Chapter 6

?

A marylis stayed in her office and worked through the rest of the day. Such a weird energy filled the place now. She kept looking up, looking around, looking for something off, but everything seemed calm. Several times Dr. Cox had walked by, asking if she was okay.

Every time she’d nodded, then smiled and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. How about you?”

One time he shrugged and admitted, “It feels weird.” Then he slapped the doorframe and walked away. But he was right. It did feel weird. All of this felt weird. Like something brewed underneath, a sense of waiting, a sense of something coming down the pipeline that they wouldn’t like. Still, it was there in front of them, just not yet close enough to see.

She considered what Tristan had mentioned earlier about the possibility of whoever was a part of this coming back again. She didn’t know whether anybody would attempt to get inside the lab again or believed the material had been moved. What she did know was that she didn’t want any part of it.

She wasn’t even sure how she got involved in the first place, except that she was the one who had found the unusual USB key and had recognized it for what it was. She wondered what would have happened if that much had stayed in the realm of mystery. It might have been a good thing, or it might have been worse. Considering the information that was found on it, even the little she knew about, it was enough to keep her worried about opening Pandora’s box.

When she finally got to the end of her shift, she looked in on Dr. Cox, still working in his office, but the techs had all gone home, which seemed disturbing. She got up and entered his office and waited while he finished a call. When he got off the phone, she asked, “Are you ready to leave?”

He nodded. “We should be out of here by now, shouldn’t we?” He looked around with a sigh. “It still seems weird though.”

“The whole day has been that way, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to have it over with.”

He laughed, then suddenly looked surprised. “Have you been waiting for me to leave?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if I’ve been waiting for you to leave as much as,… uh, looking to have you leave with me,” she shared, with a wry look.

“Oh, shit, yeah. I never even thought of that. And we do have security out there, right?”

“Supposedly.” She nodded.

He grabbed his coat and asked, “When you say, supposedly , what are you thinking?”

She shrugged. “I would like to think that security is out there, but we haven’t seen anybody and we haven’t been introduced to anyone, so who knows?”

He nodded. “Let’s go. I’m ready to get home anyway.”

“You live alone?”

“I live alone,” he confirmed. “As I told you, it’s been about six months now since my wife passed. It took a long time to get used to it, but I’ve gradually gotten there. I won’t say I particularly like living alone, not after being happily married all those years”—he shook his head—“but the adjustment is freeing in a way. I just don’t know what comes next.”

“I don’t imagine any of us do,” she murmured.

“And you’re alone,” he stated point-blank. “That might be a state you would care to change.”

“Maybe,” she murmured. “I’m not exactly sure what I want to do at this point.”

“Good enough,” he replied. “We don’t have to make any decisions right away, but I’m glad you’re here. So please don’t leave this position too quickly. Finding you was hard enough.”

She chuckled. “I don’t think it was that bad.”

“Oh, it was worse than you think,” he shared. “It’s not easy to find qualified people for these positions.”

“Hell, I’m not even sure I knew what it would entail.”

“Normally it’s peaceful. We work with the dead, so how much ruckus can they cause?” he asked, half joking.

She smiled. “A lot of people just don’t understand that.”

“Nope. A friend of mine wanted to set me up on a blind date after my wife passed away, and it wasn’t that long ago,” he added, shaking his head. “I guess she didn’t tell the poor lady in question what I did for a living. So, when she heard, she must have been pretty freaked out because she went to the washroom and never came back.”

Amarylis frowned in shock and then burst out laughing. “On the other hand,” she pointed out, “she may have saved you a lot of heartache from going down a pathway with her, only to find out later she couldn’t handle it. At least this way you got an honest response.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “but wow. What a response was that? I tell you that my ego took quite a hit.”

She was still chuckling as she shook her head, while they slowly walked toward the exit. “That wasn’t on you,” Amarylis said. “That was on your friend.”

“Maybe, and she did apologize profusely the next day, surprised that her girlfriend was still pretty freaked out about the whole thing.”

