Dangerous to Touch

Equally embarrassed, Detective Lacy had made her excuses, leaving Sidney to complete whatever sinister task Lieutenant Cruz had in store for her. They stopped in front of a heavy door marked Morgue.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head.

“Oh, yes,” he countered. “You’re going to use that psychic touch on Candace Hegel.”

“No,” she repeated, shivering. This morning’s chill was back with reinforcements.

“I still have that arrest warrant, if all else fails,” he warned.

“Have you ever heard of a body cavity search, Miss Morrow? It’s very invasive, I assure you. Especially for someone as sensitive as you.”

Fury washed over her. “You are such a bastard,” she said.

A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he made no reply as he unlocked the door. Leading her into the depths of the cavernous interior, he located a metal locker and pulled out the horizontal drawer. Before she could turn away, he unzipped the body bag.

Sidney felt the color drain from her face.

“What do you want? Her hand?” With callous indifference, he opened the bag further, exposing a woman’s head and upper torso.

It was Sidney’s first glimpse of death.

Candace Hegel’s attractive features were slack, robbed of beauty, devoid of expression. Her naked chest was bisected with a hideous, Y-shaped incision, and with no oxygenated blood pumping through her body, her skin was strangely discolored. Her lips were dark and her areolae an odd purplish-gray. She looked…cold.

Taking the corpse’s pale, limp hand away from her side, Marc held it out toward Sidney, his expression inscrutable.

Her eyes filled with tears as she pressed the dead flesh between her two palms.

With no warning, cold enveloped her, encompassed her, consumed her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Pain exploded inside her head, a quick flash, and she sank heavily into the darkness.

Marc caught her as she fell.

He couldn’t believe she’d actually held her breath until she passed out—what kind of grown woman would resort to such extreme measures? Laying her out on the floor carefully, he reevaluated her motives. Maybe she was just a sad, lonely basket case, one who truly believed she had special powers.

However she’d come by her information, he couldn’t imagine her hurting anyone, and she didn’t deserve to be treated this way. He rarely used cruelty as an investigative technique, and had to admit his motivations for doing so now were more about his personal bias than about her.

In his opinion, psychics were little better than vultures, picking on the bones of the bereaved. Because of people like her, his mother was still trying to communicate with his father via the spirit world. She couldn’t let go of him, a man who hadn’t been worthy of her affection while he’d been alive.

It drove Marc crazy, thinking about all the time she spent chasing ghosts. Walking down dark alleyways and being ushered into back rooms. Paying money in exchange for lies.

Clenching his jaw in annoyance, he stared down at Sidney’s chalk-white face, waiting for her to resume breathing. She didn’t. After falling unconscious, the body’s natural inclination was to kick up the oxygen, yet she lay there, as quiet as Candace Hegel’s corpse.

What the hell?

Her pulse was visible, throbbing delicately in her slender neck. While he watched, it slowed, then stopped altogether.

Muttering a curse, he leaned over her prone form to give her two quick breaths. Her lips were soft and cool, completely slack. If this was a trick, he was buying it hook, line and sinker. He checked her pulse, couldn’t find it, panicked and gave her two more breaths.

Gasping, she lurched forward, clutching her chest.

Weak with relief and stunned to the core, he lay stretched out on the ground beside her, placing a hand over his own heart, which was knocking hard against his ribs.

“What happened?” she wheezed.

“You died.”

“Oh my God.”

“He didn’t save you,” Marc asserted. “I did.”

She leaned to one side and wretched pitifully, her shoulders shaking.

Marc put Candace Hegel back in place, folding her arms across her chest with careful reverence and zipping up the body bag. His hands were trembling as he grabbed some paper towels for Sidney and a plastic cup of water.

She accepted his tepid peace offering in silence, dabbing at her damp mouth. “Why did you do that?” she asked after a moment, her huge gray eyes swimming with tears.

He looked away, hating the reflection of himself he imagined there. “Because I’m a bastard, just like you said.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

His gaze jerked back to her face. He’d just forced her to hold hands with a dead woman, and she was apologizing to him? “Don’t worry about it. It’s true across the board.” He watched her take a small sip of water. “So what did you see?”

“Nothing. It was just…black.”

Bleakly he wondered what she’d see in his soul. “I’ll take you home,” he offered.

“I have to get back to work,” she argued.

“You just died, woman! Take the afternoon off.”

She chuckled weakly. “I don’t have anyone to cover for me.”

Marc stared down at her in disbelief, frustrated with the entire situation. He couldn’t decide what he thought about her, and that was a complication he didn’t need. No way she was legit. So what the hell was she?

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You’ll find the real killer.”

“Are you a prophet, too?”

“No,” she said with a rueful smile. “I was just trying to be supportive.”

Although he was wary of misplaced kindness, he couldn’t resist smiling back at her. “Don’t you think you can call me Marc now? After all we’ve been through?”

“Okay,” she said, taking his proffered hand. “And I’m Sidney.”

Ignoring the burst of warmth in her eyes, and the matching sensation in the middle of his chest, he helped her to her feet.

At Vincent Veterinary Clinic, Marc attached a GPS tracking device to the chassis of Sidney’s pickup truck while she went inside to get Blue. When she came out, mangy-looking hound in tow, both dog and woman regarded him with mistrust.

“Can you take some time off tomorrow?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets.