by Brenda Novak
He’d been told that Mike was one of the best defense lawyers in California. What a crock of shit.
“The answer to the question,” Mike went on, “was yes, the case proceeded in accordance with the law, and therefore your original sentence was affirmed.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Mike? That I’m sentenced to life in prison for a crime I didn’t commit?”
“We’ve been over this before. The aggravating factors involved in your case are to blame for your plight. Not me. But I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
“You’re sorry you couldn’t do more?” Jason’s voice rose, his tone biting. “What have you done for me besides ensure me a life sentence? You’re telling me there’s absolutely nothing I can do to get out of here?” He raised his hands just enough to make the chains rattle.
Mike flinched, as if he thought Jason might actually take a swing at him.
Nothing made sense any longer. Why was he still in this place? He was innocent.
Mike lifted himself from his chair and calmly went about gathering his files. He opened his briefcase and carefully slid his belongings inside. Everything about the man was nice and neat, his suit, his tie, his hair. Every action said ‘nothing more to do here, see you on the outside.’
Jason stared at the man, and suddenly noticed something he hadn’t seen before. And that’s when it clicked. He smacked his fisted hands on top of the table so his chains rattled. “You son-of-a-bitch. You don’t care what happens to me. You took this case because of the media attention, isn’t that right?”
“You need to calm down, Jason.”
“You never thought you could get me off, did you?” It was true. Not only did Jason see it in his eyes, he read the answer in every line in his face. His lawyer was a big part of why he was here. Why hadn’t he understood that before now? “What did you do, Mike? Did you take a bribe?”
Mike leaned low, his cleanly shaved face inches from Jason’s, his gray-blue eyes narrowed and condemning. “I don’t appreciate being accused by a felon.” Straightening, he smoothed a hand over the creases in his tailored suit, moved toward the door, and knocked three times. . The guard’s key rattled on the other side. Mike turned back to Jason and said, “The only way you’ll get out of here, son, is in a box.”
Chapter Two
Five Years Later
Montpelier, Vermont
Angela Chack sped down River Street in her ancient Toyota Corolla. Minutes later, the tires spit up gravel as she pulled into the parking lot in front of the morgue where she worked.
She was late.
Her hands shook as she worked on inserting the key into the main door. The alarm beeped, but she had thirty seconds to punch in the code. Done with that, she smoothed her hair out of her face and took a moment to breathe. Thanks to the entire bottle of 2012 Sparrow Hawk Reserve she’d drank last night, her stomach turned.
After setting her purse on the counter, she walked around, turning on lights and opening blinds. Usually her boss was already here, but he and his wife had decided to take their first vacation ever after ten years of marriage.
She turned on the radio, then quickly turned it off again when she heard “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” by the Righteous Brothers.
The last thing she wanted to think about was love. She was done with men.
Today, she decided, she would lose herself in her work and forget all about Rob.
As Mr. Keener’s assistant, she was responsible for collecting bodies, helping with autopsies, writing reports, and keeping the place running smoothly. The problem was, there weren’t too many people in Montpelier, which meant that ninety percent of her time was actually spent tidying the place up, paying invoices, and filing.
She settled into the chair in front of her desk, turned on her computer, and checked the clipboard.
Interesting.
A body had been brought in yesterday before Mr. Keener left for Hawaii. There were also two other corpses in the cold room, embalmed and ready to go. It wasn’t too often she spent the day alone with three dead people, but with the week she was having, spending her birthday with a bunch of stiffs sort of made sense.
Who was the new arrival? Man or woman?
She flipped the page, looking for answers. Male. Chris Patterson. A case number was logged in beneath his name, which meant law enforcement was involved. He’d been brought straight from prison...all the way from California.
What was he in prison for? Was he a killer? A rapist?
Curious, she waited for her computer to boot up, then typed the man’s name into the search bar. She found three different Chris Pattersons doing time at San Quentin. No pictures, but they were all incredibly violent men. A shiver coursed over her.
And then curiosity got the best of her.
She grabbed the keys from the wall hook and headed for the refrigerated room. When she opened the door, cold air and the usual funky smell associated with dead corpses whooshed over her. There he was—the new arrival—in the middle of the room, lying atop a steel table with a lightweight cotton sheet draped over the length of him.
Why would Mr. Keener bother to remove the body from the body bag and then simply toss it in the corner?
Highly unusual, she thought, as the heavy steel door clicked shut behind her.
Without the music or the sound of Mr. Keener puttering around, the place was eerily quiet. The light thump of her shoes echoed off the walls as she walked across the cement floor to the table holding the corpse.
One look and then she’d go.
Mr. Keener had left no instructions for her to do anything with the body. According to the chart, Chris Patterson’s family had requested that his body be brought to Vermont because they wanted to see him one last time before an autopsy was performed.
She slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then pulled the sheet down to his chest.
Her mouth dropped open.
