Lawman Lover. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ pulled it over his face. “It was…Doc.” He expelled a shaky breath. “Doc was killed.”

      Again she felt that quick flash of relief, which guilt and regret then chased away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know he was a friend of yours.”

      “Even if he wasn’t, nobody should die like that.” The older man shuddered.

      “Oh, my God—what happened?”

      Dr. Bernard sighed. “I can determine cause of death even before I do a full autopsy. Someone beat him to death. What I can’t tell you is—why.”

      “I’m sorry….”

      His eyes glistened with a sheen of tears. “Why would someone do that to Doc?”

      Maybe they had been trying to get information out of him. If they’d forced him to confess to declaring a live man dead, the coroner would probably be called out next for her brother. Her relief fled completely, leaving her tense and anxious.

      “Bob’s bringing Doc’s body in, but the warden wants me to do the autopsy on that prisoner who died this morning first,” Dr. Bernard said.

      Nerves lifting goose bumps on her skin, Macy stepped away from the drawer. “Wouldn’t the warden be more concerned about Doc?”

      “You’d think. I know I am. I just don’t know if I can autopsy him.” Dr. Bernard shook his head, his gray eyes filling with sadness. “Too bad you hadn’t gone to medical school. I could use an extra pair of hands around here.”

      “If I’d gone through medical school, you wouldn’t be able to afford me,” she teased, to lighten her boss’s mood, like she always tried to lift Jed’s spirits.

      “True. And you’re still my extra hands,” Dr. Bernard said. And as a morgue assistant, she was much cheaper than a doctor. “Did you take a look at the prisoner?”

      She nodded. “Cause of death is pretty obvious. Stab wound.”

      “So he’s dead?”

      She fought the urge to shiver. “I don’t think he would’ve let me shut him in a drawer if he wasn’t.”

      “Is that him?” He gestured toward the not-quite-shut drawer.

      She shook her head. “No. That’s Mr. Mortimer. The crematorium is coming to pick him up soon.”

      “That’s why you’re still here.”

      “I’ll wait for Elliot.” Elliot Sutherland worked at his uncle’s crematorium/funeral home, but Elliot wasn’t coming to the morgue. She had agreed to take the body to him, so that he and his band would not have to miss a gig. “And I’ll wait for Bob to bring in Doc’s body from the prison,” she offered. “You go ahead home. The autopsies can wait till morning.”

      The coroner ran his hand over his face, etching the lines even deeper. “They’re going to have to. The only cause of death I could figure out tonight would be my own. Exhaustion.”

      “Go home,” she urged.

      He offered her a halfhearted smile. “You’ve been a godsend, Macy. I’m not sure why you came to Blackwoods, but I’m really glad you did.”

      She could only nod. She would have rather been anyplace else. But she’d had no choice; she had to be close to Jed. He had no one else. And neither did she.

      SHE HAD LEFT THE DRAWER OPEN a crack, but Rowe couldn’t hear much. Her voice and the coroner’s were muted, as if drifting down to him through six feet of dirt. Despite the coldness of the temperature inside the drawer and of the stainless steel against his bare back, sweat beaded on his skin, leaving it clammy.

      Rowe fought the panic, just as he’d had to fight it while zipped inside the body bag. Jedidiah Kleyn’s plan, to stab him deep enough to make it look fatal and convince the prison doctor to declare Rowe dead, had kept him alive but that damn plastic bag had nearly killed him.

      Even though Doc had left it unzipped enough that he’d been able to draw some air, he’d had to force himself not to gasp. But then Macy Kleyn had unzipped him.

      For a moment he’d thought she was an angel. She was so beautiful with her warm brown eyes and dark hair curling around a ponytail clip. Maybe she was an angel—a fallen one who’d brought him straight to hell when she’d shut him inside the drawer.

      Although probably only minutes passed, it felt like hours. Then finally metal ground as the drawer opened and the sheet lifted from his face. He stared up—again—into those warm brown eyes. Rowe’s stomach lurched. He shouldn’t have let her shut him in the drawer where he hadn’t been able to hear what she’d said to the coroner. Had she told her boss that the prisoner was alive? Were the warden and some of his guards about to burst into the morgue and drag him back to hell?

      He reached out, grabbed the side of the metal wall and pulled out the drawer all the way. Then he sat up and swung one leg over the side. The ding of the elevator doors drifted back from the hall and had his every muscle clenching. At this hour, the morgue shouldn’t be so busy. Employees wouldn’t be coming and going. And no loved ones were coming to claim his body. She must have given him up for being alive—which was the same as giving him up for dead.

      Rowe had been betrayed. Again.

       Chapter Three

      “Jed told me I could trust you,” he said. Rowe had been a fool to believe a killer. But what choice had he had? His flimsy shiv hadn’t even fazed the muscular giant, neither had any of the trick moves he’d learned growing up on the streets of Detroit.

      He grimaced, his body aching from the well-placed blows Jed had used to subdue him. And the stab wound throbbed in spite of, or maybe because of, Macy’s additional stitches.

      If Rowe hadn’t trusted the man, he would have wound up dead—at Jed’s hands or another prisoner’s. But still he shook his head in self-disgust. Someone in his own office must have betrayed him. So trusting a stranger, even though he hadn’t really had any option, had been crazy.

      “I should have known better than to believe a prisoner professing his innocence,” he berated himself.

      “Jed is innocent, and you can trust me,” she assured him. Then she swung his leg back onto the tray and shoved him down.

      “Get back in the drawer,” she whispered, as footsteps approached with the squeak of rubber wheels rolling over tile.

      “I’ll be trapped in there,” he said, the panic rushing over him again.

      She shoved the drawer, sending it—and him—inside the cool cabinet. He hooked his toe so it wouldn’t close all the way. But she must have been satisfied, because she scrambled into the hall. The wheels ground to a halt as she breathlessly told someone, “I got it.”

      What? Him?

      Through the crack the drawer was left open, he studied the morgue, determining his escape route in case she had told the coroner the truth. But she walked back in alone—pushing a gurney.

      He waited СКАЧАТЬ