Accidentally Dead, Again

by Dakota Cassidy

  Once more, Stinky was offended. “Well, I’m lookin’ right at it, and last I checked, my high IQ came with literacy skills.”

  He’d have to table his astonishment at hearing that name for later. It was more important to find Phoebe now. “What’s the timeline on these people entering the bogus trial?” He was hoping, in the midst of everything else, to get some perspective on how long they had before both he and Phoebe, quite possibly, died like Meredith and Raymond had.

  “A week and a half from the time Alice and Raymond entered the trial until they were of the doornail persuasion. Meredith doesn’t have an entry date—just an exit. November first.”

  The day he’d shown up on OOPS’s doorstep.

  Leaving them at best, another day until decomposition. “Who’s in on this with Hornstein, Stinky? Names. I want goddamn names.” Names so he could find the fucks and rip their throats out with his bare hands.

  “I don’t have any names yet, just the initials. TDB. No clue what they mean, either.”

  The initials on his memo pad from O-Tech. Shit. “A location where this is all goin’ down? You have one of those, Stink?”

  “Not yet. But I’m on it.”

  “So what did you find at O-Tech?”

  There was a pause, and some keyboard clicking and then Stinky said, “Now that’s the strange thing here. I didn’t find a damn thing. They’re right as rain, pal. Not a solitary blip. No files that look even a little suspicious. I can’t believe it myself, but O-Tech is legit. They really are in the business of pest control. Don’t find that often in my line of work. Can’t find a single connection between O-Tech and Dr. Crazy Train.”

  Then why had Alice Goodwin’s body been at O-Tech and why had the woman who’d shown up at Phoebe’s place been there, too? “And what did you find on Phoebe Reynolds?” Sam had to force her name from his mouth without going into a fit of rage. Yet, alerting Stinky to his involvement with Phoebe would only give him the opportunity to rat him out if Stinky needed to save his own ass.

  “She’s thirty-three. Diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. What a shitty rap at such a young age. She’s single, and marked as a possible candidate for the trial. But the funny thing about her is, she does have family. Finding them took some digging, too. Her mother and father are dead, but she has a sister—”

  “Right,” he muttered, cutting Stinky off. A sister who was going to gnaw off his limbs from the bottom up if he didn’t find Phoebe.

  Stinky must not have heard his interruption. His voice droned on with more facts about Phoebe. “Her sister’s twenty and lives in Highland Hills. You know, that facility for long-term brain injuries? But that wasn’t in her patient files. I found that by hacking into her personal PC.”

  Sam’s eyes went wide. Phoebe had another sister? Nina tugged at his arm with impatience. “Tell the dork, if he doesn’t have a location for the kid, I’m going to sniff his genius out and eat his brains. Got that, Smelly?” she yelled into the phone, stalking up and down the sidewalk.

  There was laughter from the other end of the phone. “You got a partner now, Sammy? She sounds saucy. I thought you worked alone?”

  He held up a hand to Nina to thwart her. Darnell saved him by putting one of his big paws on her shoulder and pulling her away. “No. Not a new partner. Listen, are you sure about the info you just gave me?”

  “One hundred percent. Phoebe’s sister, Penny Reynolds, was in a hit-and-run when she was ten. Got nailed on her bike right on her street. They never caught the shit stain. Kid’s paralyzed from the waist down, and suffered brain damage she never fully recovered from. Needs care twenty-four-seven, but she’s semifunctional. I found a bunch of emails from the director of the facility to Phoebe. They went back and forth about who’d take care of Penny when Phoebe couldn’t anymore because of her Alzheimer’s. This Phoebe was worried about how she’d pay for Penny’s care when she bought the farm. She’s a pretty decent chick, for the most part, not bad lookin’, either. No record other than some fighting and mandatory counseling way back in high school, and I really had to dig to find that. No tickets. Nothing. She lives in Manhattan, personal stylist …”

  Stinky’s voice warbled in Sam’s ear as he rambled on about Phoebe’s stats.

