Accidentally Dead, Again

by Dakota Cassidy

  Did they have a king-sized bed in O-Tech’s cafeteria?

  “Not that Sam, Phoebe,” Nina chastised, though her tone wasn’t gruff. Placing her hand on Phoebe’s shoulder, she squeezed it. “Picture the Sam who’s inside O-Tech right now—exactly where you want to be. He’s sitting at one of the tables, waiting for you. Can you see that Sam?”

  And like when she’d landed in her kitchen, though she hadn’t paid attention to the detail of it, the texture and feel of it, due to how frightened she’d been, she was just there. The darkness enveloped her, slithering over her skin like a sensuous lover, and when her eyes opened, she was in the cafeteria of O-Tech.

  So neener, neener, neener, Home Depot.

  Her eyes scanned the large room with its long buffet where the food was kept warm, and the cash register at the end of it. Picnic-style tables lined the walls and smaller, more intimate tables sat in clusters of twos and threes. As her eyes fully adjusted, she had to keep herself from gasping. Her vampire vision still astounded her, and it was an effort to not become startled each time she realized she could see in the dark.

  “Phoebe?”

  In her excitement, she launched herself at Sam, wrapping her legs around his waist and throwing her arms around his neck. “I did it!” she whisper-yelped against the knit fabric of his mask.

  He tilted his head back while his strong arm braced her spine. “Nice job, Ninja Barbie,” he teased.

  Her legs went slack immediately, instantly embarrassed that she’d thrown herself at him. She slid down the hard length of his body, her eyes focusing on the top of his pecs encased in a black turtleneck. “So what’s next?”

  Sam pulled his phone from his back pocket and scrolled to the picture they’d taken of the building’s specs. “First we let Nina in, then we split up and search every corridor—every door—and we use our super speed to do it. In and out. Though, I gotta say, even though I’ve said it before, I’ve been all over O-Tech, and unless there’s something hidden that I somehow missed, I doubt we’ll find anything.”

  He’d been voting down this venture from the get-go, and the more he assured them he hadn’t missed some secret passageway, the more Phoebe had to wonder if they’d offended his sensibilities. Because he sure didn’t love the idea that he could have missed something.

  Phoebe put her hand on her walkie-talkie, preparing to find a window they could open for Nina to let her in. “Well, that’s why we’re all here. So we can give it a thorough once-over.”

  “Gigantor, this is Big Mouth. Let’s do this, and do it now. Find a window.”

  Phoebe was the first to whip out her walkie-talkie, putting it to her mouth and pressing the talk button. “Roger that, Big Mouth.”

  The static crackled before Nina responded, “Shut the fuck up, Barbie.”

  Sam took her by the hand and pulled her out of the cafeteria, pointing up at a camera as they pushed through some double doors and headed out into the hallway that led to the basement stairs where they’d hoped to let Nina in.

  They flew along the staircase, stopping short at the janitor’s office where Sam claimed there was a window he’d once seen the janitor, Herb, blowing smoke from. She mentally crossed her fingers it was a window they could gain access to without having to break it.

  Sam popped the door with ease and not too much damage to the door’s handle, and shoved it open.

  Her eyes flew past the bucket and the mop to the window where Nina’s pale, beautiful face floated before them. Sam flipped the locks on it, and twisted the bolt, popping open the window and letting Nina climb through. She hopped down onto the desk below and jumped to the floor like a pale gazelle.

  “Okay—I’ll take the south wing. Sam, you go north. Powder Puff takes the east. We’ll all meet up in the west wing if no one finds anything. And fucking remember, you see anything, anything at all—or anyone—you walkie-talkie me. No taking chances. No bullshitting around. I’ve got a serious grip on my strength. You two—not so much. Got it?” she inquired, her eyes dark and serious.

  Phoebe nodded, turning away from them to dig her phone from her pocket to look at the picture of the plans for the eastern section of O-Tech, forgetting her fear for a moment and focusing solely on getting this over with.

  Just as she made her way to the door, Sam’s hand clamped on her shoulder. Eerily cool of palm, it still made her knees weak and her stomach jolt in excitement. “Phoebe, be careful. Please.”

