Free High-Stakes Affair by Gail Barrett

purplish rash, the way his skin had puffed up like an inflated paper bag. The coroner had chewed off his tongue, leaving his mouth a bloody maw. He’d bled from his nose and eyes.
    Paloma made a sound of distress. Her face sheet-white, she bolted from the room.
    His own stomach roiling, Dante forced himself to stay put, noting the twisted position of the coroner’s body, how he’d stretched out his hand, as if making a final, frantic plea for help. Sickened, he turned off the light, followed Paloma into the office and shut the door. She clung to the desk chair, trembling and gasping for breath.
    “What is that?” she cried, hysteria making her voice rise.
    “Hell if I know.” He felt just as spooked. Three people had died now, all in the same macabre way. “But whatever it is, we need to find out. Fast. You search the desk.” He motioned to the piles of paper cluttering the top. “See if you can find anything about my sister or that patient you were talking about, the one with a similar rash. I’ll look in the files.”
    He thought at first she couldn’t do it. She was shivering so badly, and her face looked so bloodless, he feared she was going to faint. But she sank into the desk chair and reached for the nearest pile, prompting another wave of respect.
    He hadn’t expected her to have grit. The tabloids had portrayed her as a shallow, irresponsible wild child who cared only about attending her next celebrity-studded event. But apparently there was more to her than that.
    Forcing his mind back to the coroner, he ran his gaze around the jam-packed room. Morel didn’t use a computer, just an antiquated paper filing system—which accounted for the file cabinets and boxes stacked to the rafters throughout the room.
    He headed to the nearest cabinets with a sigh. A few drawers later, he realized that Morel was either incompetent at filing or lazy as hell. Giving up on the cabinets, he tried the boxes nearest the desk, assuming they would contain more recent files.
    The pendulum clock continued to tick. A truck rumbled past on the road outside. Dante kept on rifling through the records, but with each succeeding box his frustration grew.
    “I found it,” Paloma said. “Your sister’s file.”
    Abandoning the box he was searching, he strode to the desk and took the folder she held out. He double-checked for Lucía’s name, then removed the papers and folded them up. “Any luck on that hospital guy?” he asked, stuffing the papers into the back pocket of his jeans.
    Paloma picked up another sheet of paper from the desk. “I’m not positive, but this name sounds right. Jaime Trevino. The date fits, too. But I can’t find the entire report.”
    Dante reached for the nearest stack of paper. “Have you checked this pile yet?”
    “No, I—” A sudden rattle came from the front room. Paloma’s startled gaze flew to his.
    Dante held his breath and didn’t move. For several tense seconds, he stared at the adjoining door, every sense riveted on the front room.
    Then the rattle sounded again.
    “Damn.” Unless the coroner had miraculously come back to life, someone was trying to get in.
    His heart pounding, he snapped off the lamp. Then he wove through the cabinets to the window and edged aside the drape—just as several guards darted past in the alley outside.
    Paloma leaped to her feet. “Who is it?”
    “The police.” But why were they here? Why the show of force?
    And how were they going to get out? The guards were surrounding the building, making it impossible to escape.
    “Upstairs,” he said. “We’ll use the roof.” He flung open the door to the parlor, then rushed past Morel’s bloody body to the stairs. With Paloma close behind him, he sprinted up the staircase, taking the wooden steps two at a time.
    But his doubts mounted with every step. The guards couldn’t have found them this fast. No one had known their plans. Unless Paloma had tipped them off… But why would she? And when had she