by Vella Day
John Ahern, the Medical Examiner walked up to her and the captain. “The lime did a real number on the body, didn’t it?”
Lucas nodded. “Ate away most of the flesh.”
Jenna swallowed and sucked up her revulsion.
Lucas nodded to the M.E. “Will you be able to tell time of death with all the lime?”
“Not accurately. Besides the lime, there’s the salt air and wet soil.” John Ahern lifted the torso and checked the victim’s back. “From the lack of pooling blood, the guy wasn’t killed here. If the killer hadn’t taken the head and legs, we might have a more accurate time frame.”
“Take your best guess.”
Dr. Ahern circled the body. “Two, three days?”
“Thanks.”
What’s wrong with people? She stood next to her boss. “Are you going to send the victim to HOPEFAL for identification?”
“No need. We found an insurance card in his pocket but no wallet. Good thing the killer was sloppy or we never would have learned who he was. Guy’s name was Rodrico Evans.” The body was too thick to be the man from Botanica’s backroom. Too bad. He was still lurking. She wouldn’t be surprised if the lurker had set the fire.
“Never heard of him. Let’s hope the ID isn’t a fake.”
Sam stood at the stove and watched Jenna pull up the drive. He’d been worried sick she’d exhaust herself waiting hand and foot on her aunt. He wished her aunt had found someone else to care for her. She should have known better than to put undo strain on Jenna—unless, the aunt hadn’t been told about the fire, which, knowing Jenna, was probably the case. Next time, he’d ask for a number where he could reach her—or come with her.
The porch light cast a shadow over Jenna’s face. Fatigue and what appeared to be anger flooded her face. She winced when she stood up straight, but she didn’t glance his way even though he was backlit in the kitchen window.
She let herself in and stopped the moment she saw him. “Well, I’ll be damned.” She smiled, tossing him a sexy look. “I never thought I’d see you in an apron.”
“I often wear an apron, just not ones with pink flowers on it. I didn’t want food on my clothes before it gets to my mouth.”
She laughed. “Color me surprised.” Not. He started toward her, but she held up her hands. “I smell. Aunt Martha threw up on me, and I have to shower.”
“Go ahead. Dinner should be ready when you get out.”
He’d made everything beforehand but had waited until she came home to heat the rolls.
Jenna spun around half way down the hall. “You want to watch?” She licked her lips in invitation.
Dear God. Would the women never stop coming onto him? She had to know his willpower would give out at some point. “I need to look after our meal.”
She winked. “You know what they say about a watched pot.”
Jenna twisted back and sashayed down the hall, telegraphing a clear invitation for him to have sex with her, and his stupid cock stood to attention. Maybe he should be assertive toward her and see how she reacted. He had a feeling Jenna was one big act.
The force of the water banging in the pipes took his imagination in a dangerous direction. He ran a wet cloth over the kitchen counter one more time and tried to think of anything other than his new roommate, who in about one minute would be naked, with slippery, sweet smelling soap all over her delicate body. He pictured his hands sliding over her perky breasts and down her flat stomach. She’d press her body against his and he’d devour her luscious lips.
He tossed the towel down. To hell with the food. He needed air. The rolls could burn for all he cared. Sam raced past the bathroom to the spare bedroom to grab a sweater. On his way back, the urge to catch a glimpse won. Of course, she’d left the bathroom door open. Tease. Steam streaked the glass door, but her shapely outline stood out.
Don’t look. She’s trouble.
“Damn it,” she groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Why did he say that?
“That you, Sam?”
“No, it’s the boogey man.”
“Funny.” She laughed, obviously enjoying the fact he hadn’t been able to resist the siren’s call after all. “I have a plan,” she called out over the hiss of the water. “You want to hear it?”
Trouble flooded her words. “Do I?”
Jenna dragged Sam down the back alley of Botanica. “Don’t be such a sissy.” God how she loved the adventure of danger. Adrenaline excited her.
“Who’s a sissy? Breaking and entering is against the law in case you didn’t know.”
“That so?” She plastered his back against the brick wall and pressed up against him. Man did he feel good, all hard and strong. “We won’t be breaking anything, I promise. Just entering.”
“Semantics won’t free you if you’re caught. Let me hear this bulletproof plan again.”
She rolled her eyes and ran a finger down the tip of his nose and over his lips. “When you were speaking with Deidra a while back, I opened the office window. Stay here and keep watch, while I check out the backroom again. Be out in a jiff.”
She was just about to grab his crotch but then resisted. Jenna didn’t need to piss off Sam. She needed him. Oh, how Jenna wanted to ravish him right then and there. Forbidden sex was the best, as was the thrill of not knowing if anyone would walk by and catch them doing the nasty. So what if it was sixty degrees outside. Inside, she was hot.
The lamplight on 8th Avenue snuck down the alley and turned Sam’s face mysterious. Jenna grabbed the front of his sweater with one hand and dragged his face down to her lips with the other. She kissed him hard.
He pressed her shoulders away, but not before he half kissed her back. “What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Kissing you. I need to relax, remember? Are you sure you have a PhD?”
