Page 7 of Dead Love

Nyla and I exchanged a look. “I put in the order today,” I shouted. “Nyla just picked it up.”

“Well,” Shea emerged, her eyes bloodshot. “You,of all people, should know better.” She rolled her eyes. “Let’s go to Nectar Latte.” She threw her purse over her shoulder. “Maybe we can get you a birthday drink.”

“And the shop?” I asked. My heart raced; Shea rarely let me leave the shop or our house. Going to Nectar Latte was like sneaking out to go to a house party.

Shea glanced at the computer, then flicked a finger at Andrew, ordering him to follow her. “No pickups until the evening. But I need to stop by the grocery store first,” she said. “And it will give us a chance to talk things over too. Andrew has a fantastic idea. He asked to partner with you on the greenhouse, but there are some conditions.”

Partners?That wasn’t part of the deal. My chest tightened. “What conditions?”

“Marriage.”

“Marriage?”

“Well, dating first, of course,” she laughed, exiting the shop.

I switched theOpen!sign toBe back soon!then followed my mother, my best friend, and my childhood friend, down the street, happy for this small adventure, pleased with the chance to actuallydiscussthe greenhouse proposal, and hoping, for all the plants and flowers in the world, that I had misheard the ‘conditions.’

CHAPTER3

Vincent

“Another one,”my employee, Catie, said, her voice sullen.

“Echo?” I asked.

She nodded and I rubbed my forehead. “Same thing as before, though.”

Catie ran a hand through the gray-dyed mane on the top of her head, the sides shaved. She wasn’t what you’d typically expect of a funeral director, but as long as the families were comfortable, I didn’t care what she looked like. She was the face of the business; I worked behind the scenes.

We headed to the holding room, our footsteps clacking on the tile.

“The wounds don’t make sense,” Catie muttered. “A car accident wouldn’t do that. Even I know that.”

We weren’t medical examiners, and Catie had only done embalming while she was in mortuary school, which made it eerie that she could tell something was up. A stillness settled over us as we reached the room. A black pouch was sprawled on top of a gurney. I unzipped the bag, the mild scent indicating that this person had died recently. The skin smooth, then rippled with blood and impact. Broken bones, gashes in his face. Parts of his body crushed like a trash compactor. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty.

And the one mark that stood out from the rest: a puncture wound through the chest bone, straight to the heart. Just like the last several Echo victims.

With my eyes steady on that hole, I asked, “The coroner’s report?”

“Car crash, induced by driving under the influence of Echo,” Catie said. “But that—” she pointed to the wound, “—that’s too clean to be from a car crash.”

There wasn’t any reason for me to care about these young adults, dying for the new drug that was as rampant as a plague in Acheron County. Deaths were deaths. It was part of the business. But when it came to suspicious reports that glossed over certain patterns, curiosity struck me. Who was behind this, and what was their reason?

Go ahead, rob someone of their life. But do it with reason.

I went to my office and grabbed my keys and jacket. Then, in the bright light, I headed to my car, then drove to the Acheron County Coroner’s Division. We were a small county that hadn’t been able to hire an actual medical examiner. So, outside of the steel doors, Bill pushed up his glasses.

“Mr. Erickson,” he said.

“I came to ask you about Echo,” I said. Bill nodded and stepped to the side, letting me past him. The chill of the room crept over my shoulders. A muted television hung to the side, local news flashing on the screen. The polished nine-body morgue gleamed against the wall.

“A lot of Echo deaths lately,” Bill said quietly.

That was an understatement. “A lot of driving under the influence, even for Acheron County,” I said. “Did the police mention the state of the vehicles?”

“Always totaled, sir.”

“There’s one missing piece, though.” I rubbed my finger over my chin, then went toward the body cooler, dragging my fingertips across the smooth steel handles. A drug epidemic was possible, but the puncture wounds didn’t add up. “Do they all drive the same car? Crash in the same spot?”