Dean nodded and poured her another. “Drink this one slower, baby. Or Joe will come in here and kick my backside into next week.”
That earned him a smile from all three women. A computer geek, Joe might weigh in at one-hundred-and-forty-five pounds dripping wet.
“Sally still here?” Nadine asked.
“Nah. She left with Eaton.” Emily drew heavily on the cigarette.
“They still have a thing going?” Nadine tasted her whiskey, made a face, then sipped some more.
“I think so.” Dean leaned against the counter. “I walked in on them making out one night in the supply room.”
“Eww. Not a pretty image.” Nadine declared, but she smiled and drank more of the Maker’s Mark.
Emily couldn’t be distracted though. “Eaton kept asking me the same questions. I don’t understand. He wanted to know what time we left, and if Angie was mad at anyone. I never knew Angie to harbor a grudge. As far as anyone being angry with her—”
“No way. Angie was always the life of the group,” Nadine agreed.
“I only met her yesterday, but she seemed like a very gentle soul,” Lucy said.
Emily’s phone rang. She answered it, listened, then snapped it shut. “Joe’s here, so I’m gone.”
“I’m walking you out,” Dean said.
All three women turned to stare at him as he stepped out from behind the bar.
“Better careful than dead, ladies. It’s our policy from now on.” He escorted Emily to the door and unlocked it.
They stepped out into the night. Without letting go of her arm, Dean re-locked the door behind them. Their footsteps rang out on the boardwalk as they moved toward Joe’s car, parked a mere ten feet away.
Nadine and Lucy stared at each other.
“Did he say he was walking her to the car?” Nadine asked. They both hopped off their stools to peer out the window. Emily’s husband had parked directly in front of E.T.’s. Dean was talking to Joe, gesturing toward the bar, while Emily stood beside them—arms crossed, face grim. The two men shook hands, and Joe led Emily around to her side of the car.
Dean stood watching the car drive away. Lucy thought she could see the weight of all their lives resting on his shoulders. She found herself longing to reach out and help him. Didn’t partners lean on each other?
Dean finally made his way back inside the bar, but he stood there, next to the door, his head cocked and a look of exasperation on his face. “You ladies like staring at my sorry self?”
His tone was teasing, though the expression on his face remained dog tired.
“Why sure, Dean. You know we do.” Lucy winked at Nadine.
Nadine had managed to finish her whiskey. She gathered her things. “Don’t lock that door, Dean. You have one more maiden to deliver.”
With a laugh, he put his arm through hers and walked her out—again careful to lock the door behind them. Lucy shook her head and took one more swallow from a second shot he’d poured. At least he had found a way to ease their tension and keep them safe. The man made a good undercover agent.
She couldn’t resist resting her head on the counter. Whiskey’s fault. It made her feel all warm and soft inside. She allowed her thoughts to unwind for a minute.
DEAN COULD SEE LUCY through the front glass window. He re-entered without making any sound. When she didn’t move, he closed up around her. She might end up with a crick in her neck, but she needed the rest.
He would have liked to let her sleep longer, but he knew he needed to wake her. Instead of using one of several more professional ways, he paused behind her, lifted her hair, and brushed his lips against the back of her neck.
“Lucy.”
“Hmm?”
“We have to go now.” He slid his arms around her waist. Nuzzled her neck. Allowed himself a moment of enjoying the smell of her.
“Go where?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
She tilted her head back, and he found himself following the curve of her throat. She was beautiful. Her skin tasted of sugar and lemons.
“Lucy.”
“Yes?”
“We need to go. I don’t want to. I want to stay here...with you. I want to forget...what’s out there.”
She spun around on the bar stool, slowly, stretching like a cat. Her arms came up and wrapped around his neck. “Did they teach you to sweet talk a girl like that in agent school?”
“I’ve refined my technique over the years.” He kissed her on the lips then, finally kissed her like he’d been thinking about for forty-eight hours. Or was it years?
She was like holding on to a Spanish firecracker. He could feel her skin burning his fingertips, feel the heat racing through his veins.
With something like a purr, she pulled back. “Where did you want to go?”
“Huh?” He stepped back, shook his head.
“You said, we had to go somewhere.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah what?” She stood, put her hands in his hair. When his eyes focused on hers, she kissed him thoroughly, then placed her forehead against his.
“Crap,” he said.
“Where were we going?”
Dean pulled away, paced to the other end of the bar. He put his hands against the bar top, as if he planned to perform pushups, and took a few deep breaths. When he trusted himself to look at her again, he couldn’t help laughing at her teasing smile.
“Where are we going, Dean?”
“To the morgue.”
“The morgue?” Lucy stood, reached down, pulled her nine millimeter compact P229 out of her ankle holster, checked and re-holstered it.
Dean shook his head, pulled his own weapon out of his shoulder holster and did the same.
“Are you expecting trouble, Dreiser?”
“I have trouble, Agent Brown. I have you.” He pulled his car keys from the pocket of the leather jacket he’d been wearing since his escort service had started.
Lucy grabbed her own jacket and bag. Before they stepped into the night, she reached up, touched Dean’s face. “We’re going to win, Dean.”
