Alyssa set the folder down on the desk and opened it. She’d been waiting for the ME’s final report on the body from the landfill since getting to LA and had been frustrated it was taking so long. She knew why, of course. Dead Jane Does with no one to claim them didn’t get much priority.
She slowly flipped through the pages, looking at the photos of the woman’s body in the condition it had been found in at the dump, then after she’d been taken to the morgue. Both versions made her want to cry. How did a young, pretty girl end up in a landfill?
“You know you could have scanned all this and emailed it to me, right?” Alyssa frowned as she tried to decipher the nearly illegible notes. It would take hours to figure out if there was anything in here she didn’t already know. “You realize we do live in the twenty-first century.”
“I know, but the ME made me promise I wouldn’t make copies or let the original out of my hands. There’s some stuff in there that he doesn’t want getting out or associated with his name.”
Alyssa looked up. “Okay, now I’m definitely interested. Spill. Because I know you read it.”
Christine snorted. “It’s scary how well you know me. But let’s talk about that later because you’re going to freak when I tell you blood loss isn’t the official cause of death.”
Alyssa stared. She did that a lot lately. She hoped it didn’t make her look stupid. “How is that possible? The body was drained of every drop of blood. That has to be what killed the girl.”
“You’d think.” Christine shrugged. “But the ME discovered the true cause of death was heart failure. The blood was drained after the fact.”
Alyssa tried to grasp the implications of that. After a few moments, she decided she couldn’t. “How could she have died of heart failure? She was twenty-two years old and in good shape—at least superficially.”
“You won’t find this part in the report, but the ME thinks the girl had heart failure from being terrified for a sustained period of time.”
Alyssa hadn’t even known that was possible. “But the initial report stated there was no severe trauma, bruising, or other signs of torture.”
Christine reached over and flipped through several pages in the report until she came to a form with the outline of a woman’s body on it—half the page for the front and the other half for the back. The ME had drawn in little dots all over the place.
“The two puncture wounds in the neck were obvious, since that’s where the killer drained all the blood from,” Christine said. “But when the ME put the body under a black light, he found hundreds of small puncture wounds on the neck, wrists, forearms, shoulders, inner thighs, behind her knees, inside her ankles, stomach, hips, even her breasts. He thinks they stuck her with a large gauge needle, slowly draining her blood in small amounts at a time over the two-year period she was held, letting her heal up in between. Based on the number of puncture marks, he thinks they must have given her something to help her heal faster because it’s the only way to explain how they were able to do it. When the girl’s heart gave out, they drained the rest of the blood.”
Alyssa felt the urge to throw up. Holy crap. The girl had been slowly tortured for two years, poked with needles over and over, her blood drained from her body. Alyssa mentally reviewed everything she either knew personally about monsters, or had read, things she and her team had learned while dealing with creatures that went bump in the night. The only problem was lots of nasty things out there liked human blood. The thing that had tortured the girl could be anything.
Alyssa flipped through the rest of the ME’s report, copying down a few notes here and there as she went. She was so caught up in what she was doing she barely noticed Christine studying her from the other side of the desk.
“What?” she asked when she finally couldn’t ignore the pressure of her friend’s gaze any longer. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Nothing.” Christine’s lips curved in a sly smile. “I was just going to ask how your dinner went last night.”
“What dinner?” Alyssa asked, getting a sinking feeling she knew exactly where Christine was going with this.
The smile on her friend’s face broadened. “The dinner at the diner with that devastatingly handsome SWAT cop from Dallas—the one with the sexy British accent. I can’t imagine sitting through an entire dinner listening to a man that good-looking talk to me in that voice. I’d end up drooling on my plate.”
Alyssa’s jaw dropped. “Christine, you’re married! You can’t say stuff like that.”
Her friend laughed. “I’m just messing with you. But seriously, the guy is hot. Just because I’m married doesn’t mean I didn’t notice that. You can’t tell me you didn’t notice, too.”
She almost blushed as she remembered exactly how much she had noticed. Not to mention how good he’d smelled and how much she’d wanted him to kiss her in the diner parking lot.
“Yeah. I noticed. And yes, Zane is very attractive and easy to talk to. I’d be lying if I said he didn’t intrigue me.”
Because he’s a supernatural creature that growls and throws people around like sandbags. And oh yeah, his eyes glow yellow sometimes.She did love the color yellow.
Alyssa pushed those thoughts aside and cleared her throat. “And dinner with him was nice. Okay, it was better than nice. It was also the first time in forever that I’ve sat across the table from a man I wasn’t interrogating.”
That earned her another laugh from Christine. “Do you think the two of you might get together?”
She shook her head. “No way.”
Christine frowned. “Why not?”
It wasn’t like Alyssa could tell her she thought Zane might not be human—or that he might be as dangerous as whoever or whatever had kidnapped and killed that poor girl and tossed her in a landfill. Instead, she went with a lie Christine would most likely believe.
“I’m here working a case. I don’t have time to get involved with anyone.”
