“Minka?”
“I just like to be thorough.”
Stopping at the bedroom door and handing my coffee to the police officer guarding it, I take a fresh pair of gloves from my intuitive colleague and slide the rubber onto my hands. “Chief Medical Examiner Minka Mayet, called to attend the death of Paul McGregor.” I push my hip forward to show off the badge I clipped to my belt before hastily leaving my home only moments ago. “Why is there a guard on this door, Officer, and not on the front door downstairs?”
“Because the scene past here is gruesome, Doctor.” He clears his throat, like the idea of death makes him a little queasy. “It’s really bad.”
“They tend to always be bad, Officer. This is a murder investigation, after all.”
Setting my coffee aside, the cop rests his hands on his hips and shrugs. “Just doing my job. You can enter.”
“Thanks.”
Casting a knowing glance back to Aubree, I watch as she sighs and hands her coffee to the officer, then follows me into the room.
She gasps and holds her breath for a moment, while I allow the smell of blood and death to settle deep in my lungs.
“Jesus,” she exhales. Because what lies in front of us can only be described as a massacre. “Minka…”
“Swallow it down, Doctor Emeri.”
Taking the recorder from my back pocket and hitting the button to get it started, I remain professional and detached as I move closer to study the scene.
“Blood covers almost every surface in the bedroom. What remains of the victim lays in the center of a king-size, four-poster bed.”
I step closer. Closer. And wrinkle my nose at the savagery of what lays in the middle of the room, displayed almost as though it were a platter of food to tempt.
“Victim is identified as Paul McGregor, though I’ll run further testing in-house to make certain. Four posts frame the bed, one dismembered limb tied to each post.” I reach out with my gloved hand and gently brush my fingertips across overlapped rope. “The perp—or perps—used nylon lengths. Enough binding to keep their victim helpless, but thin enough in diameter to be painful as Paul fought his restraints.”
While I speak, a shadow falls across the doorway that leads to what I assume to be a bathroom.
Where a dead body didn’t bother me, where blood-soaked rugs and dismembered limbs didn’t faze me, that movement, and the person who follows, makes my stomach drop.
The man who owns the shadow steps through the doorway and stops on the threshold, then his glare, fiery and furious, burns me where I stand.
Archer Malone is a Copeland City homicide detective, the son of a mafia killer—though he doesn’t advertise that connection. He’s the bringer of justice, the king of hypocrisy… and my lover.
Former? Current? Never again?
I have no clue.
“Doctor Mayet?” Aubree, clueless to the undercurrents of the room, steps forward and looks to McGregor. “Would you like me to ascertain time of death?”
Archer’s jaw flexes and grits. His eyes scald, and his chest, when I look at it, heaves with rage.
What was once a resting place for me is now possibly the last thing I’ll touch before he slaps restraints on my wrists and tosses me into the same cage I advocate for other killers.
He swore nothing could come between us. Nothing that happens outside the four walls of our apartments would touch what happens inside them. So I trusted him. I confessed to my crimes.
And now… he looks at me like that.
“Minka?” Aubree tries again. “Do you want me to—”
“No.” I shake my head and accept the scalpel when she offers it. “I want you to document the scene.”
Dragging my eyes away from the watchful homicide detective and his goofy partner, his opposite in every way, I make my way toward the body and do my very best to block out the knowledge that Archer Malone is watching.
That he’s near.