Usually the corpses were as white as the sheet covering them, but this guy still had some color. His dark hair was wavy and a little on the long side, but also thick and shiny. His brows were also thick, and his lips full. The only flaw was the slightest crook to an otherwise perfect nose.
Her gaze roamed south.
She pulled the sheet a little lower, low enough to see strong pectorals and well-defined abs. No reason to be shy here. Seeing a naked corpse had never bothered her before. But at the moment she was feeling flushed and a little uncomfortable. Rigor mortis had obviously dissipated.
Again, she noticed the coloring of his skin.
Something wasn’t right.
Her gloved hand trailed down his arm. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist to feel for a pulse.
And that’s when the dead man grabbed her.
His body shot upward.
He pulled her close and just as she was about to scream, he clamped a hand over her mouth.
Chapter Three
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said close to her ear. “I’m going to let go of you. When I do, you’re going to calmly tell me if anyone else is inside the building. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
The minute he dropped his hand from her mouth, the high-pitched sound that came from her throat pierced his ears. He grabbed her again, repeated the process, but this time twisted her around just enough so he could make eye contact with her.
“You’re not dead!” she said beneath his hand.
He might have been freezing after spending a night in this place, but no, he wasn’t dead. “I’m very much alive,” he agreed.
Keeping one hand over her mouth, he used the other to reach inside her lab coat pocket, his hand going deep, rummaging to make sure she didn’t have a cell phone or a weapon.
She gasped beneath his palm.
Ignoring her, he took the keys he found there. “Is anyone else here?”
She nodded.
“How many?”
“Three,” she said, her voice muffled beneath his
hand.
If she had said one person, he might have worried, but there was no way there were three others out there. The place was way too small to have more than a couple of employees working at a time. And he had yet to hear one noise since she had come inside the cold room. “Go ahead and scream,” he said as he released his hold on her and padded across the room toward the door.
There was an old wall phone mounted next to the door. He yanked it from the sheetrock, dropped it to the floor, then unlocked the door and peered into the front room.
Just as he thought. Nobody was there.
From where he stood, he could see through the open blinds covering the front window. One lone car sat in the parking lot. He needed to find some clothes and get out of here. A noise from behind prompted him to shut the door and turn back to face her.
She had a scalpel pointed at him and a determined expression on her face.
“Listen,” he said. “You don’t want to tangle with me. For the past eight years I’ve had nothing to do but dream about this day. There’s no way I’m letting you mess things up for me.”
“If you come near me, I’ll cut you,” she said. “I will.”
“I’m sure you would. What’s your name?”
Her gaze fell to his chest and then lower before quickly sweeping upward to his face again.
He took a step toward her. “I’ll give you a good long look later, but right now, I need you to give me the knife.”
“Stay away!” She flailed the scalpel around in front of her.
He didn’t have time for this. He needed to get out of here before anyone else stopped by. “I’ll be right back,” he said, turning for door.
“Where are you going? Don’t lock me in here!”
He exited quickly, making sure to shut the door securely behind him.
As he rushed around the front room looking for something to cover himself with, he could hear her shouting and rattling the doorknob. Inside a storage closet he found a pair of blue overalls covered with dried paint. They would have to do. He slipped into the overalls, then grabbed a white lab coat from a hook and put that on too.
Working quickly, he began to collect any provisions he might need on the long ride across country: scissors, tape, sanitizer, and soap. He stuffed his pockets, then found an empty bucket for everything else.
As he made his way outside, he inhaled a breath of fresh air, overwhelmed by the smell of freedom. The sun warmed his back as he took in the endless sweep of trees and green grass from the morgue’s vantage point atop a hill. There wasn’t another building in sight. And her car was unlocked.
Freedom.
And the warmth of the sun.
It didn’t get any better than that. Especially after spending the night in a refrigerated room. His teeth had chattered from the moment he’d arrived. After being transported to the morgue on Thursday night, he’d waited until everyone was gone before he’d wriggled his way out of the body bag, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize he’d been locked inside the cold room. He hadn’t wanted to involve anyone else in his escape, but there was no way around it. If he left the woman inside that room, she could die. If he let her go, she would call the police.
He had no choice but to take her with him.
The flight from California to Vermont had been quick. No doubt the warden had discovered he was missing by now, but it would take the man a while, hopefully more than a few days, to figure out how he’d escaped or whose body bag he’d ended up in.
After spending years researching morgues and how to fake his death, Jason had realized getting his hands on a low dose of curare, tetrodotoxin, or similar drug would be nearly impossible. Once he’d understood that faking his death would be too difficult to pull off, he’d decided he just needed to be ready for anything.
And then it happened.
His chance to escape became a reality: a riot broke out at San Quentin. Six men were killed. And Jason had to act fast. With years of stellar behavior, he’d been put in charge of a special work crew, which happened to be outside the compound when the refrigerated trucks were brought in. He hadn’t had time to think things through. The moment he saw the truck drivers gather in the front office to collect their papers, he knew this might be his best, if not only, chance to escape.
