I SEE HIS EYES FIRST, very dark, intense, and unblinking, staring right into mine.
He’s dressed in a gray suit, nothing fancy, jacket open with a loose tie, yellow-and-red stripe. Clipped to his belt is a scuffed-up badge.
With a deliberate gait bordering on slow, he weaves his way through the crowd and walks up to me. All this time, his eyes never leave mine. I guess he heard me screaming. I smell his aftershave... and tobacco.
“Oh, thank God,” I say, a relieved hand slapping my chest. “Are you with the police?”
“I’m a detective, yes.”
I point back at the hotel. “Hurry, you have to do something.”
He gives me a strange look before glancing over his shoulder. “Excuse me? I have to do
I jab my finger at the gurneys again, the words tripping over my tongue. “The zipper... over there... the one on the...” I take a deep breath and spit it out. “The person in that last body bag is still alive!”
The detective looks at the hotel again. It’s not quite a smirk on his hardened face when he turns back to me, but it’s close. There is something unsettling about this man, deeply so.
“Lady, I can assure you the person in that bag is dead. They’re
“Please, just go check.”
He shakes his head. “No, I won’t go check. Did you hear what I just told you?”
“You don’t understand, Detective. The zipper on that last body bag, it’s going to—”
I stop myself cold.
I complete the sentence in my head and suddenly, embarrassingly, I realize how crazy it all sounds. I sneak a quick peek at that last body bag, which still hasn’t moved. I want to tell this guy about the dream; I want to make him believe me.
So of course I
“I’m sorry,” I say meekly, starting to put away my camera. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I just got scared.”
“Four murders,” he says. “That’s scary, all right.”
I can feel the detective’s eyes on me as I fumble with the lens cap for my camera, but I don’t look at him. And as I turn to slink away as quickly as possible, I don’t say another word. No good-bye, no apology, no nothing.
It’s been a morning to remember.
Four dead bodies.
Whatever.
PART 2
Chapter 7
THE RASH, whatever it was, is gone now. So is that awful burning smell.
Thankfully, I’m not very good at running and
For now, what I force myself to think about is that I’m late for work and how that’s a major no-no with the boss, something Louis, the morning doorman for the building, is all too pleased to point out as I blow by him.
“Uh-oh,” he says, slowly shaking his nearly bald head. “Somebody’s in trouble. Never let ’em see you sweat, Miss Kristin.”
“Good morning to you too, Louis,” I say over my shoulder.
“Overslept, huh?”
If only.
I hop on the elevator and press PH for the penthouse, the top, the ritz.
Eighteen stories later, I step out onto the black-and-white-checked marble of the foyer that separates the only two apartments on the floor. My rushed footsteps echo as I steer left to the Turnbull residence with key in hand.
Fat chance.
Opening the door, I see Penley’s rail-thin frame standing before me. It doesn’t matter how much Restylane she’s got spackling her frown lines, I can tell she’s pissed.
“You’re late,” she announces, her voice detached and chilly.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t work for me, Kristin.” She picks a piece of lint from her designer workout clothes. Nearly every morning, she heads to the gym after I arrive. “You know I have to be able to rely on you,” she says.
“Yes, I know.”
“From where I’m standing, I’m not so sure you do. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you don’t.”
I look at Penley “the Pencil” Turnbull and want to scream so loud it will break crystal, and there’s plenty of it in earshot. Her patronizing tone, the way she refuses to yell at me because that would be
Penley folds her arms. It’s her Mommie Dearest pose. Actually, her
