“What?”
“Always be prepared. Stuck in the back, behind the credit cards.”
She stared to laugh, and when he dug the condom out of his billfold, they were suddenly as giddy as children.
“A treasure,” she said.
“Better than gold.”
“And diamonds.”
“Way better than diamonds.”
“Actually, I don’t even like diamonds. Better than...all the tea in China, all the fish in the sea, all—”
“The dolphins in the world?” he asked.
“Don’t push it,” she told him, and they fell together, kissing and laughing.
And then the laughter was gone, and they made love in earnest.
When they climaxed, Lara knew that the reason she hadn’t been interested in other men for a very long time was because she’d always wanted it to be like this. She’d wanted someone like Brett Cody.
And when he touched her, everything in life seemed worth the wait, and even the struggle for truth seemed like an easier task.
And when early morning came and they made love again, she prayed she’d been right and together they might actually solve this string of horrors. She was glad when he asked, “We’re not making any pretenses, right? I’d feel like an idiot trying to pretend I slept on the couch.”
“No pretenses,” she told him. And she smiled suddenly. Little did the lovely Sonia Larson know that the little white lie she had told Grant Blackwood at the fund-raiser would turn out to be the truth.
*
Each of the long rows of bricks set flush in the ground had a number, as did each brick. This cemetery, unlike the one they had visited the day before, was in the middle of the city, down in Kendall, and situated between a fire station and a telecommunications company. There was no impression of grace, no flowing sense of peace here, no feeling of history; it was no Woodlawn or Bonaventure.
Still, it wasn’t ugly; it was a park, of sorts. There were trees and trails—and the rows of bricks with their numbers.
This was where the unclaimed, the forgotten, were taken. It was a potter’s field.
They had decided it was time to use the city’s records to try to find Antoine’s final grave.
Brett closed his eyes for a minute. The knowledge that so many people had died unknown, unremembered, was disheartening.
If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was somewhere else. And, standing there, even in such a place, he almost smiled. Because last night had changed everything for him. Life could be hard and brutal, and he spent his days pursuing evil, so it had been incredibly good to have a night in which he’d felt as if he’d touched something that was exhilarating and purely good.
And waking up to see her face...
To touch her cheek, to see her eyes open and a smile curve her lips...
Diego cleared his throat, and when Brett opened his eyes he saw his partner frowning at him as if he was afraid there was something wrong.
“What?” Brett asked.
“Your eyes were closed.”
“The better not to see,” Brett said drily.
It was bright and early, and there weren’t many people around, not that many people were likely to come here anyway, even though the highways were clogged with people heading to their jobs. This being Friday, most of them would be looking forward to the weekend.
A man walked by with his dog, despite the no-dogs-allowed sign just outside the gate. But standing there, with Diego, Phil Kinny and the work crew, Brett thought that walking a dog in a cemetery seemed like the pettiest of crimes.
“There was an autopsy, and I have the records,” Kinny said as the cranes worked to dig up the poor pine coffin holding the man who had been buried with a number rather than a name. “Cause of death was listed as a heart attack.” He hesitated. “There are a number of tests that weren’t done because, believe it or not, the morgue works on taxpayer money and there’s never enough of it. Certain tests for poisons and other factors aren’t done, not when cause of death appears to be obvious.” He turned to look at Brett. “I may learn something for you. Then again, I may learn that this man died of a heart attack while walking down the street.”
“I know. But paranoia on the streets about zombies is growing. This is the information age. The public knows a lot more is out there than what we’ve shared with them. Thing is, what used to be word of mouth now becomes word of internet. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, Phil, and as quickly as possible,” Brett said.
“I’ll do my best,” the ME promised. “I’ll get right on this, and I’ll call you as soon as I know something, but I’ll be asking for a number of lab reports, and even if I put a rush on them, they’ll take time.”
When the coffin was in the county hearse and headed for the morgue, Diego turned to Brett. “We going back out on the bay now?”
Brett nodded.
“And the ghost hunters think we’ll find a body out there?”