“It’s not as if you are a serial killer. Somebody needs to do this job and do it properly. While it takes a special person to handle this profession, it’s nothing to be ridiculed about,” she protested. “That’s just silly.”

“That’s what I thought, but, hey, you never know what people are thinking.”

“Now you know,” she pointed out, “and she made it very clear.”

He winced at that. “I could have done with a little less clarity,” he noted. “I was pretty depressed by the time I got home, after I finally realized she wasn’t coming back.”

“And that’s the embarrassing part,” Amarylis stated. “You’re sitting there at a restaurant, waiting for somebody who never shows up again.”

“Exactly, and I haven’t been on a date since.” He tossed her a mock look. “But you, young lady, should be out on dates.”

“Ha, but not right now. Not while this mess is going on.”

“Are you sure?” he asked in a teasing voice. “That Tristan fellow seemed awfully serious about you. I can definitely predict, with some degree of certainty, that something is happening there.”

She rolled her eyes at that. “We’ll see.… He’s nice enough, but I’m not sure how much of what appears to be interest is because of his job.”

Cox’s tone went serious as he replied, “The looks I saw him cast in your direction had nothing to do with the job, but I can understand how you would want to make sure. You don’t want to end up alone at some restaurant, like me.”

She smiled. The front door loomed ahead of them. As she looked around, she frowned. “I don’t see any sign of security.”

“The guards should be inside and outside,” Cox declared, glancing around.

As they got to the front door, she pushed it open and stepped outside. Almost immediately she felt this weird sensation in the air. She hesitated, then jumped back inside.

Dr. Cox hadn’t made it outside yet. “What was that all about?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t like it.” Slowly he turned toward the door, then back to her. She nodded.

Dr. Cox frowned. “Are you sure you’re not just freaked out about what happened earlier today? It’s not as if you wouldn’t have good reason,” he pointed out.

“No, it’s not that.” She frowned, shoving her hands into her pockets as she stared outside.

“So, what do you want to do, stay here all night? Surely we must leave at some point,” Cox said in a partially joking tone.

She looked up at him. “Do you want to take a chance?”

“Not particularly,” he muttered, thinking about it. “Call that partner of yours and see if he knows anything about the security.”

She pulled out her phone and phoned Tristan.

When he answered, his voice was distracted, but he seemed happy to hear from her. “You missed me?”

She ignored him and went straight to the point. “Did you ever get security set up out here?”

“Why? What’s up?”

“I want to leave the building and had this weird feeling, so I came back inside. Now I feel like a prisoner.”

“Hang on a minute. I’ll get right back to you. And please don’t move.” With that, he ended the call.

She stared down at the phone and shrugged. “He told me to stay here, and he would get back to me.”

“Good,” Dr. Cox replied. “At least then you’ll feel better. A little bit of security goes a long way.”

“A whole lot of security,” she corrected him, “goes a lot further.” Cox just smiled at that.

When Tristan called her back a few minutes later, he stated, “I’m not getting an answer from the security guard, so hold tight. I’m on my way. Don’t leave the building. Just stay inside and keep away from the windows.”

“What if somebody else wants to come in?” she asked in a freaked-out tone.

“Don’t let them in. Not even if you see someone you know. Just confirm that the doors are locked and stay there. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She frowned at that, looked over at Dr. Cox, and repeated what Tristan had told her. “We’re to stay inside, keep away from the windows, and don’t let anybody else in no matter what.”

“What are we to do about visitors?” he asked. “It is a public building.”

“Maybe, but it is after-hours. Plus, haven’t you noticed how deserted it feels right now?”

“I have.” He nodded, looking around. “Let’s step back away from the glass doors.”

“Yeah, good idea,” she muttered, and they stepped back enough so that they were not visible from the outside. As they stood in the shadows and waited, she asked, “Is it possible that people are still after that key?”

“If anybody has reason to believe something very important is on that USB key,” Dr. Cox began, “I highly doubt they will give up so easily.”

