I didn’t like this one bit.
“Everyone aware of their roles?” Antun asked.
Or lack thereof, I mentally objected, my teeth grinding. “Remind me again why I have to sit this one out?”
“Jones likely is already suspicious of the number of people I’ve brought in on the case, so I can’t bring on another person. But I can hypnotize him into thinking that Sarah is you for a short period of time while we gain access to the morgue with all the bodies. The first part of the plan is simple: I hypnotize Jones before Michael and Sarah arrive at the precinct after work so that when they arrive, he sees you instead of Sarah.”
Why did I agree to this? Jones had only seen me once before – when I had gone to the precinct to sign paperwork to be able to “officially” help with the case along with Michael after our talk with Razvan. Right before the mass murder. So, he knew that Antun had brought on three civilians to help with the case, but that was about it. He had a lot of faith in Antun it seemed, but we didn’t want to stretch it by bringing Sarah in officially as well.
Someone came up with the brilliant idea to have Sarah impersonate me to test the hypnosis on Jones. If they could successfully do that, then Antun could go back to the morgue with Jones and “me” in order for Sarah to gain access to not only the bodies from the crime scenes, but also others in order to isolate any scent that may remain on the victims’ corpses from the murderer.
“I still don’t like it,” I protested with my arms folded.
Michael enveloped his arms around me, locking mine into place. I squirmed, still somewhat irritated at him for having agreed to the plan with very little persuasion. Maybe I was just being a jealous girlfriend, but I couldn’t help but think of how Michael had acted around me at the police station that day. He’d been as loving as he ever was whenever we weren’t at work, holding my hand and sneaking a kiss when he thought no one was watching.
Would he have to act like that with Sarah in order to make it believable? The thought of him holding her hand, of him kissing her cheek, made want to turn into a raging monster, all fire and anger. But at the same time, I wanted to crumble.
He squeezed his arms and nuzzled my neck, now making me squirm for an entirely different reason. “Stop, that tickles!” I squealed.
“Not until you smile,” he teased.
I twisted in his arms, uncaring that Antun and Syla were right there as I stood chest to chest with Michael and gave him a look drier than the Sahara. It made him laugh with a mix of pleasure with himself for getting a reaction and surprise by said reaction.
“I doubt I’ll be able to smile until this is all over,” I admitted.
“Good thing we’re doing it after work today then,” Michael replied. I groaned, leaning into him and letting the shelter of his arms keep me. My forehead resting against his chest, I took in a deep breath of him – citrus and musk – and tried to let it calm me. Just enough.
❖ 🩸 ❖
The workday was done. The floor was entirely empty except for me. I paced in my office, my phone sitting face up on the desk as I stared at it. Come on, come on, come on! When was Michael going to text that he was back to pick me up? How was everything going? Was Sarah able to convince Jones that I was there instead?
I tried not to catastrophize but kept failing. What if Jones isn’t fooled? What will that do to his trust with Antun if he realizes he’s being fooled? Around and around the desk I walked, occasionally glancing through my office window at the cleaners who had just arrived.
The janitorial staff ignored me, likely thinking that I was just putting in some OT. My brain was certainly working overtime but not about contracts. Sarah was taller than me, was that going to be an issue for the hypnosis? Hurry up, tell me it’s over!
My phone buzzed and a picture of Michael in sunglasses with me putting up bunny ears behind him lit the screen. I lunged for the phone, fumbling to unlock it. It simply said, “I’m waiting downstairs.” No indication of things going well or not.
Brain alight with awful imaginings, I grabbed my bag, already packed, and rushed to the elevator. I mashed the button over and over, willing the elevator to hurry up. The doors opened and I selected the ground floor before pushing the close door button repeatedly, knowing the button did nothing but pretending it did. My foot tapped impatiently as the floors went lower and lower, eventually arriving at the ground level. I hurried out of the carriage, heading for the glass doors at the other end of the lobby. I saw Michael’s car waiting at the curb and couldn’t help but quicken my pace even more, nearly running by the time I got to the car.
Michael sat in the driver’s seat, calm as a cucumber, and gave me a quick smile as I sat down in the passenger seat. Before I even buckled, I blurted, “How did it go?”
“It went okay. Why don’t I give you the details on the way home?” he said with normal inflection.
I took a steadying breath. Things had to have gone okay if he’s so calm about everything. Breathe, Drew. It’s over now. Right?
He pulled onto the street and started heading home to Antun’s. Seeing that I was barely holding together at this point, he decided to put me out of my misery and went straight into the story.
“I’m pretty sure it worked. When we walked in, he was even looking at her as if she were only as tall as you, at the level of her shoulders. He never once looked her in the face, as if her face were lower than it really was.”
Well, at least there’s that… I grasped Michael’s hand as he continued.
“He scheduled a time tomorrow to go with Antun and ‘you’ to the morgue. Then will really be the test of Antun’s hypnosis powers, because he’ll have to make sure she’s in there alone with the bodies in order to get close enough to scent them. Which means he might have to hypnotize the medical examiner as well, or the coroner, whoever it is at the morgue. Anyway, Sarah is getting access to the bodies tomorrow.”
“What was the excuse to have ‘me’ examine the bodies?” I was genuinely curious, as I couldn’t think of a legitimate reason for a civilian to need to see corpses.
Michael’s hand tightened on mine and he squirmed in his seat. “Well, Sarah came up with the idea that she knew one of the victims, even giving a name of one of them to make it that much more believable…” He glanced over at me for the barest moment before returning his eyes to the road. “She talked about how she doesn’t get along with the victim’s family and knew that she wouldn’t be able to find closure after the body is released, requesting an opportunity to see the body and say goodbye.”