“Yeah. We are, Lucy.”
As they made their way toward his old truck, their footsteps echoed on the boardwalk and rang out across the deserted streets of Roswell. They didn’t know what they were walking into, but they knew they had each other’s back. It was all an agent could hope for.
Then they were back in the truck, driving through the night, driving toward death, and maybe toward a few answers.
THE MORGUE LAY TUCKED into the far west corner of town, conveniently located next to the hospital. Lucy had done her share of rotations in morgues, but never in one so unapproachable. The plain brick building was surrounded on two sides by clumps of trees. Harsh fluorescent lights cast circles on the pavement and building. They looked for all the world like alien ships come to claim their own. No doubt some architect’s sense of humor. Everyone in Roswell wanted the last laugh. Or perhaps she had been abducted, and the past twenty-four hours had been an alien-induced dream.
The morgue appeared closed for the night. Dean parked at the hospital’s visitor center, next to a row of hedges separating the two parking lots.
“Wouldn’t want a late shift nurse noticing our truck at the morgue.” Dean motioned her out on his side, pulled a duffle bag from behind his seat, then shut the door without a sound.
“I’m assuming we don’t have an appointment.”
“You’re a quick study, kid.”
They kept to the shadows as they approached the back entrance. Dean stopped her a hundred yards from the door, when they reached the top of the hill between the two buildings. He reached into the bag, and pulled out two pairs of night vision goggles. They watched the play of shadow and light, reality and unreality, for several seconds.
“I see no security cameras or guards,” he said.
“Apparently there’s not a big problem with people stealing stiffs.”
Dean pushed his goggles ba
ck into his bag. “Not yet.”
“No twenty-four-hour morgue service?” Lucy asked.
“Fortunately for us, no.”
Dean pulled out a small bag of picks and two earpieces. He handed an earpiece to Lucy and showed her how to wear it.
She ignored the feel of his hand in her hair, the touch of his fingers on her neck. Goosebumps shimmered down her arms, like so many stars falling from the sky. Then an owl hooted in the woods, and she spied Dean’s grin—the grin of the wolf. They would make it through the morgue. Heaven alone knew what they’d find, but his wolf grin told her they’d make it.
“Tap it once to turn it on,” Dean whispered. “This provides a secure channel between the two of us and works for up to twenty miles.”
Lucy smiled. “I won’t be going twenty miles.”
“Good. Scan the building, parking area, and surrounding road continuously until I tell you to follow me to the back entrance. If you see anyone approach, stay here. I’ll have a cover story, but I need you to hold your position. Understand?”
She nodded. They had covered similar scenarios in Virginia when she’d been in ops training, but it felt different with the stars above her, Dean’s eyes staring into hers, and Angie’s body on a slab in the building below them.
“It should take me three minutes to get down there and another two or three to move in. I’m going to disengage any interior security before I clear you to join me.”
“Okay.”
“Questions?”
“No.”
He turned to go, but Lucy reached out to stop him. “Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
“Yeah.”
Then he evaporated into the black night. She watched for him through the goggles, listening to his steady breathing in her earpiece. He appeared at the back door in no time. She wanted to stare at him, as if doing so could will him through the locks more easily. But she forced her eyes away, back to the road, to the front entrance, constantly scanning. Everything remained quiet, ominously deserted.
“How you doing, Doc?”
“I think there’s a coyote breathing down my neck back here, and a snake closing in from the east.”
“That’s my city girl.”
She heard a soft click, jerked her attention from the road to Dean in time to see him open the door and step inside.
“I’m going in. Hold those wild animals off a few more minutes.”
“Copy that.”
As soon as the door shut behind Dean, she heard the crunch of tires on gravel. A Jeep pulled off the side road, passed the morgue, and pulled into the adjoining hospital lot. Lucy held her breath until it stopped at the emergency entrance. A pregnant woman and young man stepped out and disappeared through the doors.
Much calmer and cooler than she felt, Dean’s voice sounded in her ear. “I’ve disengaged the cameras. You’re clear to come down. Remember to stick to the shadows, in case anyone happens to look out a hospital window.”
Lucy removed her goggles, placed them in her bag, and headed for the morgue. She’d just reached the back door, when Dean pulled her in. He locked the door behind them.
The lights of electronic appliances dimly lit the inside corridor. A microwave showed the time as one-twenty-three. A monitor scrolled through a screen saver with pictures of aliens. A few overhead lights glowed on lab tables. A refrigerator hummed.
Dean tapped his earpiece to turn it off and motioned for her to do the same. “Any idea where they keep the bodies?”
“Most morgues are laid out the same. There’s a refrigeration section toward the middle of the building, where the bodies are stored until the autopsies can be performed. Once they’re completed, bodies are transported to funeral homes.” Lucy led the way down a hall.
She stopped at a pair of doors. A sign posted outside reminded personnel the importance of maintaining safe decontamination procedures. They pushed through and found themselves in an outer room with sinks, gowns and gloves. Bio-hazard containers stood along the walls, and boxes with masks lined the shelves overhead.