  He wasn’t the only one with secrets. But his gut assured him, Phoebe’s reasons for keeping this so close to her chest were much different than his. She’d kept Penny from Nina due to Nina’s outrage—her anger at finding out she had one sister was a lot. Two would have sent her over the brink.

  She’d done that to protect Penny until she thought it was safe enough to tell Nina. In the same way she’d kept her Alzheimer’s to herself. She was looking out for everyone concerned, revealing only what she had to in increments to consider all the emotions involved in finding out about Penny.

  This wasn’t just about saving herself, it was about saving herself so someone could always be around to look after Penny.

  Christ.

  He brought his focus back to Stinky’s voice. “Stinky! Shut up. I don’t need to know the woman’s shoe size. I need you to put a track on Phoebe Reynolds’s phone. Find it. Find it now. While you’re at it, send me everything you’ve got. All the files on the expired patients and potential candidates, every single note this freak’s written, and anything else you can get your hands on.”

  “Dude—I’m smart, but I’m software smart. I don’t know a whole lot about some of the medical crap this guy’s got goin’ on. How the hell are you going to figure out what this all means? You want me to send it to my contacts?”

  “With my degree in chemistry.” God willing. He’d gotten that degree early on in his life by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin sandwiched in between frat parties and the FBI recruiting him. “And none of your slimeball contacts. Got it? One word, you breathe wrong about any of this to anyone—I’ll find you Stinky Malone. You and your blow-up dolls.”

  “Shut. Up. So you’re not just some cowboy from Wyoming with overdeveloped trapezoids? Sammy. You been holdin’ out on me, playin’ dumb all these years?”

  “Stinky?”

  “Boss?”

  “Find Phoebe’s damn phone and call me back with a location. Five minutes.” Sam clicked the phone off with a terse finger.

  He wasn’t much for praying, but his eyes went heavenward anyway.

  Hat in hand, rain beating down on his head, Sam prayed.

  * * *

  “THAT’S her!” someone yelled from behind.

  Phoebe’s head swiveled on her neck, taking her eyes off the horror before her just before the barbarian who’d brought her here slammed into her, knocking her into the double doors, leaving her face-first on the floor.

  The screech of metal as she crashed into the wheels of the gurney, taking out two of the men in white lab coats with her, bounced off the walls of the room. Surprised howls followed suit.

  Clearly, Conan hadn’t expected her to react so quickly. At least not judging by the look of shock on his face when she grabbed the leg of a chair, brought it high over her head, and cracked it over his back.

  She smiled at the satisfying crunch the metal against his flesh made.

  But like all jarhead twits who couldn’t admit defeat, he was right back up, lunging for her while the weasel she’d tried to get information out of screamed, “She’s one of them! She’s strong, Yuri! Immobilize her! Someone get the sedative!”

  Faintly, and just before this Yuri rammed into her, wrapping his arms around her waist and hurling her into the far wall, dislocating her shoulder, Phoebe realized whatever they were getting to immobilize her had to be a cocktail specially made for vampires. They’d created something that was powerful enough to stop a vampire and it wasn’t garlic or a wooden stake?

  Badass. Sucked to be her, but badass.

  She couldn’t let them get near her with it or it was curtains.

  As the thug grabbed her by the neck and lifted her off her feet, still completely unaware he wasn’t keeping her from b
reathing, she noted her left shoulder sagging awkwardly. Her eyes darted to the victim of these animals, fearing he’d be hurt in this weird science version of the WWE.

  Someone rushed in and wheeled him out as quickly as the thought came to Phoebe—enraging her further. Just who in the fuck did these people think they were?

  Rage rather than fear motivated her next move. She went slack, closing her eyes and playing a pretty decent imitation of a rag doll, if she did say so herself. Okay, so it wasn’t the coveted role of Sandy in Grease, but sticks and stones.

  The beast that smelled like an elephant’s ass chuckled. Just like all good trained seals do when they think they’ve slain the dragon, er, vampire. And she let him revel in his manliness, dangling limp and feigning helplessness.

  That is, before her eyes popped open and she flicked his large, red nose with her good hand. “If your big, greasy paw leaves a mark on my neck, so help me Jesus, it’ll be your head. I bruise easily, thug.”