That must have insulted him, for he spun her around, her back now against the wall, and planted one on her. Yes! Progress. She ground her hips into him, excited to feel an erection. Once she knew he wanted her, Jenna let loose. She opened her mouth to taste his sweetness and raked her fingers through his hair.
“God, you taste good,” she said after coming up for air.
“Jenna, this is stupid. Let’s go.”
Thrusting her chest forward, she made total contact with the planes of his rock solid chest.
A wave of laughter and giggles floated toward them. Shit. Sam must have heard them too, for he stepped back. “They won’t mind,” she said. “People have sex in alleys all the time here.”
Her rookie year she’d followed Sergeant Dustin Fallow around for six weeks and had seen plenty of illicit activity in this part of town.
“Tell me again why you really need to get into the backroom?”
She ran a hand down his cheek. “I told you. If I can get a blood sample off the wall, and if it turns out to be human, maybe the police can get a warrant.” Which had nothing to do with Sam. Whoops. “Or there might be more cauldrons inside. More dead bodies for you to work on.”
“I don’t need any more bodies.” This was the stupidest idea Sam had ever heard. He didn’t want to be involved with her scheme, but here they were, nonetheless. There was no way he’d let Jenna go it alone though. If the man who’d grabbed Jenna outside his classroom was the same man as who was in the backroom, she didn’t need to go in by herself.
The wind howled down the back alley, and he looked over at her. She’d wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “Are you warm enough?” he asked.
“I will be as soon as I get inside.” She pushed on the window. “The sash is stuck.”
“Here, let me help.” Not wanting to leave his prints or tempt fate since his prints were in the system, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “You sure you unlocked this?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Sam looked right then left before stepping around her. Dried paint caked around the sill. Old buildings made window opening a challenge. Using his knees to help shove the window up
ward, he forced the sash open but not without a lot of tugging. The window squeaked and he stopped.
“Don’t worry. No one can hear. Can you open the window any wider? Even I’m not that small.”
When he managed to raise the lower sash far enough, he motioned her in. “You go first. I’ll follow.”
“You’re coming with me?” She smiled, and he knew he’d made the right decision, at least until they were caught.
“I don’t want to be responsible for you being hurt.”
“Oh.”
Damn. He kept hurting her feelings. Before he could explain, Jenna slipped in and turned on her Mag light. With quite a lot of wiggling and Jenna’s help, he squeezed through. “Hope we don’t need a quick exit.”
Jenna strode over to Deidra’s desk and pulled open the bottom drawer, and then routed around the contents for a minute. “I can’t believe this.”
“Believe what?”
“Her keys are gone,” she whispered.
“Keys for what?”
She blew out a breath. “Keys to get into the back room.” She stood and planted her hands on her hips.
“Looks like that sample might have to wait until the cops get a search warrant.”
“Hello. You can’t get a search warrant without proof, and the blood is the proof. Assuming the stuff is human.”
“And you know about search warrants how?” He cocked a brow.
“Ah, TV?”
Smart ass. He loved bantering with her, only now wasn’t the time. “Jenna, why do you care so much about this case?”
She blew out a long breath. “If Deidra, or a former owner for that matter, is involved in using someone’s bones for nefarious purposes, and I don’t do anything about it, what kind of person would that make me?”
He rubbed her back, wondering what had happened in her life to make her so feisty. “If more citizens were like you, maybe there wouldn’t be so much crime.”
“A lot of good it does us now.”
Sam had given up his bad ways a long time ago—right after his younger brother was arrested for B&E and his father killed himself. Someone had to step up and be the responsible one in the family, and he’d chosen himself. But now? He had more than himself to consider.
Her desperation prompted him to cross the line—a line he swore he wouldn’t step over again. “Let me see what I can do.”
“Are you going to break down the door or something? Don’t tell me you have a black belt in karate.”
“Nothing as romantic as that.”
He stepped over to the locked door and pulled out his lock picks. Picks he shouldn’t have brought, but something told he they’d come in handy. He’d kept them all these year to remind himself he wasn’t the same man he had been. At least he was breaking the law for a good reason, or so he hoped.
Jenna stilled his hands. “What are you doing with those?” Her whisper was louder than a shout. “You’re a science geek for God’s sake.”
That stung, but he let it pass. “It’s a long story.”
“Where did you get those?”
“They’re mine from when I was a young thug.”
Jenna’s hands fluttered in his face, almost as though she’d forgotten their mission. “But your house burned down.”
“I didn’t want to keep them at the house for fear someone doing renovation might come across them.” Sam was surprised how quickly his skill returned. In a matter of seconds, he had the hall closet open. “Whoa.”
The stench of decomp hit him hard. Just because he was used to the smell didn’t mean the rancid odor didn’t burn his nasal passages any less. Jenna covered her mouth, and then pulled a gray cord high in the ceiling. The hallway lit up. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Kind of creepy in here,” he said. “You sure Deidra won’t come back for something?”
“The shop closed twenty minutes ago,” she said, still keeping her voice low.
“But you can’t be sure.”
“No.”
Great. Sam decided on a new plan. His—not hers. They’d rush in, get the sample, and then get the hell out. Simple. Jenna would want to linger.