“So, one dead body isn’t enough,” she stated bitterly.

“I think we will find the body count doesn’t matter to these people. Once you’ve killed the first time, every time thereafter gets easier.” She frowned at him, and he nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got lots of military experience myself,” he added, “and it wasn’t my thing.”

“Yet you’re still here.”

“I didn’t like the shooting part.” He chuckled at that. “I would much rather work on the bodies after the fact, which is where I’m at now.” He sighed. “You don’t forget your days dealing with the fighting, but at least now I’m happy being where I’m at.”

“I’m happy for you,” she murmured. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“No, it sure wasn’t. Not only was it not easy, sometimes those memories just never leave you.” He gave her a jaded look, shaking his head. “My wife used to say that I slept about two hours every night, but I was always surprised she thought I slept even that much.”

“It was that bad?”

“Sometimes it was.” He nodded. “Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do, and those memories roll through your head all the time, even forty years later.”

She winced at that. “That means you were there when you were very young.”

He laughed. “Signed up as soon as I could, ever the fool.” As he finished his story, headlights flashed across the front of the building.

She hesitated, waiting to see if it was Tristan, but Cox pulled her back. “We’re supposed to stay out of the way of the windows,” he reminded her.

“I was just hoping it was him.”

“If it’s Tristan, he will let you know,” Cox stated, and they waited a little bit longer.

When no phone call came, she groaned. “So, it’s not him.”

“Doesn’t seem to be. You know very well that, if it were him, he would be contacting you.”

So they waited, the minutes ticking by slowly.

Just then her phone rang. She answered it in a hurry. “Tristan?”

“Yes, it’s me. I’m just walking outside the building.”

“A vehicle shone its lights on the front door a few minutes ago,” she shared, “but we couldn’t see who it was.”

“And it could have been completely innocent too,” Dr. Cox reminded her at her side.

Tristan echoed that sentiment. “It could have been nothing, but I have not seen the security guard. I have two other men on their way as well.”

“So, what do you want us to do?” she asked. “We could go back up to our office, if you think that’s necessary.”

“It might be. Give me a few minutes.” And, with that, he hung up.

Amarylis filled in Dr. Cox. “Tristan is walking toward the front of the building and asked for a few minutes.”

“He’s probably looking for the security guard.” Cox crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Let’s hope he’s not dead too.”

She groaned. “That would be terrible.”

“Not only that,” Cox added, with a hard mocking grin, “can you imagine calling in our forensics team again?”

She shook her head. “They would not be happy.”

“No, they sure wouldn’t be, and honestly, with good reason. None of us have gotten a whole lot of sleep since this mess started,” he muttered. “We all want it to end, just not this way.”

“No, of course not,” she agreed. “Still, it seems as if you’ve got a good team here.”

“I do. I’ve been working with them for a long time, at least most of them.”

“When you say most , not everybody?”

“No, a couple guys are pretty new,” he muttered, as he gave her a look, “but new doesn’t mean bad.”

“No, it doesn’t mean bad. I just wondered who the new ones are.” When he mentioned the one that she rarely had anything to do with, she nodded. “That explains why he never speaks to me.”

“He’s only been here about a month, and then we have Adam, our newest hire,” Cox noted. “He’s only been here for a few weeks. He came in just before you.”

She stared at him in astonishment.

“What is that look for?”

“I wasn’t expecting that, as he seems to be fairly well adapted.”

“Yeah, I think he is,” Cox agreed, tilting his head as he considered it. “He took to it very easily in fact.”

“Suspiciously so?” she asked.

His eyebrows climbing, Cox replied, “I hope not.… Are you tearing apart our staff now too?”

“No, not necessarily. I just don’t know what compromising material these bad guys might have on various people.”

“That’s a good point,” Cox admitted. “I never thought of it that way.”

“We don’t want to think about it now if we don’t have to,” she shared, “and investigating our own staff sucks.”

“I’ve never had to do that,” Cox replied, “but you’re right. It would be bad. Especially when I’ve known most of these guys for a long time.”