  Her hand found its way to Sam’s and she let her fingers wrap around his for a brief moment. The cool digits soothed her, calmed her, and with that, she smiled beneath her mask. “You, too. Both of you,” she whispered before she slunk out of the janitor’s office and took a hard right, heading for the eastern staircase.

  Alone.

  Shaking off her rising anxiety, Phoebe slipped through the door and flew up the stairwell, reminding herself along the way—she wasn’t exactly helpless here. She did have superhuman strength.

  And that was a good thing, too, because wouldn’t it just figure she’d run into a security guard.

  One who wasn’t supposed to be making his rounds for another fifteen minutes.

  How unfortunate.

  SAM sped up the northern staircase, pulling out his gun, one that had been tucked securely in his sock, and scanned the hallway through the glass window in the door. Tucking his piece to his chest with both hands, he slipped inside and plastered himself to the wall while his mind kicked into overdrive.

  Fuck if he could talk those two hardheaded women into hearing a single thing he’d said about O-Tech. He’d worked here for three months. There was nothing to find.

  And until he’d been bitten by a vampire, that’s what all his reports had said. It was also the reason he’d agreed to go along with this batshit crazy plan of Nina and Wanda’s. No one could get hurt if the worst that could happen was they’d end up in cuffs.

  O-Tech was as exciting and worthy of an in-depth undercover investigation as a shoe factory. Yet, here he was. He couldn’t very well have discouraged Nina and Phoebe with too much insistence or they’d have become suspicious.

  At all costs, don’t blow your cover, Agent McLean. You’re there as a plant to be sure everything’s on the up-and-up while you catch your breath, were the last words he’d heard before he’d gone in as Sam McLean, entomologist. All of which was true. He was Sam McLean. And he had once been an entomologist.

  An entomologist who’d been seeking some respite from the crazy. So he’d jumped at the chance to take a job that probably wouldn’t involve anything more dangerous than a microscope. He hadn’t found a single thing about human testing anywhere in O-Tech. But … What happened to him could well have been a result of some experiment. Jesus. It made sense. It made sick sense.

  If someone at O-Tech was testing some diabolical serum, powder, pill, whatever on humans, the O-Tech employees were damned good actors and actresses, because he hadn’t witnessed even a hint of foul play. Nothing suspicious.

  And he knew foul play. He’d seen plenty of it in his career.

  In fact, just before the organization had been ready to pull him out for lack of discovery, he’d had the encounter with the strange woman and found himself a vampire, and he’d been stalling ever since. He’d bullshitted his way through three calls now, claiming he wanted to be as thorough as possible in an effort to keep them at bay.

  Which was total horseshit, Sam thought as he rounded a corner and slid past one of several labs at O-Tech. Though stalling the organization meant buying time for himself and his new dilemma, it also reminded him he couldn’t drag this mission out any longer without doing exactly what he didn’t want to do. Arouse suspicion. It was time to call in and ask for some leave.

  They’d buy it because he’d sell the shit out of his burnout from the job complaint, and the agency would close the case, letting him off the hook for a couple of weeks. Even if they did find something tonight, he couldn’t report it now. Not in his new position as Agent Vampire.r />
  But that didn’t keep him from feeling like a complete shit.

  He’d done lots of questionably moral things in his time as an agent for the FBI, and he often soothed himself that it was for the greater good. If the population at large were to know what he knew, mass hysteria would be the least of the government’s worries. If they knew what had happened to him on this assignment—he’d be as screwed as some of the cases he worked.

  In all his undercover work, he least liked deceiving people who were decent. Especially people like Nina, Wanda, and Marty.

  Good people who in some crazy, loud, totally selfless way, gave up their everyday lives to throw themselves wholeheartedly into helping others who were afraid in situations that were unreal.

  Others like Phoebe.

  No one was ever going to believe this shit back at the agency. After all the years he and his colleagues had spent hunting the unexplainable, after never solving a single one of the bizarre cases they’d investigated, after being left to scratch their heads without ever finding a definitive answer to some of the crazy they’d seen, there was this. This paranormal Pandora’s box. Who would have believed this was all real? All the leads, all the twisted shit he’d seen wasn’t just some elaborate hoax or something one of the techs could explain away with a scientific fact. It was happening, and how ironic that it was happening to him. Maybe it was the universe’s way of reminding him he’d begun to flail in his conviction that there really was something more out there?

