“Sounds like you have your hands full.” Minka wanders closer and sits on my thigh. She doesn’t ask. Doesn’t wait for me to shuffle back or make more room. She doesn’t turn it into a thing for people to discuss. She just wraps her arm over my shoulder and breathes a little easier when I set my hand on her hip. “I’d understand if you were simply too busy for me now.” She presses her fist to her heart. “It won’t be easy, but I think I’ll be okay.”
“Like I said—” Cato lays a noisy kiss to the very middle of Zora’s forehead. “I’m man enough for all of you. Eventually, Christabelle, Zora, and even Mary will return to New York.” He lowers the baby and glances across. “Then it’s just me and you again. And him,” he drawls, looking me square in the eyes. “I suppose.”
MINKA
“Ihave an update on Donna Beecroft, Chief.” In a white lab coat and with her hands tucked securely in the pockets, Doctor Flynn hovers by my floor-to-ceiling windows and peeks out at a city buzzing with Monday morning traffic. She was employed at the George Stanley long before I was, but she was smart enough to remainjusta medical examiner. The type who follows the rules and goes home at the end of a shift. The kind who gets to leave her work at the office and enjoy her weekends off.
I… foolishly aspired for more.
I thought my plan to become Chief Medical Examiner was something to celebrate. A promotion. A prestigious title. Responsibility I would thrive within.
Now, I realize I might’ve been the dumbest one of us all.
“That was the old woman who passed downstairs last week, right?” Doctor James Kirk—not of the Star Trek fandom—waits by the two-seater couch. But he doesn’t sit. “Her husband passed away in the street. MI.”
“Yeah.”The one I tore my knees up for while I was trying to save him.I meet Flynn’s eyes. “Update, please?”
“Ironically, the autopsy shows her aortic valve was basically ground beef, possibly a result of the car accident. Everyone was so focused on her husband dying, and she was caught up in her grief… I have no doubt she felt pain in her chest. But she probably considered it a broken heart.”
“Kinda was, in a way.” Doctor Raquel lounges on the couch, dressed in a cargo-pockets-on-the-side skirt, black boots, and a black tank top, all partially hidden under a crisp white coat. It’s a look. One she gets away with, considering she almost never has to leave her lab or talk to real humans. She especially never has to talk to the families of the deceased. “Her husband died. She had a broken heart—literally. And now she’s with him, skipping into the afterlife and enjoying that pie she intended to bake for him.”
“A romantic notion.” I bring my focus back to Flynn. “Have they been transferred to the funeral home?”
“Last I heard, yeah. I believe they’re having a joint showing and a same-day funeral. They’ve got family coming from out of town for it.”
“Good. That’s…” I draw a deep breath. “That’s good. She didn’t want to live without him, so I guess it all worked out. Doctor Kirk? What’s on your slab this week?”
He blushes. The poor, young doctor has no clue how to deal with a female—any female—let alone an entire room filled with them, turning their attentions his way.
“Y-yeah, Chief. I had the weekend off, and tied up my last case Friday afternoon, pending tox. MV accident. Male driver, female passenger. I was assigned the female, while Doctor Torres took the male.”
Nick Torres drops his chin in acknowledgment. “Male victim. Reckless driving, by the looks of things. Rapid tests came back indicating a high concentration of alcohol in his system. Samples are with tox. My guy suffered blunt force trauma to the face after he plowed his car into a tree. Took him about ten minutes to die, according to the police on scene.”
“Female vic was ejected from the car,” Kirk continues. “Face first through the windshield. Instant death. No alcohol or drugs were detected in her system. She leaves behind a four-year-old son. The driver was her boyfriend, but he was not the father of the child. Patient’s parents flew in from Colorado on Friday afternoon and liaised with child protective services and, as far as I’m aware, will assume custody of the child. I have no bodies stacked up on my table at this time, but once you delegate whatever arrived over the weekend, I’ll be all set.”
“Same,” Doctor Torres murmurs. “I’m clear and awaiting a new assignment.”
“Me, too.” Doctor Flynn raises her hand.
“Everyone is so organized.” I settle against the edge of my desk, taking a little weight off my knee and folding my arms while I consider what comes next. “Alright. Unfortunately for us, there was a mass casualtyevent on the freeway about…” I glance up at the clock on the wall. “An hour ago. Every lane in both directions has been shut down. Eight or nine cars are piled up, and according to what I heard on the radio, a tandem-trailer semi truck was involved, too. Jackknifed itself tryingnotto hit the existing pile-up.”
“Did he succeed?” Raquel questions. “Or did he wipe the whole lot of them out like bowling pins?”
“Rolled his truck,” Catlin inserts, nibbling on her bottom lip. “They were reporting about the pile-up on the news when the truck came screaming along the freeway. I guess he panicked when he realized he’d run out of room. Braked, turned, rolled. It was literally playing out live on television. We’ve got our work cut out for us today.”
“What was the truck hauling?” Raquel presses. “Teddy bears, right? Definitely nothing flammable.”
“Not teddy bears.” I scratch my chin and work to hide the smile creeping across my lips. “But nothing flammable, either. It was a refrigerated storage truck headed for the grocery stores.”
“So we’ve got cold cuts littering the freeway,” Torres quips. “Too bad it’s hotter than hell out there. If this happened in the winter, I could swing by on my way home after work and fill my freezer. Do you know how much a T-bone steak costs these days?”
“No. I can’t say I do.” And that realization, after spending the first twenty-seven years of my life counting pennies and worrying about having enough for next month’s Factor, almost takes my breath away.
Marrying Archer has changed my life. And he’s so smooth with it all, so freakin’ subtle, I’ve hardly had a chance to notice. Because it’s not always luxury SUVs and four-story mansions. Sometimes, it’s just never needing to go to the grocery store, because the fridge is somehow, magically, never empty.
Pushing away from my desk, I circle around and sit in my chair, tapping the mouse to fire up my computer screen. Then, I go to my emails and start delegating. “We have six new bodies stacked up from the freeway incident, plus four others from the weekend that Doctor Patten didn’t have time to work through. That makes ten, and seeing as how there are five of us available, I say we take two each and see how we go. It’s a fresh new week, which means unattended deaths will pile up in the next few hours when folks don’t turn up to work and alerts are sent out. I’ll delegate those as they arrive. Work your two, and if something more urgent pops up, we’ll reshuffle. Questions?”
“Yeah.” Raquel thrusts her hand in the air, a teasing grin quirking up atthe side. Then her bright blue eyes flicker to my office door. “Is there a reason the Secret Service is staring at us, or…?”