“And the trouble is, when you’ve known them for a long time, you tend to think that you know them and that they’re free and clear from any investigation,” she explained in a hushed voice, “and that can be a fatal error.”

“Ouch,” Cox muttered. “I don’t think I like this conversation.”

“No, I don’t either,” she confirmed. Her phone buzzed just then, and she looked down at her incoming text. “It’s Tristan.”

“Is he coming in?”

“He says for us to just stay where we are.”

Cox frowned at that. “Does that mean he found something?”

She quickly phoned Tristan, and, when he answered, she asked impatiently, “What aren’t you telling me?”

He groaned and relented, “I found the guard. He’s alive but not in very good shape. I’ve got an ambulance coming.”

“Let us see to him.” When Tristan hesitated, she reminded him, “Hello, we’re doctors, not just of dead people, so if need be—”

Immediately he replied, “Come on out then. I’m not sure we can do anything for him here though.”

*

The two coroners raced to the downed guard, as Tristan watched. The guard moaned softly, but he was breathing, and it looked to be more of a head injury than anything. Amarylis dropped to her knees, and Tristan watched as she did a quick and thorough exam of the guard. “What’s the ETA on the ambulance?” she asked Tristan.

“I would have thought they would be here by now,” he said in frustration, and just then they heard the wail of a siren in the distance.

She stepped back and announced, “He’s been conked on the back of the head.”

“Yeah, that was my take on it too.” Tristan turned to Dr. Cox. “I presume your opinion is the same?”

Dr. Cox was still examining the poor man, but he nodded. “That is my estimate as well. I don’t know what the hell is going on around here, but this ,… damn it, this is getting ugly. It also means that we can’t leave,” he added, with a sigh.

“You can,” Amarylis suggested, turning to Dr. Cox. “I will stay here.”

Cox frowned. “Why the hell would you want to stay here?”

“Because, until security is in place,” she pointed out, “everything here is in danger of being destroyed.”

Cox hesitated, then groaned. “You’re right,… damn it.”

“I have security coming,” Tristan shared. “It will take a few minutes to get the team here, particularly now that we have evidence of another attack.”

“You need more than one guy though,” she declared, turning to look at him, frowning. “These men are getting picked off, one by one.”

He nodded. “That was my argument earlier, and you’re right. We do need at least two at a time, but it’s also a matter of the budget.”

“Budget?… Screw that,” she cried out. “These men deserve better.”

Tristan smiled at her passionate response. “We are looking after them, you know.”

“Maybe, but this guy, he didn’t get looked after, and we need to make sure that he lives. He might not be right in the head, for all we know.”

The ambulance pulled up at that moment, parked, and the driver raced to them, while the passenger ran to the back to get the gurney. The first paramedic noted the two doctors, before dropping to his knees to check out the patient. “Good Christ, no end to this now, is there?”

Dr. Cox grumbled, “I keep telling Tristan to stop bringing me patients. So I guess he decided to send them your way instead.” As bad jokes went, it did the job, and it did lighten the sad atmosphere, at least for a moment.

In ten minutes, the guard was loaded up and gone.

Tristan turned to the two coroners. “Now, when was the last time you saw the guard?”

She shook her head. “As I mentioned earlier to Dr. Cox, we had absolutely no contact with him. We didn’t know who was here, when he came, where he was positioned, or anything else.”

Tristan frowned at that. “He was supposed to report in, at least when the shift changed.”

He turned to Dr. Cox, who shook his head. “I don’t know what he was supposed to do, but I can tell you, young man, I never saw this guard before.”

Tristan shook his head. “I didn’t handle the shift change, but we should have new men coming any minute.”

“As long as they don’t become new fodder for the meat grinder,” Dr. Cox muttered.

“Let’s hope not.” Tristan shot him a hard look. “These are good men, and they’re here for the best of reasons.”

When the new guard drove in, he had three others with him.

