He huffed a sigh. "You wouldn't have believed me if I’d told you, boss. Better to see it for yourself."
Apprehension prickled my skin, but I didn't argue. It was pointless when I was about to find out. Drawing a steadying breath, I pushed open the swinging doors to the morgue itself.
A woman in a lab coat and glasses startled so hard she almost fell off her stool, then quickly recovered and strode over to greet us.
"Hades, ma'am, sir, sorry, uh—" She fumbled over her words, and I held a hand up to stop it before she panicked too hard.
"You must be Meredith," I said, giving her a quick once over. Our old medical examiner had recently suffered a stroke. He was doing well, but he'd been forced to retire and appoint a replacement: Meredith Quay.
She was a pretty woman with tightly curled hair and a dusting of freckles across her nose. Her head bobbed in confirmation, and she held her hand out for me to shake.
"Yes, ma'am, uh, sir, uh, Ms. Timber?" Her panicked eyes shifted to Zed, who was hiding a smirk behind his hand as he pretended to scratch his cheek.
"Just Hades is fine," I told the new medical examiner with a cool smile. I knew it wasn't one that reached my eyes, though. They rarely did these days. "Zed tells me you have something to show me?"
Meredith bobbed her head again. "Yes, I mean, I probably wouldn't have noticed anything super suspicious about it on a body like this, but..." She paused, hurrying over to the metal gurney already set up in the middle of the room with a body on it. A sheet covered the whole corpse, but she quickly flipped the sheet down to reveal Sonny-boy. "I mentioned to Mr. De Rosa that the victim had a recent tattoo." Her eyes darted to Zed as she pulled a fresh pair of latex gloves on, then indicated I should come closer.
Not that I needed any encouragement. I was no stranger to dead bodies, and Sonny had loads of tattoos. But something about this one had alarmed Zed enough to call me down to the morgue in person, so I was burning with curiosity.
Meredith rolled Sonny's corpse slightly, lifting his shoulder off the table to show me the fresh ink in a small patch of previously un-inked skin.
Alarm ricocheted through my whole damn body when I saw the tattoo in question, and my eyes flew to Zed's. He gave a nod, confirming that I wasn't fucking imagining things, and I silently cursed.
"This looks like it was only done a day or so before he was killed," I commented, keeping my tone carefully neutral and my face blank.
Meredith put the body back down and shrugged. "Yeah, I'd say so. Within a day or two, anyway. Does it mean something?"
Zed and I exchanged a quick look, then I shook my head. "Not that I can think of," I lied. "But thank you for showing me, anyway."
She didn't believe me, and I would have been disappointed if she had. Still, she took the hint and didn't push any further.
"No troubles, Hades," she chirped. "Also, Mr. De Rosa, Jenks made a copy of the file for you." She snapped off her gloves and hurried over to her desk where she picked up a thin folder of paper.
"Thank you, Meredith," Zed said as he took the file from her. "I really appreciate how helpful you've been today." His smile was pure charm, and I had to bite my cheek to stop from rolling my eyes at him.
Meredith blushed, though, despite being an easy ten to fifteen years older than Zed. Fucking hell, his appeal knew no limits, apparently.
I didn't hang around to watch him flirt with the new ME and stalked out of the morgue with paranoia pricking my skin with every damn step. Zed followed quickly, catching up before I’d even made it to the end of the corridor, but didn't say a word as we exited the building.
Once outside, I drew a couple of deep breaths, letting the fresh air ground me and calm me down. It didn't totally work, but the pressing sense of panic subsided slightly. I didn't feel quite so much like I was about to pass out.
"Tell me that wasn't what I think it was, Zed." My voice was a rough whisper as I continued toward my car in the parking lot. Zed was close enough to touch, though, so he heard me just fine.
"Can't do that, boss." He grimaced. "It's exactly what you think."
Not wanting to believe him—or what I'd just seen with my own two eyes—I swiftly grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him into the side of my range rover. He didn't fight me as my shaking fingers tugged his buttons loose, parting his shirt to reveal the tattoo on his chest.
His chest rose under my touch, his breath gusting out as I ran my fingertips over the geometric design over his heart. It'd been years since I'd seen it up this close and even longer since the day Zed had drawn it as a doodle in the margin of my economics workbook while he helped tutor me through exams.
"How is this even possible?" I breathed, tracing those lines over and over with my finger. It seemed like an intricate and possibly random design, but I'd watched him create it. It was my middle name. Darling.
Chase had seen him draw it too. Chase goddamn Lockhart, my first love and Zed’s best friend. It'd been his idea to make it into a tattoo, and Zed had only gotten it done because Chase Dared him to do it. It was a stupid fucking game. Dare.
"I don't know, Dare," Zed whispered back, using my nickname for the first time in five years. It shocked me almost as much as seeing that tattoo on Sonny-boy. "We'll figure it out though. Whoever it is, they're just trying to get inside our heads. Don't let them." His index finger pressed under my chin, lifting my gaze up to meet his. "You're Hades, remember? No one scares you. Not even a ghost."
I wanted to believe that so badly, but he was wrong. No one scared me more than this particular ghost.
13
Zed and I headed back to my apartment from the morgue, not wanting to discuss sensitive topics out in the open. By the time we’d finished reading through the police report of Sonny-boy's murder and officially decided that a certain Officer Randall was our lead, I was running late to pick Seph up from school. And I still hadn't dropped off her car with my mechanic to be fixed.
"I'll take it in now," Zed offered when I said as much aloud. "I need to go back to the ME’s to pick up my car anyway; I can drop hers at Rex’s on the way."
He'd come home with me in my Range Rover, as if he didn’t want to let me out of his sight for that amount of time. Silly really. I was scared and paranoid and wallowing in old guilt, but I was perfectly capable of driving alone. And yet I hadn't protested when he'd climbed into my passenger seat.
"You're the best, Zed," I told him with a genuine smile. "What would I even do without you?"
He rolled his eyes with a short laugh. "Let's never find out." He headed over to the hall table where Seph usually tossed her car keys when she came home. He found them straight away, thanks to the fluffy pink ball hanging from them.
I groaned as I stood up and stretched, feeling all the kinks in my spine and regretting that I hadn’t gone back to sleep this morning. With a yawn, I pulled my shoulder holster back on, shifting it until it was comfortable, then strapped a couple of slim but deadly blades to my thigh, right over my jeans. Fuck it. I gave less than zero fucks if stuck-up Shadow Prep parents saw me and screamed.