Free Beyond the Grave by Lina Gardiner Page B

sounds that meant they were going to leave. At the same time, she kept her hearing attuned to the morgue.
    If she had to fog the minds of the workers in the coffee room, how much time would she have to help Britt if things got dicey? Not enough. Not nearly enough.
    * * * *
    Britt entered the morgue with all the hair on his body standing on end. Damn it! He still hadn't shaken his phobia of bones! What if the local forensic anthropologist had remains in here? Give him a mutilated body any day over a pile of moldy, chalk gray bones. An uncontrollable shiver wracked through him.
    Not in the actual morgue, but the storage area, a full bank of person-sized drawers were tucked into the wall on his right. There were name tags in slots in the front of the drawers so he didn't have to pull out each one in order to find Beverley Kellerman. Thank God!
    He found her name on the third name tag, grabbed a gurney from the corner and pulled it close before he took hold of the handle to open the drawer. With the drawer still shut, he listened for sounds of a dead person coming to life inside. Hearing nothing but the sound of his own blood pulsing through his veins, he yanked the door open and rolled out the slab.
    Beverley Kellerman looked very dead when he peeked at her face underneath the green sheet. He watched her for a few seconds. Was she really dead or just zonked out in vampire slumber? He'd seen Jess in stasis, and there was no way to tell if she was alive.
    At any rate, Beverley Kellerman didn't look like Jess when she was sleeping. Instead she looked lifeless to the extreme. Put a whole new spin on deathly white, but that didn't mean a helluva lot, he supposed.
    He poked her hard with his index finger. Then did it again.
    Dead as it got.
    Good.
    Next he grabbed the thin sheet, whipped it off and tossed it into the corner so he could lift her onto the gurney.
    He stared at her now and swallowed. Jesus. She was naked.
    But of course, she was naked. What did he expect? At least she hadn't been autopsied yet. Didn't have long hideous cuts and stitches all over her body. In retrospect, throwing that sheet in the far corner had been a huge mistake.
    "Get it over with, Brittain. You don't have all day,” he growled to himself, then pursed his lips and wrapped his arms around her cold, naked flesh. He flopped her onto the gurney like she was a prize catch just off a tuna boat. She had about as much give as a tuna, too.
    He cursed again when he realized her shoulder length brown hair was caught in his watch strap. He tried to get free gently at first, then realized that was of little use to the victim. She really didn't care if he pulled her hair. So he yanked, and yanked hard. He heard a tearing sound that made his knees go a little wobbly before he pulled his wrist out from under her head. Yuck.
    Thank God it was only hair caught in his watch strap. After that noise he'd been afraid he'd taken part of her scalp, too.” Eeeew ... He looked down at her just as the morgue doors flew open.
    "What the hell is taking you so long?” Jess hissed through the opening.
    His head shot up. This looked bad. Damn it! Why'd he have to ball up that sheet and throw it in the corner?
    He stepped in front of the woman. Tried to hide her nakedness, as if she had any modesty at this point. She was still a human being and deserved some decency.
    "Why are you standing over a naked corpse? And why isn't she in the SUV by now?"
    He raised his arm, displaying his watch. “Her hair got caught in my watch strap. I just got it out when you threw the door open,” he whispered. “Where are the others, anyway? Why aren't you watching them?"
    If looks could wither, hers just withered him. Shit.
    "You took so long I had to create a slight fog in their minds. Here's hoping the discrepancy in their time doesn't set off any alarm bells within the Department."
    She was so angry her teeth had grown to a sharp point and her eyes had turned black. “Now, could you please