Predatory (Immortal Guardians #3.5)(119)

“Did you say breather?”

I grabbed my purse and stood up quickly. “Sure, breather. It’s what everyone calls the cops in San Francisco. You know . . .” My mind raced. “They ‘breathe’ justice?” I turned on my heel. “I’ve got to go.”

I felt Pike’s hand close over my forearm and the strong warmth sent a shiver of gooseflesh all over my body. He pulled me closer and my breath caught in my throat, the tight anticipation all at once amazing and uncomfortable. His lips brushed over the part in my hair, then barely touched my earlobe. “Meet me tonight.”

My body felt like warm Jell-O as his command oozed through me. I swallowed, batting my eyelashes in that slow, bedroomy way that Elizabeth Taylor created and I mastered. “Where are we going?”

“The morgue.”

It’s official: I’ve been living with Sophie Lawson for way too long.

It’s never dark in the city. It’s also never without a population or a pulse, which was why I was wearing a form-fitting black Shoshanna Lonstein dress (I forgive her for the Seinfeld marriage debacle; we can’t always avoid the starter husband) with six-inch platform heels in blazing blue for my evening sojourn to the morgue. Besides the fact that I would never be caught dead (again) in anything velour or with a drawstring, the ensemble was a perfect cover: New Yorkers might mistake me for a socialite or a supermodel, but a morgue burglar? Not a chance.

Pike looked me up and down and despite that fact that our upcoming “date” revolved around the officially dead, his appraising grin shot a little zing down my spine. “Well you look like you’re ready to catch a killer.”

Vlad crossed the living room, gave me a once over, and muttered, “Or hepatitis.”

The Lower Manhattan City Morgue sits like a fat, ugly beehive among other government-owned fat, ugly beehive buildings.

I suppose there isn’t a lot of support of a morgue makeover.

It was easy enough to slip inside and easier still to scurry around unbidden—vampires have no scent, nor any discernible weight, which means no footsteps, no creaky floors to give us away. And also the man at the front desk was asleep.

I waved Pike through and we scurried down the dimly lit hall.

“Okay, stay out here and stand guard.”

“No way,” I said. “I’m going in. You stand guard.”

Pike sighed. “Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?”

“Look, Pike, my roommate is basically a private investigator who is dating a detective. I have inadvertently been on more stakeouts, snuck through more morgues, and flopped around with more dead bodies than all the NYPD put together.”

“I don’t know why, but I’m kind of aroused right now.”

“You’re sick.” I yanked open the storage-room door. “Stand guard.”

Inside, I was pleased to see the bodies were stored in an orderly fashion (did I mention we vamps are a little bit OCD?). I was able to find Reginald and stretch him out on one of the exam tables in record time, gingerly placing a file folder over his flash-frozen man bits—I could only investigate so many things at once. I checked out the red-purple bruises circling his neck—not entirely certain what I was looking for—and was walking my fingers toward a tiny red pinprick behind his left ear. “Interesting,” I whispered to my dead audience. The pinprick was minuscule and could have been a broken blood vessel or a mole for all I knew, but I knew how to find out. I pulled Reginald’s file and did a quick scan. The bruises were listed, as well as a hernia scar, a hair weave, and a little tattoo on Reginald’s derriere. There was no mention of the pinprick.

I left Reginald laid out and went to find Emerson. She wasn’t listed on any of the drawers and I gulped, staring at the heavy metal door for the “overflow” body storage. There are very few things that give me the heebie-jeebies, but walking into a room where the dead are laid out and stacked like bakery goods made my stomach lurch—and not in a good way. I sucked in a nerve-steadying breath and stepped into the walk-in freezer, jamming a Gross Anatomy book in the doorway. I had seen one too many television shows where the main characters get locked in a walk-in and end up freezing to death or eating their weight in ice cream.

All my bases covered, I went to work examining the paperwork stacked on each body. I was so engrossed—or so desperate to get Emerson and get out of there—that I didn’t hear someone slyly removing the Gross Anatomy book. What I did hear was the heavy metal thunk of the door closing.

My heart locked in my throat, but I refused to let myself panic. I casually walked up to the door, certain that the giant refrigerator people had seen all the locked-in-the-freezer episodes as well, and had created some sort of snazzy trapdoor or inside lock pop.

Apparently, refrigerator people are not TV watchers.

I dug into my cle**age and yanked out my cell phone. I wasn’t entirely sure whom I’d call to rescue me from a walk-in freezer filled with people-sicles, but Vlad was usually good for the occasional rescue. I wrapped my arms around myself and hit the speed-dial button.

And nothing happened.

“No bars!” I groaned. I started to pace, staring down at my screen. Closer to the back of the fridge a few cheery bars popped up. If I held the phone above my head, I got another half. Still not enough to support a phone call.

I pressed myself as far back as I could, then eyed the stackable body shelves. If I could just get a little higher . . . I tentatively poked a foot on the edge of the lowermost platform, careful not to get anybody on my shoe. I took a step up. And then another. And then I grinned down at my phone when it decided it could make a call.