Sam hurried to the end of the hall, did his magic trick again on the second door and tugged it open. Oh, boy. The odor was close to a body assault. “There’s something dead in here all right.”
“It’s far worse than before. I think Deidra’s been in here.” She flashed her light on the red streaks.
Sam whistled. “Looks like Indian cave paintings.”
“Or a math class gone bad.”
He chuckled. “Now what?”
“Why don’t you get the sample while I look around for the source of the decomp?” she asked.
“Suit yourself.”
Sam scraped the blood off the wall with the cotton swab and shoved the specimen back into the tube. He thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t a crime scene investigator. Give him bones any day.
“Let’s get out of here, Jenna.”
“Oh...my...God. Come here. Look what I just found.”
13
Jenna’s heart raced. “It’s another cauldron. The bitch is guilty of murder.”
Sam grabbed her shoulders and moved in front of her. “Let me have your light.” Under what looked like blood, a skull bobbed at the bottom of the black pot. “Just because she possesses this skull doesn’t mean she is a killer. This could be a fake.”
Her mind flashed to the torso of the man at Ballast Point. Christ. Could this be him? She wasn’t supposed to know about that murder.
Sam reached down to pick up the cranium when she stopped him. “Don’t touch anything.”
“Why? I just want to see if the head is real or a hunk of plastic.”
“Plastic doesn’t smell like this.”
“The smell might not be coming from the head.” A muffled noise reverberated down the hallway, and Sam grabbed her arm. “What was that?”
Every muscle tensed. “Deidra? Shit. Maybe she forgot something, or else she’s coming back to practice her witchcraft. Could be that guy with the gun again though.”
“You never told me about a gun.”
“Forget it.” She bent down to lift the cauldron.
“Leave it. I’ll notify the police to come get it. You have your cell phone for a picture?”
“No.”
“We have to get out of here now.”
Jenna raced toward the door the best she could. The cuts on her face pulsed from the exertion, and her breath was harder to find than a killer.
Sam closed the first door behind them. “I can’t lock the door with picks.”
Crap. They didn’t have a key. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Forget it. Come on.”
They made it down the hallway without making much noise. At the end, Jenna peeked her head into Deidra’s darkened office. She turned to Sam. “All clear.”
Voices sounded outside the office. Adrenaline was having a hay day in her body as Jenna slipped out the window. When she landed on feet, her knees buckled, and she dropped to the gravel alleyway. “Dammit.”
Sam crawled out after her, though he had a more difficult time than she did squeezing through the narrow window, but at least he managed to land upright.
“You okay?” he asked.
She didn’t have time to investigate the damage. Her father’s voice echoed in her head about showing no emotion. “I’m fine.”
He closed the window most of the way. “It’s stuck.”
“It doesn’t matter. Deidra will realize soon enough that something is wrong when she goes into the back and finds all the doors unlocked.”
“Go.” He pointed to the road.
They’d made it. Actually, made it. They raced down the alley a hundred feet and stopped. Jenna planted her hands on her knees, her back heaving. “That was a such high, wasn’t it? My God, my heart’s going one hundred miles an hour. Wow.” She couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t remember when I had such fun.”
�
�Jen-na. We need to get away from here.”
Before she could chastise Sam for being such a fuddy duddy, the light in Deidra’s office clicked on, flooding the road behind the building. Oh, shit.
Sam plastered himself on top of her, the hard brick walls biting into her back. His breath came out in rapid bursts next to her face, and her traitorous body reacted to his presence.
“Don’t say anything,” he said.
Talking wasn’t on her mind. Escape was.
When Deidra failed to poke her head out the back window, Sam motioned they continue down the alleyway toward the road. The window squeaked open behind them making Jenna pump her feet faster. If Deidra caught them, everything would be ruined. She couldn’t get enough air. That damn elephant was sitting on her chest again. Blood gushed down her cheek from the cuts on her face opening up.
“Hey you. Stop!” Deidra shouted.
Crap. Jenna couldn’t let her catch them. She could only hope the light didn’t bounce off her blond hair and give her away. They reached the end of the alleyway, hopefully out of sight from the back window. “I have to stop. I can’t breathe.”
“Deidra could come out the front and find us. We have to hide.”
She swallowed hard and sucked in the needed oxygen. “Which way?”
Sam tugged on her hand to go right. They were halfway down the block when she pulled to a stop again and bent over to catch her breath. Pain ripped through here, and tears welled in her eyes, but she refused to complain. “The...the...car’s in the other direction.”
“I know, but we can’t go toward the store.”
Jenna agreed. “You lead. Take it easy, though.” Don’t be a wimp.
Sam wrapped a possessive arm around her shoulder and led her away from harm.
Maybe breaking into the store to get the sample hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
Wearing his white lab coat, Sam pulled up a chair next to her. “Jenna.” He dragged a hand down his face. “I wasn’t able to sleep last night.”
There were circles under his eyes and his skin had a yellow cast to it. “Because?” She figured it wasn’t due to his overwhelming need to be with her. In fact, after they were nearly caught, he’d been a little cool toward her.
