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47

COHEN

T he air was tinged with the distinctive scent of copper, my gaze honed in on the rib cage cracked open in front of me. Like some fucked-up Sunday roast. Slightly pinker in the middle against the aging not-quite-white bones while the buzz of the suction tube drowned out the rest of the machinery. I could almost hear the contracting of the cardiomyocytes whenever the suction stopped as Prescott’s heart throbbed in time with the blipping of the machine to my right.

There was that sound again. The rhythmic pulsing in my eardrums.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

My nerves were still misfiring, sending faulty signals to my brain, which made it difficult to determine which sensations were real and which were phantasmal. I cracked my neck from side to side, trying to release some of the built up fluid in the joints, and watched in stunned silence as Adrian used a makeshift tattoo gun to scrawl a name across the thin tissue of Prescott’s pericardium.

Marisela.

I canted my head to one side, unable to stop myself from taking some visual measurements. Shit was more than a habit. It was second nature. By the time my eyes swept back along the chest cavity, I was certain if we didn’t kill Tate Prescott, heart disease would do the job for us.

Adrian eyed his handiwork for a moment before lifting his gaze to meet mine, a smirk curling one side of his mouth.

“Who’s Marisela?”

The good doctor dropped the gun onto the medical tray, ink mixing with blood as it splattered across the blue surgical pad. “Our client.” He shrugged, then gestured a red-tinged glove to the slab. “Also his wife.”

“His wife paid you to do this.” It wasn’t surprise that had my brows pulled tight across my forehead. I didn’t give a shit about the Hippocratic Oath or follow any sort of moral code outside my own. Again, I was just curious. Enjoyed figuring out what made someone tick. What drove them. Their motives. Who hired us and why.

“No, she paid us to take him from the house and hold him for a few days. Scare ?em straight. Keep him out of his mistress’s bed. I did this …” Adrian threw a hand out towards Prescott again. “…on the house. Want our clients to know how much we really care about their overall… customer satisfaction.” He grinned, and if fear were something I was prone to feeling, a shiver would have traveled down my spine.

Good thing for both of us I didn’t scare easy.

I stared at the man sprawled out on the stainless-steel mortuary table. His weathered skin and the tiny pinpricks that suggested he received regular Botox treatments. His manicured nails, which told me he didn’t do much with his hands outside of signing checks and playing the occasional game of golf. The wide pores dotting his scalp that screamed hair transplant. Throw a bottle of those magic blue pills inside a shiny red sports car and Tate Prescott screamed midlife crisis.

“So what do we do with him now?” I grunted past my disgust. Only one thing pissed me off more than cheaters. Big fat fucking liars. And this fucker was both.

“We aren’t doing anything.” Adrian pivoted on his heel, his leather shoes squeaking on the cement flooring. I’d been so focused on the body on the slab I hadn’t noticed him strip off his gown and boots and toss them in the trash can by the heavy metal door. “You’re keeping ?em alive or we aren’t getting paid.”

He waited and watched the confusion flick over my face. Then the panic. Before I settled on irritation. Twisted together with a shit-ton of defiance. “And how the fuck do you expect me to do that?”

I knew the grin was coming. Expected it. And I should have known better than to react. But untethered rage was volatile, especially when mine had been simmering for months. And I rushed the door just as it clicked closed, Adrian staring at me through the little panel of bulletproof glass on the other side as the padlock dropped into place.

“You son of a?—”

Adrian tsked his tongue. The lines of his eyes, the only part of him I could still see, crinkled by that same stupid grin. “Go tend to your patient, Dr. Michaels. Open-heart surgery is no small procedure.”

The increased beeping of the O2 machine told me that Prescott’s oxygen levels were dropping, his heart rate following a similar rapid decline. It’d taken me too long to wire the fucker’s sternum back together. Plating would have been the more medically sound choice, given my patient’s age and lowered bone density. But that shit was much more complex. Time-consuming and not a fucking option.

My right hand was fatigued, the slight tremor an obvious sign of muscle weakness as I tightened my grip around the metal clamps and alternated between an intracutaneous stitch and surgical staples. While hoping it would be enough to stave off infection. At least until the exchange. I didn’t give a fuck if the guy’s chest exploded and his heart fell onto his lap, as long as it happened after I was done with him. I didn’t like having my fucking time wasted.

Time was money after all. And money was the only fucking reason I was here.

I was fighting the urge to pull up the app on my phone that would give me a direct view into Emily’s bedroom as I deposited my gloves into the red sharps bin and washed my hands in the industrial sink. I could feel my foot tapping again, my eyes seeking out the clock, my knee bouncing and my skin on fire. I needed to get out of this fucking room. I needed to see her. Touch her. Taste her. Make her bleed. Taste that too.

I glanced at my palms and envisioned them turning my favorite shade of red before the cardiac monitor started screeching in the background, and I realized my patient was crashing.

Jesus-fucking-Christ.