Dean pushed at the doors to the interior room. Lucy reached out a hand and pulled him back.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Lucy scanned the room. She’d spent part of her residency in forensics. There was something different about this lab though, about this morgue. More than the night sounds had wormed their way into her soul. Something other than Angie’s body in the next room had her every nerve on alert.
Dean watched and waited as she paced around the outer room. She remembered again her mother’s admonition, “You have your abuela’s second sight, Lucy. It’s a gift from God, never doubt that. And it doesn’t matter whether you want your grandmother’s gift. The question is what you will do with it.”
Looking around the scrub room in the dim reflection, she sensed the danger that lurked. She knew with a deep certainty what they had come to Roswell to unearth waited within these walls. It felt like a predator in the grass. She chose in that moment to trust what she couldn’t see.
“Dean, we need to gown up.”
“Huh?”
Lucy strode over to the boxes—grabbed gloves, gowns, and a mask. “Put these on.”
“Lucy, we don’t have time for this.”
“Then, you’d better hurry.”
In the dim glow of the suite’s nightlights, she saw his confusion.
“Dean, I can’t explain how I know, but there’s something in there pertaining to the bio-weapon we saw in the photos Martin sent us. We need to scrub up and put on these suits. They aren’t bio-hazard suits, but maybe they will be enough.”
Dean nodded, let her put the gown over his clothes, help him snap the gloves on.
She selected the best filter she could find, stood on her tiptoes to place it over his face. “Don’t take this off. For any reason.”
Dean watched her put on her own scrubs as naturally as he’d get dressed in the morning, and he realized she’d done this many times before. She was, after all, a doctor—wasn’t she? He shook his head, wondering at how different her life was from his.
“Ready?” Brown eyes were all he could see, peeking between the cap she’d placed over her hair and the mask around her face.
He nodded. The mask itched, and the gloves made his hands feel clunky. Lucy entered the main morgue with no hesitation. She began opening refrigeration doors and pulling out slabs. He crossed to the other side of the room and did the same. Most were empty. Dean had found two bodies when he heard Lucy’s sharp intake of breath from the far corner of the room.
“I’m going to need some light, Dean.”
He joined her, looked down, and saw Angie—a twenty-two-year-old girl who’d had no enemies. First glance told him she’d died from a twenty-two caliber bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. Correction. Two bullet holes. He didn’t need to read an autopsy report. He’d killed a few men that way himself with the same caliber gun.
“Double tap to the head. Looks like the mob.” Dean left to find a portable light. By the time he’d returned, Lucy had pulled the drawer out all the way and removed the sheet covering Angie.
Twenty-two was young. Too young to be on a slab.
“Hold the light as I work up her body, please.” Lucy spoke softly, but Dean knew she was struggling to remain detached.
“Does it make sense to you the mob would want to kill Angie?”
“Vegas isn’t so far from here. It’s possible she could have stumbled into something, seen a deal she shouldn’t have.”
Lucy raised her eyes to meet his.
“Possible, but it doesn’t seem to fit,” he admitted.
Lucy had reached Angie’s thighs. “Dean, move the light so I can see better.”
“What are we looking for, Lucy? This can’t be the same as the previous vics. Look at her face. Her skin is completely intact. There are no burn marks on her throat.”
Lucy didn’t stop, me
rely kept working her way methodically up Angie’s body. “You’re right, but there’s something here we haven’t found yet.”
“I know this is upsetting, but maybe it’s what it looks like. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. It could have nothing to do with our operation.”
Lucy had reached Angie’s chest. She stopped, looking at a butterfly tattoo on the right side of Angie’s chest. She took a step back, cocked her head, then bent closer again.
“What do you think of her tattoo, Dean?”
“Looks fairly new.” Dean grimaced and leaned closer. “I’d say someone botched it.”
Lucy glanced up. “You have a tattoo, don’t you?”
“Yeah. So do you, Doc. Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment?”
Lucy smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Mine’s on my ankle. There’s not much subcutaneous fat there.” She tapped Angie’s breast lightly, then bent closer to examine the tattoo again. “Unlike the chest area.”
“I don’t have fat on my chest.”
Lucy stopped examining Angie’s tattoo long enough to give him a thoughtful stare. “Breasts, whether on a man or woman, are composed of glands, muscles, and connective tissue— including subcutaneous fat. It’s one reason they’re a popular place for tattoos—more fat, less distortion of the tattoo. I remember seeing your tattoo as you changed shirts in the truck, and, again this morning.”
Dean’s eyes narrowed. “So we know you like to stare at my chest. What’s your point?”
“How long have you had the tattoo?”
“Three years.”
“It’s not irritated, swollen, or red.”
“Not since the first week or so.” Lucy nodded, peered more closely at the butterfly tattoo. “And how old was Angie?”
“Twenty-two. Jerry told Eaton she’d turned twenty-two last month.”
“Right.” Lucy pulled up a rolling stool, sat on it, and took the light from Dean, shining it on the butterfly tattoo. “Bring me the magnifying lamp from the corner, please.”
He rolled it to her side. She focused its beam on the butterfly, adjusting until she had the exact position and magnification she wanted, then motioned him toward it. He hesitated, but with a sigh bent and peered through the lens.
Roswell's Secret Page 7