Everything happened fast after that. He read charts and made fast decisions. Solely to complicate matters, he also switched the corpses’ wristbands. Since Chris Patterson weighed in at one hundred and thirty pounds, he put Patterson inside another dead guy’s body bag, neatly stacking the bodies, before slipping into the empty one. It was all smooth sailing after that. He was flown to Vermont and delivered to the Montpelier Morgue, all within twenty-four hours.
Back inside the morgue, Jason found a case of water bottles and took those to the car, too. His heart was pumping now, his body temperature finally normal. A good thing since he hadn’t been sure how much longer he would last inside that refrigerated room. The gravel dug into his bare feet. There had been individual drawers inside the cold room. He hadn’t felt inclined to look inside, but that was before he realized he would need shoes.
But first, there was one more room within the morgue that he hadn’t checked out. He swung the door wide. Nobody was inside. The floor was tiled. There was a metal table identical to the one he’d been sleeping on in the cold room. In the corner was a machine with tubes…embalming equipment used to replace blood with chemicals. He’d done enough research over the years to know what went on in places like this. This particular morgue was immaculate. There were lotions, disinfectants, hand sanitizers, and boxes of gloves on every shelf. A scale hung from the ceiling. On the table was a standard white mortuary tray made of fiberglass with the block that would be placed beneath a corpse’s head to keep it above the chest and prevent purging. The sink in the corner looked more like a toilet and was used to drain blood and fluids. Steel bins filled with tools, medical waste bins, and crates took up the rest of the area. It was hard to imagine working here day in and day out.
Back in the lobby, he found a woman’s purse on the desk. Said female was still pounding on the door and making a lot of noise for one small woman. Every once in a while she sprinkled in words like die, jail time, and asshole.
Ignoring her, he fished around inside her bag and shoved her car keys into the pocket of his lab coat. According to her I.D., her name was Angela Chack. She was five-foot four, blond, a hundred and twenty pounds, thirty-one years old…today. That little tidbit of information made him feel a tinge of guilt, an emotion he didn’t have time for. Although he had plenty of money in his account back home, he wouldn’t be able to touch it until he found a way to prove his innocence. Until then, he would have to borrow money from Angela Chack, starting with the fifty-three dollars and change he found in her wallet.
Something vibrated.
It was her cell phone.
A man’s picture flashed on the screen along with the name Rob. Boyfriend? He put the phone to the side and finished going through her things. No gun. No pepper spray or weapons of any sort. She could keep her purse.
Ding.
He looked at the phone again. A red dot appeared next to messages. He didn’t like snoops, but he figured it would be a good idea to learn anything he could about Angela Chack, since she would be coming along for the ride. He had a list of people he needed to talk to, starting with a certain defense lawyer in California whom he intended to have a heart–to-heart with.
Her friend Rob, with his perfectly combed hair and paisley bow tie, looked like a douche. “Angela,” the voice message began, “please answer my call. I’m sorry about what happened. I never meant for you to find out about Christine and me—at least not like that.”
Jason winced.
“I know you’re not the emotional type—you’re probably fine—but I need to hear your voice so I know you’ll be okay. Oh, and happy birthday, Angi.”
Jason shook his head. That was painful to listen to. He turned off the phone,
since he didn’t want anyone tracking her whereabouts, then slipped it into his pocket.
Chapter Four
Angela rubbed her arms as she paced the room, trying to keep warm.
He’d been gone for fifteen minutes before she finally heard the door being unlocked. She grabbed the scalpel and turned to face the criminal. He was no longer naked, which was a relief. He now wore an old pair of overalls and a lab coat that was a size too small. He looked ridiculous.
“Take my car and go,” she told him. “I won’t tell a soul, I promise.”
“Not going to happen.” He walked toward the drawers at the other side of the room and opened one up. “You’re coming with me.”
“What are you doing?”
He shut the drawer and opened the next. “When do these people get clothes put on them?”
“Not until its time for the viewing.”
He shut the drawer and turned toward her.
She stuck the scalpel out in the air in front of her. “Stay away.”
He let out a grunt as he marched forward, took hold of her wrist, and made her drop the blade.
Now she was scared. She didn’t want to die. “What are you going to do with me? Please don’t rape me.”
He rolled his eyes. “I need you to shut up and do as I say.”
“And you won’t hurt me?”
“Put it this way. If you scream or try to run, I’ll be forced to do something about it.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. He meant business. She was in shape, but she was certainly no match for this man. With a good solid grip on her arm, he leaned over and picked up the scalpel from the floor, then dragged her through the building and out to the car, where he shoved her into the passenger seat. Pulling the surgical tape from his pocket, he began to wind it around her wrists and ankles. After he was finished with that, he buckled her seatbelt and wound tape around the belt’s connection, making sure she wouldn’t be able to jump out of the car once they started down the road.