  His beady black eyes, smushed between his nose and his forehead, opened wide, confused. “What the hell?”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes in disgust, letting her good shoulder sink. She plucked at one of his fingers, bending it back in the same fashion she had Dr. Nutball’s. “Vampire, stupid. We don’t breathe. As in, so much air between your ears you have genuine cyclonic value, you’re wasting precious energy here, Yuri. I know you’ll find this a big, fat disappointment, but this doesn’t hurt.” She pointed to his hand and gave him her win-a-client-over-with-charm smile. “Not even a little. Neither does the shoulder you so carelessly dislocated. And yet, I have to ask myself. What would your mother say about you beating up a woman?”

  But he didn’t have time to answer with her knee lodged in his groin. She didn’t even need to brace herself to get enough leverage when she swung upward. He crumbled like a fallen house of cards, his scream of pain ringing in her ears when she fell to the ground, hitting it with the slap of her bare feet.

  She was up in half a second; head down, she scooped up the clipboard just outside the door and made a break for it, leaving behind two unconscious men in white lab coats with the hope she’d find the man they had on the gurney. How she’d get him out of here or if he could even be saved was something she couldn’t dwell on.

  Finding him was.

  Stopping but for a moment, without thought, she backed up against a wall, placing her good hand on her mangled shoulder and slamming it against the hard cement. The sharp crack didn’t even make her wince.

  Behold the wonder of vampire.

  Then she was running again, racing in the opposite direction, away from the room the doctor held her in and down another corridor, where she flew past room after vacant room. Where the hell had they taken him? Her eyes skittered across the dank landscape before her, locating an exit.

  The cement tore at the skin of her feet when she skidded to a halt in front of the door, but she didn’t feel it. The only thing she was feeling was the rising panic at her inability to locate that poor man.

  Flinging the door open, she lunged up three flights of steps to the next available door and, without thinking, burst through it, ripping her skirt.

  She looked down in disgust, slapping her hands over her thighs. Goddamn it all. As if trying to escape this hovel wasn’t bad enough, she had to do it while her ass hung out, too?

  The indignity.

  Vaguely, as she tallied up the damage to her personal items—phone, purse, a hundred bucks in said purse, manicure trashed, shoes left like orphans in some parking garage, and now her skirt—Phoebe realized someone owed her a makeover.

  And again, as with all things shiny, she was so distracted by her torn skirt, and the peek of panties the rip revealed, she lost her focus.

  So, so, so much bad when you were the hunted.

  Four enormous men formed a barrier in the middle of the white-tiled hallway she’d just entered, and they didn’t look like they were lining up to do the electric slide. In front of them stood the doctor, a gun of some sort in his hand, but it wasn’t the kind of gun you saw on television. It was huge—like a child’s water gun, with a round green nozzle attached to the end of it. More than likely, whatever was in that gun meant to immobilize her would have a spray effect, thwarting her from rushing at them.

  Her eyes assessed the situation, giving them a fierce once-over. And from out of nowhere, she couldn’t help but think this was a lot like the time Arizona Caulfield from Mercy General found herself locked up in a psyche ward because the dastardly, revenge-seeking Victor Hemp found out she was his half sister. A half sister who was due to inherit a fortune unless she was diagnosed mentally incapacitated.

  Of course, that meant Victor would get everything and Arizona would be left in the dirty, state-run hospital for the rest of her life with no one to save her. Arizona made a daring attempt at escape, only to end up dead after a heated chase, resulting in her tripping over a chair and falling through a window ten stories up.

  In reality, the actress who played Arizona had just wanted off the show. Rumor had it, the powers that be wouldn’t indulge her fetish for expensive champagne and the request that only yellow M&M’S adorn her dressing room each day.

  But still. This was a lot like that. A. Lot. And Arizona was a really nice name.

  “Phoebe? I’ll give you one last chance to surrender. You know there’s no way out, right?” Dr. Handsome called. He held out his hand, and smiled—serenely—patiently.