“I hope they’re all staying,” Dr. Cox declared. “We don’t want anybody else hurt.” As it was, all four men were guards for this shift, and they were scheduled for a shift change in a few hours with another four.

With that completed, Tristan looked over at her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I am. It just feels very odd and sad to see this happen. We’ve had a fairly routine work life, up until this.”

“ Fairly ,” Dr. Cox teased her. “It was a nice, quiet work life, and all our patients came in without any arguments.” He shook his head. “I will go home and grab some sleep. At the rate we’re going, tomorrow will be another shit show.”

They watched as he got into his vehicle and drove off. Tristan turned to her and asked, “What about you? You ready to go home?”

“Not particularly, but it’s probably the safest place for me.”

He nodded. “I won’t argue with that, but I would suggest dinner first.”

She nodded. “Are we talking about dinner out or picking up dinner and taking it back to my place?”

“That’s an option too,” he noted. “Which would you prefer? Besides, you’re the one who’s worked all day.”

She laughed. “Are you telling me that you didn’t?”

He flashed her a bright grin. “Yeah, but this is what I do.”

“Sure, and I worked on bodies all day. I am a little tired, but it would be nice to get out and to see something other than the inside of my apartment.”

“Done. Particularly after we didn’t even get to have pizza out.”

“We got pizza,” she corrected, with an eye roll, “just not exactly in the atmosphere we thought it would be.”

“Very true, so let’s go try something else.” He led her to his car and then asked, “Do you want to drive home first and leave your vehicle there or go together from here and come back?”

She frowned as if contemplating the options. “I think I would rather have my wheels with me, than to leave them here.”

“Good enough. You drive, and I’ll follow.”

And that’s what they did. By the time they got to her place, she was calm and settled enough to sort out what she wanted to do for dinner. When he approached her car, she got out and locked it up. “I want Italian.”

“Italian, as in not pizza?”

“Italian, as in not pizza,” she repeated, with a laugh. “Pasta would be good.”

“Pasta is doable,” he said, with a smile. “I do know a good pasta place.”

“I suspect,” she replied, with a laugh, “you know a lot of places.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve lived in this area for quite a while, so you do eventually get to know every eatery, ranking them as you go.” She just snorted and didn’t say anything. “Unless you meant something completely different.”

She shrugged. “I was just thinking that a guy like you must have lots of girlfriends.”

He laughed. “No, I sure don’t,” he argued, yet still cheerful, which seemed to be his personality. “I’m not necessarily somebody who likes to do the quick-fling thing. I did that for a few years when I was young and stupid, but I’ve grown up a lot, and life changes, so…”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t have or haven’t had serious relationships,” she pointed out.

“No, and I’ve had a couple of those, just not any that went the distance.”

She got into his vehicle, and he drove carefully to a small restaurant. It was bigger than the hole-in-the-wall pizza place, but it was definitely more of an intimate setting.

“What happened to your relationships?” she asked.

“I got close to asking one to marry me, but then she decided she wanted to go travel for a few years, see more of life, wasn’t ready to settle down. It was almost as if she knew I was getting ready to ask.”

“She probably did, instincts and all that, you know. She quite possibly saved you a lot more heartache.”

“Maybe so,” he conceded, “though it did take a fair bit to get over it.”

“Of course. Rejection like that is never easy. And the second one?”

He shrugged. “We were just too busy, and we drifted apart. She’s now happily married to what seems to be a great guy. She has a couple kids, and I’m happy for her.”

“Good. That means you’re not holding a torch for anyone.”

He laughed. “No, definitely not.” He parked, hopped out, then went around and opened the door for her.

She smiled up at him. “I’m not used to seeing manners like these.”

“My mama would have my head on a platter if I didn’t treat a lady right,” he stated in a sardonic tone.

“I’m not sure your mama was all that wrong, but there are women who prefer to flout their independence and all that,” Amarylis noted. “Still, I find it lovely to be treated like I’m something special.”

He smiled and led her inside the restaurant. “Don’t you ever doubt it. You are something special.”