As he shifted again, my stomach sank and my anger rose. What the fuck did Sarah do to Michael while she pretended to be me? He was acting guilty, and I knew he would never do anything to warrant that look, so what did she do?
“She made the story believable; she was very weepy and… clingy.”
My blood turned to shards of ice under my skin. “Define clingy, ” I clipped. I wasn’t mad at him, never at him. I was livid with Sarah.
“Like the word implies, she clung to my arm with both of hers. She kept leaning her head against my shoulder…”
He might’ve kept talking, he might’ve stopped, all I knew was that something inside me snapped, and I quit hearing anything at that point. Until he uttered, “When we go to the morgue tomorrow—”
“ We?! ” I nearly shriek. “Oh, no no no. The only people going to the morgue with Sarah are Antun and Jones. There’s no fucking way she’s making it so you have to go, too.”
He looked at me regretfully. “She made me promise ‘you’ that I’d go tomorrow, as emotional support.”
Bitch is about to die, I thought vehemently. At Michael’s continued looked of guilt, as if he was the one who’d done something bad here, I assured him, “You did nothing wrong, Michael. I’m am beyond pissed with Sarah, and she’s going to hear about it tomorrow, but you did what you were supposed to do. You played the part of supportive boyfriend to her, just like you were supposed to. I just hate that she took advantage of it instead of being a professional.”
He gave my hand a triple squeeze, immediately thawing my heart a fraction. “I love you too, Michael. That’s why this bothers me so badly. It’s a good thing I wasn’t there; I’d have probably put her into a chokehold in front of the detective and then what could we do?” A realization dawned, making my heart sink even further. It had to be reaching the Earth’s mantle at this point. “I can’t be there tomorrow with you.”
Michael shook his head sadly, “Just Antun, Sarah, and me with Jones.” I swore under my breath and looked out the window. He tugged on my hand to regain my attention. “Once she and I are behind those doors, it’ll be all business. I’ll make sure of it. I’m not going to let her try and drag me away from you. I don’t think anything in this world ever could. You are my everything, Drew.”
He pulled up to a stop sign and turned on his blinker. Looking left first, he didn’t expect my face to meet his when he turned to look toward the right. I kissed him squarely on the mouth, pulling on his tie to bring him as close to me as I could with our seatbelts and everything else in the way. We parted, panting, and he smiled. “And that was for?”
“Shut up and let me love you,” I said with an upturned curl to my lips.
He glanced behind the car, then around us, before putting the car into park right there on the corner. He unbuckled both his and my seatbelts before he reached over, picking me up around the waist to deposit me on his lap. “Then have at me,” he nearly growled as he pulled me into another heated kiss.
❖ 🩸 ❖
Michael and Sarah left the office only a couple of hours into the workday for their appointment with Jones. I was doing my best to not pace in my office, failing horribly as I kept needing movement. Why couldn’t I come with and hide in the trunk or something? I’d have done it too, just so I wouldn’t be here, worrying alone about what all was going on. An hour passed, and time continued to crawl on. Two hours. Three.
Surely, they must be done by now. Why haven’t they come back to the office? Did something happen?
As if it read my mind, my phone buzzed and I lunged for it answering with a slightly breathless, “Hello?”
“Drew,” Antun’s voice came through the line. “With you running off after the wild animal was found in the morgue, we were beginning to worry when we hadn’t heard from you.”
“What?” I was so confused. Wild animal at the morgue? But I hadn’t gone, it was Sarah…
And like a vision opened in my mind, I saw what must have happened. Sarah must’ve shifted into her animal form to catch the scent, and something went wrong and she was seen. I didn’t have details, of course, but I was able to extrapolate that much from what I knew of the plan.
“I-I’m fine, Antun, thanks. Is Michael okay?”
Please be okay, please be okay…
“He’s here with me and Detective Jones, worried about you.” Hence them calling me instead of Sarah.
“Did you get a hold of our canine friend by chance yet?” I asked. So much for helping get the scent. Was she able to get it?
“I was wondering if you’d mind calling her? We’re trying to wrap things up here, but the medical examiner is pretty wound up from having a wild animal get into the morgue. So, Jones is having to calm him down too.”
Sarah, I swear to God, if you’ve gone and made everything harder, I will hunt you down. I replied, “I’ll call her. Thanks for letting me know you’re all okay.”
We finished the call and I pulled up Sarah’s contact info, pressing the call button. The phone rang, and rang.
“Answer the phone, dammit.”
Ring. Ring. Ring…
A female voice on the other end of the line cleared her throat and said, “Hello?”
“What the hell happened? Antun just called me to make sure I was okay. So, what happened?”
A sigh turned into a groan on the other end. “Stupid assistant is all. I had shifted in order to help with the scenting, Michael mostly staying out of the way, occasionally opening doors for me to sniff other corpses. Then, through the back door, one of the assistants came in looking for the medical examiner, saw me, and started yelling. Michael was on the other side of the room and feigned surprise at my being there. So, I acted like a wild animal. I managed to get out of there—”
“Did you get the scent?” That was the most important thing. I didn’t care how she was.
Perturbed at the interruption, I could hear the bristling in her reply. “I believe so, only one way to find out.”
“You’re excused the rest of the workday. Meet us at Antun’s tonight.”
“Already here.”
“Oh… well… Does Syla know you’re there?”
“I’m not a creep, of course she knows I’m here. I was about to start helping her with baking until you called.”
Sarah baking with Syla? For some reason, I hated that almost as much as I hated everything else about Sarah. I didn’t want her anywhere near my friends, yet she was still weaseling her way in.
“Okay, okay. I gotta call and let Antun know you’re okay. See you later.” I hung up without waiting for a response. I messaged Antun through the group chat with a dog emoji followed by a thumbs up. He sent a thumbs up back, but I was feeling anything but thumbs up.
