Love Me Dead (Lilah Love Book 3)

Setting aside my personal hate for blood and the fact that I now estimate the amount beyond that apartment door to be excessive, I have questions, starting with: where the hell is the person who’s supposed to be making sure we wear those bagged jumpsuits laying on the ground? If they’re counting on humans being smart, they’re stupid, which proves my point: someone should be on guard in front of the door, managing the integrity of the crime scene.

Oh, wait. There is no integrity to this crime scene, which is so poorly managed that I wish I was a drinker. I’d drink myself into throwing up and then check into recovery, where I’d survive a few days before my irritation at the people who couldn’t control their urges would then cause me to beat some asses. Which would be highly hypocritical of me since I have a few urges I can’t seem to control either, like killing people and ending up naked with Kane fucking Mendez. A thought triggered by the ringing of my phone in my pocket that is most assuredly Kane fucking Mendez.

I ignore the call simply because I don’t want to ignore the call. Fuck you, Kane Mendez, for making me want to talk to you. Just because you buried a body for me doesn’t mean you get to control me.

I grab one of the suits and dump my field bag on the floor. Reggie appears at the top of the stairs, hovering there. I have a bad history with the name Reggie. The body Kane buried for me bore a tattoo done by a guy who worked for a tattoo parlor owned by another Reggie. Therefore, if your name is Reggie that immediately puts you on the wrong foot with me. I shove my arms into my suit. He’s still watching me. “Are you role playing for some practice session at the police academy and pretending to be a Peeping Tom or is creepy just your thing?”

“You aren’t the detective in charge,” he snaps.

“Did you know,” I begin, zipping up my orange suit and wondering why cleanliness means looking like an inmate in this city, “that I was the girl most likely to in high school?”

“Most likely to what?” he asks, taking my bait, his thin lips thinning even more when they’re already pencil drawings on his face. “Get naked?”

“Kill someone,” I say, grabbing my field bag and sliding it over my head and across my chest, so I don’t have to try to hold onto the damn thing when my feet and stomach are swimming in blood. “You wouldn’t be my first,” I add. “Put on a pretty orange suit or don’t come into the apartment.” I offer him my back and reach for the door.

“You aren’t the detective in charge,” he bites out, repeating himself, his limited vocabulary rather irritating, as is his need to get the last word.

That said, I’ve found that men who need the last word with a woman typically have deep-rooted confidence issues, in essence, little man complex. And since Reggie isn’t little anywhere that I can obviously identify, I can only assume his lips aren’t the only things pencil thin. I feel sorry enough for him to let him think he’s won: I give him the last word.

I open the door and inhale the scent of iron, that distinctive promise of blood, lots of blood, but I don’t find it. The scent is there, but the room before me is a simple, clean living space with an untarnished, basic cream-colored couch, and two pastel blue side chairs. Of the not one, but four, jumpsuit-clad forensic specialists working the tiny space and beyond in an open concept dining room and kitchen, not one of them so much as looks up to greet me. That’s okay. I don’t need to be greeted. I’m here for the victim and no one else. This is a crime scene, and while this space might be missing the body that is here somewhere, it could hold clues. I stand there, taking in every detail, eyeing the painting of an ocean on the wall and nothing more. There are no photos of people. No trinkets. No memories. This person is as fucked up as me. That means he or she doesn’t let people close.

“Ms. Love.”

At the sound of my name, I turn to find a thin redhead, I’d place in her mid-forties, who isn’t wearing a jumpsuit. “Agent Love,” I correct. “And were you afraid the orange would clash with your hair or did you just not give a fuck that you might contaminate the crime scene by failing to wear one?”

“I’m not rolling around in the mess that’s been made,” she bites out. “Nor should you. You’re supposed to profile the killer, not perform forensic analysis.”

Obviously, this bitch is Detective Williams, the detective in charge, but she won’t be for long. “Where’s Roger?” I ask, still trying to solve the mystery of how I got here in the first place.

“Roger said you can handle this on your own. Was he wrong?”

She’s baiting me, but I’m not one to be baited. Roger called me in, but he’s not here. Any relief I feel at avoiding his all-knowing inspection fades quickly. “Where’s the body?”

“Down the hall in the master bedroom.”

I start to walk in that direction.

“You don’t want to know who she is?” Williams calls out.

“She’ll tell me herself,” I reply.

“You might want a barf bag,” she calls out, making herself all too easy to read. Detective Williams is a walking, talking power trip out to prove that she’s better than me. Which is why I don’t bother to reply, and why would I? She’s not important. The woman who lost her life tonight is another story. She matters. The person who took her life also matters, right up until the moment that we make them pay.

Cutting down a narrow hallway, the walls along my path are barren and the iron scent of blood now permeates the air with a vicious punch. I could work myself up about the buckets of blood that could be waiting on me, but that’s just not how I’m made. I need to be punched in the face with the crime scene. I need to take it all in, feel the shock and pain, and do it without any reserve. And so, I enter my Otherworld, my zone where nothing but the crime scene exists, where Kane Mendez and my shitty father don’t exist. Where assholes that fuck up crimes scenes don’t exist. There is just me, and the victim who needs me to speak for them. I step to the doorway of the bedroom and let the scene take over, clicking through what I find in what has become an almost mechanical process for me.

There is, of course, a dead body, a naked woman lying in the center of the room on her back. That’s expected. What’s not expected is the fact that she’s holding an open umbrella above her head. She’s been dead long enough that rigor mortis has set in, and her fingers are frozen around the handle. There is also blood, but not in buckets. It’s dispersed in splatter marks on the walls, the ceiling, all over the white, neatly placed bedspread, and virtually every other spot in the room.

There’s also an unexpected but familiar woman kneeling by the body, smartly wearing an orange jumpsuit. “Beth,” I say, drawing her attention.

Her gaze jerks to mine, going wide in surprise. “Lilah fucking Love,” she says, using her gloved hand to pull down her paper mask.

“Why is a Long Island coroner at a Manhattan crime scene?”

“I go where they send me,” she says. “But it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that we’re both here, now does it?”

Considering she just worked a case with me that directly linked to the Society, no, no it doesn’t, but she doesn’t need my agreement. Not to mention she looks unsettlingly like the victim. This entire crime scene is starting to feel like a puzzle, and we’re not the ones controlling the pieces. I need to change that and quickly. I cross the room and kneel beside the body, across from Beth, then look up at the ceiling fan that is holding a Tupperware container with holes in it.

“My understanding,” Beth says, “is that the fan was on when law enforcement arrived.”

A rather brilliant contraption that took time and some level of engineering to execute. I frown and look at her and then the body, my brow furrowing at the untarnished face and body, no cuts, no wounds. “I know what you’re thinking,” Beth says, “and you’re right.”

My gaze lifts sharply to hers. “The blood isn’t hers, is it?”

“No. The blood isn’t hers.”