  And now, he was a vampire, and if the agency got wind of it, protocol would have him exactly where Wanda had openly warned Phoebe she’d end up. Somebody’s guinea pig.

  That thought brought to mind Phoebe and what could happen even if they survived this death-by-decomposition.

  Sam was good at compartmentalizing—most of the time. He had quite nicely separated his duties to the agency and his emotions. He slipped into Sam the Bug guy’s role as easy as he slipped his Stetson on his head.

  He knew that guy—it was the guy he’d perfected over the years. Easygoing, affable, a little goofy. The real Sam had much darker shades to him, and those darker elements were usually what kept him from getting too involved. Though, even at his darkest, his failed one-night stand was totally out of character for him. He was on the job. He knew better. He never, ever gave in to his needs when he was on duty. But he’d been lonely. Period. Look what lonely had gotten him. A vampire and a couple of werewolves.

  And Phoebe …

  Phoebe had a vulnerability about her that, when mixed with her determination, made her one helluva sexy combo.

  He’d been instantly attracted to her—something he couldn’t claim had happened in quite this way in a very long time.

  His stab at a one-night stand had been purely physical and completely impulsive—Phoebe was something altogether different.

  It was bad timing on his part—to find himself stealing glances at her when she wasn’t looking or imagining her curvy hips beneath his. To watch her soft lips part when she was concentrating and her auburn hair curve just below her chin. No matter how often he reminded himself he was still essentially on the job, he continued to find himself easily distracted by her beauty and her humor—even in probably the worst-possible situation, she still laughed.

  And at whatever cost, Sam had to keep her not just alive, but out of the hands of the very agency he’d sworn to protect. It also meant, he couldn’t go back to the job he’d been doing for ten years.

  Then, as if things weren’t already bad enough, he was going to have to come clean to the women of OOPS.

  Right now, he was just going to be grateful that when he had to tell Nina and the others about what he really did for a living, he didn’t just have vampire in his cache of badassery. He had a black belt in karate and black ops training on his side.

  Because Nina was a badder bitch than any terrorist group as a whole he’d ever come across.

  And still, it wasn’t her violent nature that worried him.

  It was the fact that he was going to end up breaking a trust she and the others had given him without qualm.

  And that really blew some chunks.

  CHAPTER

  8

  “Breaker! Breaker-breaker one … um. Damn. I can’t remember the stupid numbers. I don’t know! Just breaker!” Phoebe huddled in a corner, pressing her lips to the walkie-talkie. “Big Mouth, Gigantor—this is Little Mouth! Do you copy?” Phoebe whispered into the walkie-talkie, fear making her words rushed as she huddled in a quivering mass of freaked out in the corner.

  Nina’s voice crackled over the instrument Phoebe had pressed to her ear like it was her lifeline. “Jesus Christ. Yes. I copy, you mindless moron.”

  Sam’s words slid into her ear, silken, and almost erotic—even in her panic, she was still able to make note of that. “Little Mouth? What’s your location?”

  “I don’t know, but … please, drop the hammer, good buddies!” she whisper-yelled. That meant get here right now, according to the CB lingo she’d looked up online so they could communicate with subterfuge. At least she hoped she’d memorized it correctly. Because no doubt, she needed someone here STAT.

  “Oh, I’m gonna drop the hammer, dingbat. Right on your airhead!”

  “Little Mouth!” Sam’s tone was urgent. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  “We got a bear!” Which meant she’d run into a security guard and/or cop. Or was that bear trap? Oh, Jesus. Her eyes flew in a wild scan of the room she’d landed in when she’d panicked after seeing the security guard. If she could still vomit, surely an ugly projectile wouldn’t have been out of the question.

  “A bear,” Nina drawled, her sarcasm rich amidst the static. “Is it Yogi or Smokey? If it’s Yogi, my apologies in advance. I forgot my fucking picnic basket. If it’s Smokey, tell him to set you the fuck on fire with those matches he collects so I don’t have to listen to you anymore!”

