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Jennifer Crandall, my ass.
Chapter 12
Juliette
Juliette stared, her heart in her throat. Ronan looked pale under the bluish fluorescent glow of the morgue lights but just as gorgeous as he’d been when he was watching her in the window—broody yet dangerous.
And especially dangerous now.
Juliette swallowed hard. She thought she’d be able to walk in under the guise of assessing reconstructive work on the body—“I’m here from Silverbrook Memorials.”
She’d found Silverbrook the same way she’d found Jason’s birthday: social media. His mother had posted the funeral home information with the date “to be determined.” When Juliette worked in the coroner’s office, mortuary representatives occasionally dropped by—just enough for it to seem routine. She’d even waited until late afternoon when morgue admissions usually spiked. While that alone wouldn’t make them busy enough to brush her off, she’d thought the bus accident on her police scanner would have kept the staff too preoccupied to question her.
She had underestimated Ortega.
“My friend!” the medical examiner boomed, lifting the brain from the scale. “You said you wanted to be kept abreast of the Mercer situation. This young woman wanted to assess his injuries for, quote, ‘restorative work.’ I told her he had no injuries that might require such intervention, but she insisted.”
Ronan cocked his head, eyes narrowed.
When had Ortega even called him? The only time the doctor had left the room was… when a colleague had flagged him down in the hall. Damnit. Had she known, she’d have taken the stairs and escaped before Ronan got here.
Now, Ronan would arrest her, take her upstairs, run her fingerprints. And if Daniel’s game was over, she was as good as dead. At best, she’d be locked up in jail, where Daniel could torture her for the rest of her life. And her mother… her mom…
Her throat closed. She could not find the air. What the fuck had she been thinking, coming here? Every muscle in her body was tight with the frantic need to run, to escape.
“It’s okay, Ortega,” Ronan said in that growly voice. “We can show her.”
She blinked. What? He wasn’t going to arrest her? But that wasn’t what he’d said. Her breath hitched, lungs filling with precious oxygen, his quiet confidence a balm against the panic.
Ortega deposited the brain on a stainless tray but did not remove his gloves. “You know where to find him,” he said to Ronan, then went back to his work.
Ronan glanced at her, then headed for the far right side of the room, where metal drawers glinted from floor to ceiling. She followed, debating whether to make a run for it, but she didn’t think herself capable—her legs felt numb. He popped the latch on one of the drawers near the center and rolled it open as she stepped to the other side.
The body was not draped in a sheet as she’d always done in her morgue—Jason Mercer was nude in all of his gray-corpse glory, mouth ajar, flaccid penis lying against his pubic hair. A Y-shaped incision glared from his chest, dark and angry.
She could feel Ronan’s eyes on her as she studied the corpse—at least, she pretended to study it. All she’d wanted was five seconds alone with the body, enough time to open the cell. Now… she couldn’t.
Why was Ronan even letting her do this? Was he trying to figure out what she wanted? Was she a suspect? Should she cry? Act traumatized by the fact that she’d seen Jason die at her feet?
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“I’m cold.”
Ronan blinked. Then he shrugged out of his suit jacket and, with a practiced flick of his wrist, stepped around, wrapping it over her shoulders. It smelled like sandalwood.
“You’re not assessing anyone for restorative work,” he whispered into her hair, and the heat of him made her heart clench—panic or attraction, she couldn’t tell. Maybe both. “How about we take a drive, and you can level with me?”
She nodded, mute. She’d been ready to break out the waterworks, sob that she just wanted to see his face—this man she wasn’t supposed to know—hoping he’d buy trauma or closure as an excuse. But it appeared he wasn’t even going to ask her why she’d come, at least not in front of the medical examiner.
Ronan slid the drawer closed, then headed for the hallway with a backward wave. “Thanks, Ortega!”
“Right on, Detective!”
The walk up the hallway was cold and quick—past another set of bustling exam rooms. None of the people within them looked over as they marched by. And this was not the way she’d come in. Where were they going?
A good rule-following cop wouldn’t leave with her at all—he’d make her sit in an interrogation room. A dirty cop… well, his motivations would be much more complicated.
She forced a breath into too-tight lungs as they turned the corner. The next hallway ended abruptly at a wide freight elevator. Ah, he was taking her out the back way—keeping her from the bullpen. She’d been nervous as hell when she’d walked through the main doors, past all those cops to the elevator, but no one had glanced her way. Until Ortega.