  Her eyes darted in a mad attempt to find an escape. “You ripped my skirt,” she accused in an effort to stall. That’s right, Phoebe, make ’em sweat Tim Gunn style.

  The lovely blond man with no name clucked his tongue. “Would it make you happy if I offered to buy you a new one?”

  Well, yeah. It had run her forty bucks. She really had to lay off the felonious acts when she was wearing something so cute. Phoebe pouted with a coy puckering of her lips. “Maybe. And what about my shoes? My phone? Do you have any idea the money they charge when you have to replace a phone? It’s like a mortgage payment.”

  He inched closer, his footsteps soft. “I promise to look into it.”

  Before or after he hacked her open while he dispersed social niceties? She fought a shiver of fear, squaring her shoulders. Shoulders that ached from being slammed against the wall.

  Wait, that couldn’t be. She wasn’t supposed to feel pain anymore. She’d just jammed her shoulder back into place like she was as tough as any member of the Vampire Fight Club.

  Oh, wait! Maybe it was that phantom pain Marty had talked about. She only thought she felt it. Still, it wouldn’t make her sad if someone were kind enough to grab her a bottle of that delicious mint and vanilla massage oil she could only find at Bed Bath & Beyond and give her a good rubdown.

  Before she could again find something shiny to distract her mentally, several things happened at once. Four large, hygienically dysfunctional men were rushing her and Dr. Loon was aiming his super vampire gun.

  At point-blank range.

  With a will of their own, knowing there was nowhere to run, instead of facing her attackers, her uncooperative eyes slid closed.

  And then it was done.

  SAM jammed a finger to the touch screen on his phone and bellowed, “Stinky? That was five minutes and twenty-eight seconds. I got some new asshole to chew!”

  The pop of gum snapped in Sam’s ear. “You know what would solve all your problems, Sam? Herbal tea. Chamomile, maybe. You’re always so wound up.”

  “Speak, and it better be good!” he demanded with a roar.

  Static crackled over the line. “You’ll never believe it.”

  “And you’ll never believe the damage I can do to your esophagus with just one blow.”

  “She’s at O-Tech, dude.”

  His look of disbelief alerted Nina and Darnell, who’d been pacing the pavement, waiting on Stinky’s call. “But you said there’s nothing going on over there. Swear to Christ, Stinky, if you’re plucking my ball h
airs, I’ll take you out in your sleep,” he snarled while precious minutes ticked away.

  “Hey, Cowboy Sam! This is not bullshit. I tracked her phone to O-Tech. If she’s still got her phone, she’s inside O-Tech!”

  Sam’s lips formed a sneer. “You’d better be right, Stinky—or it’ll be your scrawny ass!” Clenching his fist, he held on to his phone, resisting the urge to throw it when he ended the call.

  Nina was at him like some fierce mother cub. “Where the fuck is she, Sam? Is she okay?”

  Cool, Sam. Keep your cool. It’s the only way to get anything accomplished. He eyed Nina, letting warmth seep into his gaze. “I don’t know if she’s okay. I just know her phone’s at O-Tech.”

  “Hoo-boy. We got some high IQs to beat down, then, huh?” Darnell whooped, stomping his sneakered foot in a puddle.

  Nina shook her head, her wet hoodie sticking to the sides of her face. “What in the ever-lovin’ fuck is going on here? I thought your friend Smelly said there was nothing to find over there?”

  “Stinky. His name’s Stinky. And that is what he said. But if Phoebe has her phone, she’s at O-Tech. Stinky may be a greedy twerp, but he’s almost never wrong on a location.”

  Nina cracked her knuckles. “Then O-Tech it is, and I promise you, one hair on Fluffy Barbie’s head outta place, and someone’s gonna have a shitty day,” Nina said from between teeth so tightly clenched Sam wondered how she’d managed to spew the words.

  He nodded his consent.

  Just one hair was all it would take.

  One hair.

  “WANDA?”

  “Phoebe? Oh, sweet heaven, Phoebe! Where are you, honey? Are you all right? Did they hurt you? I’ll kill them myself if they put one itty-bitty finger on you!” Wanda cried.