  “Big Mouth, shut it! Little Mouth, what’s happening?” Sam demanded, his rasping voice rough against her ear.

  “We got a John Law right outside this door!” she yelped in return.

  “Listen, Convoy, where the fuck are you? And tell me in English, Kris Kristofferson,” Nina growled, her voice full of anger and a hint of anxious.

  “I don’t know!” Phoebe yelped. “But you two better highball it or we’re gonna be in the pokey with a smoky!”

  “Gigantor? This is Big Mouth. Find her before I rip her fancy salon hair out strand by fucking strand. Ten-four, good buddy?”

  “Listen to me, Phoe, er, Little Mouth. Are you still in the east wing?”

  “I don’t know and I’m too afraid to look outside this lab.”

  “Lab? What lab, honey? There are no labs on the east side of the building,” Sam said with insistence.

  Honey? Had he just called her honey? Phoebe fought a full-on preen and tried to focus on anything but what was in the corner of the room. It would be lovely if she were afforded the time to bask in the glow that was Sam’s endearment.

  But, no—she had this to deal with. In fact, this—this was almost exactly like the time on When the World Turns when Pedro Montoya Federico Salinas had been found in a lab just like this one in an underground bunker in Old San Juan after his maniacal brother-in-law, Shawn Patrick O’Hara, put him in a coma.

  She scrunched her eyes shut. “This is definitely a lab, good buddy. There are all sorts of vials of stuff, beakers, and a microscope and needles. So many needles!”

  She could almost see Sam shake his handsome head in disbelief. “Okay. Stay calm. Is there a door to the lab? Can you see out of it?”

  Phoebe slid along the wall in a crablike sweep, keeping her eyes on the door and not the thing in the corner. Pressing the button on the walkie-talkie, she nodded. “Yes. There’s a window and a big bear right outside it!”

  “What the fuck is a big bear, moron?”

  “A security guard!” she hissed, her teeth chattering.

  “How did
you get into the lab, Little Mouth?” Sam prodded, his voice coaxing.

  Oh. That. “I saw a security guard just as I came up the east side staircase. I must’ve freaked out and all I could think was I’m going to die in jail while some woman-beast with the title The Punisher or Bitch Maker beat me into doing her dirty jailhouse deeds. Not to mention, I hear the sheets in the pokey are really harsh on your skin. Then I began to think about my skin and how awful it would be if I couldn’t have my coconut oil. I rub that all over my body to keep my skin smooth and glowing. Every single night. Anyway, it just felt worse than death to me—which is shallow and vain, I know, but I couldn’t help it. And that put me here. The word death. I think. Anyway, it put me here. In this lab. With—with …” Oh, Jesus and a dead body, she just couldn’t say it.

  “With what?” Sam prompted with what sounded like strained impatience.

  Phoebe jammed a finger in her mouth to keep from screaming. She would not scream. Nina’d howl with laughter and that just wasn’t acceptable. “With something heinous!”

  “Heinous,” Nina said in dry tones from her end. “What is heinous to Fluffy Barbie? Oh, noes. I bet she just found out her favorite hair gel is used to kill off tsetse flies. Aw, Barbie haz a sad now?”

  Phoebe’s last nerve disconnected from her sanity, and after much abuse, while she huddled in a corner, she blew her wad all over her walkie-talkie. “You know what, Big Mouth? That’s enough, you mean, ornery, cranky, insulting, angry, bitch of the highest order—you can blow me! Do you hear me? Bloooow. Me. Hard! I’m sick to death of you and your put-upon bullshit. You did this to me. If it weren’t for you, I’d have left your offices and probably never looked back, because you’re a mean one, viper. I’m here because of you. You—you—you! So get the fuck off my back, you venomous bitch, and come find me, or I swear to the heavens above, I’m going to beat your ass with a sack of garlic and shower your stank with some holy water! Got that, Ghetto Barbie?” With a huff, she let go of the “talk” button and stuck her tongue out at the walkie-talkie, shaking.