I damn well please, bitch.” Dutch didn’t bother to use the gun to bolster his menacing tone. The scowl on his face and gleam of the gold skulls flashing from his teeth were enough. That and the ripples of muscle extending down from his hunched shoulders.
Andy didn’t answer, but instead moved to the gurney housing the corpse, wheeled it alongside an autopsy table, and undid the latch that held the top shut. Opening the lid, he swung the side of the metal box against the tabletop, where it acted as a ramp.
Before he could reach for the body, Syrene leaned over the table and yanked the old man wrapped in sheets across to her. As she eagerly tore at the swaddled corpse, Andy swung the side of the box back into place, leaving the top of the gurney open, the large hollow box waiting its next occupant.
Which would be him if he wasn’t careful. He glanced around the room. All the instruments that could help him, like scalpels and shears and the like, were neatly tucked away in glass-fronted cabinets on the other side of the room. The only thing useful near him was the walk in refrigerator that held the bodies awaiting examination. Maybe he could lock them inside?
“Damn, it’s just an old fart,” Syrene said. “The cops would never buy him as you, even after we torch him.”
“Where are the others?” Dutch asked. “Don’t you have those metal drawers like in the movies?”
“No.” Andy walked over to the refrigerator and swung the heavy door open. A light came on automatically. “We keep them in here.”
Dutch and Syrene joined him. Inside the refrigerator were several gurneys, each containing a body wrapped in clear plastic.
Dutch held back, obviously not happy about being surrounded by so many dead people. But Syrene practically danced into the cooler, rummaging through the corpses like she was selecting the perfect side of beef. The expression on her face resembled the expression she’d had last night in bed with Andy, supposedly in the throes of passion.
God, how could he have been so stupid?
“Look, man,” he tried to reason with Dutch. “You don’t need me. Do what you want, I won’t tell. It’d mean my job if I did.”
Dutch slanted his eyes at Andy. He thought he might have a chance, began to edge toward the exit, taking a deep breath, ready to run.
“Found one!” Syrene chimed out, her voice bouncing off the steel walls like a rock skidding across an icy pond. “He’s a big one. I need a hand.”
Dutch jerked his chin at Andy. Shivering not only from the cold but also from the gun muzzle at his back, Andy entered the refrigerator and helped Syrene steer a gurney out the door. The corpse was large, over six feet, and dark skinned. Dutch glanced down. “Yeah, he’ll do.” He nodded. “Strip him, sugarloo.”
Andy scowled at the name, but began to unravel the plastic enshrouding the dead man. To his surprise, as he worked, Dutch shrugged free of his jacket and stripped his shirt off, revealing a cobra tattoo encircling his waist and chest, the snake’s head coming to rest over his left shoulder, staring back at Andy with glistening emerald green eyes. Syrene skittered around, humming an eerie cadence, plugging in her steel torture device and inserting one of the colorful darts into it.
“It needs to look old,” Dutch said. “Can’t look fresh.”
Syrene frowned at him, rolling her eyes. “I know what I’m doing.”
She plunged the needle end of the machine into the corpse.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out the scam. Syrene was meticulously copying Dutch’s tattoo onto the corpse. Andy was certain that dismemberment of the hands and head were soon to follow. Add a fire and the easiest way to identify the corpse would be through the ink trapped beneath the skin-ink soon to look identical to Dutch’s.
What he wasn’t certain of was why they kept him alive-or how long that would last.
“Why here?” he asked. “Just take him with you, do what you have to.”
“Cops looking for me will never look here. Besides, if she messes up, we’ll need to get another-the cops have pictures of my art.”
“I won’t mess up,” Syrene grumbled, now wearing a pair of magnifying glasses as the machine on her hand hummed.
Cops looking for Dutch-Andy didn’t dare ask what he was wanted for. What ever it was, the man was desperate enough to add tonight’s fun and games to his list of felonies. Hopefully homicide wasn’t soon to follow.
“You don’t need me,” Andy tried again. “And someone will come looking for me soon.”
“That’s what’s keeping you alive. Anyone comes looking, you’re our fall guy-giving kinky sex tours of the morgue.”
Andy didn’t care for the chuckle Syrene and Dutch shared at that. Or the fact that as soon as Syrene was done, so was he. He considered his options. The refrigerator was his best bet-he could lock them inside. There was an alarm button, but they wouldn’t use it-wouldn’t want security to come get them out. The day shift would find them in the morning, cold but no worse for the wear-they might even talk their way past the day shift. As long as it wasn’t his job on the line, he couldn’t care less.
Okay, he had a plan. Now how to put it in motion?
Dutch did half the work for him. Syrene had him turn away and lift his arm over his head. That put him directly in line with the empty body box on the gurney.
“Stand up on that stool so I can see better,” she ordered, peering over the tops of her glasses, wielding the tattoo gun like it was Michelangelo’s brush. Dutch complied. Andy saw his chance.
“Need more light?” He reached up to adjust the overhead operating light that was extended on a swivel.
Dutch had his back to them and never saw the blow coming. Andy smashed the heavy, metal-rimmed light into the back of Dutch’s head. He followed through with a tackle to the waist, toppling the larger man facedown into the gaping steel box. The gun flew free, sliding across the floor and under a cabinet.
Dutch shouted a curse, but it was muffled as Andy slammed the lid shut and latched it.
“You bastard!” Syrene lunged at Andy with her tattoo gun. She brought it overhead and plunged it down, aiming at Andy’s face. Andy raised his arm and was instead impaled in the meaty part of his forearm. The machine whipped free of the outlet, its cord snapping through the air.
Syrene was on him, their weight hurtling against the gurney with Dutch inside, banging on the lid and shouting. They skidded across the room, crashing against the wall. She landed a knee on Andy’s inner thigh, missing vital organs but still painful, and scratched his neck and arm. Andy tried to grab her but it was like wrestling a rabid squirrel, all claws and writhing limbs.
Finally, he grabbed the electric cord and wrapped it around her neck-not tight enough to strangle her but it got her attention. He doubled over, heaving in a breath, then yanked the tattoo gun out of his arm.
“Let him out,” she whimpered, trying to lunge past him to reach the latch on the box. He hauled her back. “He’s afraid of the dark.”
“And I’m afraid of dying. You can let him out yourself-once you two are in the meat locker.” He twisted the cord in his good hand, making her yelp but not cutting off her air. He shoved his weight against the gurney and rolled it into the refrigerator, then pushed her inside as well, flinging the tattoo gun in after her.
As soon as the door was secured, he collapsed against its cold steel and slid to the floor.
“Hey, man, where you’ve been all night?” Blake Crider, one of Andy’s fellow interns, asked him when seven
