“I didn’t. I modeled, but—”
“But now you see dead people, right?” I say dryly. “You’re too pretty to do this job. Go back to modeling.” I kneel next to the body, missing Beth right about now, who would be here if she wasn’t still in Paris, playing footsie with one of Kane’s men. He was protecting her when the Umbrella Man, Roger, targeted her. Now they’re just having fun. And I’m searching for the source of the blood.
DD, as I decide to call the supermodel medical examiner, kneels across from me and she’s still talking about all the wrong things. “Modeling was a college thing. It paid for my tuition. And you’re pretty too, you know? And from what I hear, I might see dead people, but you see killers, very, very clearly.”
My gaze lifts sharply to hers, with what feels like some sort of Society-driven insider information. As if she knows I’ve killed. They know I’ve killed. They sent my first kill to me. The man who raped me and meant to kill me, but Kane got back into town early. He saved me, pulled him off me. No. I saved me. I killed that monster. And then Kane buried the body or whatever he did with it. I open my mouth to ask her if Pocher placed her in my path, but bite back an attack. Sometimes I do like to play it smooth. “Don’t hit on me. I’m not into girls, but more power to you and all.” For me, that’s smooth.
She laughs nervously. I’m good at making people nervous. It works for me, especially if I think they’re linked to the Society. Nerves make people ramble. It makes them tell me things they don’t mean to tell me. “Neither am I,” she says, “but Jesus, you really are intense.”
I don’t comment. I’m back to looking for the source of the blood, which seems to be some sort of eruption in the woman’s throat. “Poison?” I glance at DD again. “Or an aneurysm in her neck?”
“I won’t know until I get her back to the lab, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” She waves a gloved finger above the rupture. “This doesn’t read like poison or an aneurysm doing this. It’s almost as if she had a sharp object explode from the inside out.”
My brows dip. “An explosion from the inside?” I glance at the water bottle and back to her. “Like she swallowed needles or something along that line?”
“A pin wouldn’t cause this kind of rupture. A razor would be too big to swallow. Like I said, I need to get back to the lab and see what I find.”
“When will you do the autopsy?”
“Friday.”
“I want to be there.” I reach in my bag at my hip and snap up a card that I hand to her. “Text me the time and details.”
“Of course.” She reaches in her jacket and hands me her card. I snap a photo. “Keep it,” I say, already keying her number in my phone with a contact that reads: DD the Model.
“Special Agent Love.”
I glance behind me to find a uniform standing under the archway. “Kane Mendez is asking for you.”
I don’t react. I’m not shocked. I doubt anyone on this island is shocked that Kane is here or anywhere he wants to be. He all but owns the island and most people attribute that to the cartel that his father, and now his uncle, thankfully still runs. At one point, he went MIA and the cartel was immediately in turmoil and on Kane’s doorstep. Not good, when law enforcement wants to prove Kane runs it, not his uncle. Until recently, that included my brother. I’m pretty sure burying a body with Kane ended that part of our family drama.
And yet, Kane respects my badge, sometimes more than I do, which means if this wasn’t urgent, he’d wait for me to come home. He knows something I need to know.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell the uniform and a niggle in my mind has me turning back to the body. I study the victim, the woman who can no longer speak to me, but yet, she is. The dress is bothering me. It’s loose, too big, as if it’s not zipped up in the back. I walk around the body and kneel to find it is in fact zipped up.
North walks back into the room and I glance up at him. “Either that dress is not hers, or it’s not been altered yet,” I say, standing again. “Find out which.” I don’t give him time to reply. I walk past him and head for the exit, fully intending to leave him behind.
CHAPTER SIX
North is going south fast.
My booties and gloves go in the trash by the door, and I jog down the steps, the snow gone for now, but the cold bitingly present. So is North. He catches up with me. He just won’t go away, and says, “Good catch on the wedding dress.”