Page 12 of Deader than Dead

“Not particularly.” Another call came through and I squinted at my phone, grimacing. “Mum, I’ve got to go. Cade’s calling, and I already told you I’m at work.”

She mumbled a begrudging goodbye, and I switched calls, Cade wasting no time with social niceties. “Is the job done?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Cade’s voice turned sharp. “What does that mean?”

“It means she lied to you about her reasons for wanting her beloved husband back, and that I ended up stuck in the middle of a domestic. He’d moved money to an account she didn’t have the details to.”

“Messy.” Cade said in the world’s biggest example of an understatement. “You’re a big boy, though, John. You can handle it.”

I narrowed my eyes at the phone. “If you came up with a better vetting procedure, I wouldn’t need to.”

“We can talk about it.”

“When?”

“Not today,” Cade said abruptly. I sighed, reminding myself that he was my boss and biting back the caustic words on the tip of my tongue. “I have another job for you.”

I frowned. “Since when? And why are you calling me about it instead of Asher?”

“Since it just came in.” Cade chose to ignore the second part of the question.

“Can’t Griffin do it?” I bit back on the urge to ask whether anyone had seen him since the no-show a week ago. His cherry picking all the best jobs was nothing new. Somehow, even without being physically present, he stayed on Cade’s good side—a feat I’d never been any good at. The fact that I’d only just completed one job and was being sent on another was usually a sign that Griffin had turned it down.

“Griffin’s busy.”

Busy having an early dinner at an expensive restaurant and chatting up the waiters, no doubt. A dinner I apparently wouldn’t get until I’d completed another job. “What about Calisto?” I bet Maria would have been far happier if he’d turned up. He had the name, the Spanish accent, the dark hair, and the olive skin.

“Calisto is on the night shift.”

I checked my watch. “Which we’re only an hour away from.”

“Exactly,” Cade said. “We’re still an hour away from it. Hence, he’s not here yet. Do me a favor, John, and for once, don’t fight me on this. There’s a job that needs doing and I need you to do it.”

I frowned at the impatience in Cade’s voice. Who’d rattled his cage? “Fine. Give me the details.” The problem with raising the dead and needing to do it within a certain time scale was that someone always had to be available. I was just beginning to feel like that someone was me more often than it wasn’t. “You know I haven’t had a weekend off in months?”

“Do this job and you can have next weekend off.”

“?” I didn’t bother to hide my surprise.

“Yes. I’ll get Griffin to work it.” He’d love that, the thought making me smile. I was so busy fantasizing about the look on the older man’s face when Cade broke the news to him that I nearly missed Cade’s next words. “I’ll send the details to your email. And John…?”

“Yes.”

“No mouthing off. No giving it the big I am. Just do what you’re asked to do. Don’t ask questions. Don’t poke your nose into things that don’t concern you. Straight in and straight out.”

A tingle of foreboding inched its way up my spine. “Why would I…?” But the line had already gone dead. The email came through less than a minute later, like Cade’s finger had been hovering over the send button while we’d been talking. Who was I trying to kid? It had been. There’d been about as much chance of me changing his mind as there was of me waking up the next day to discover I’d won the lottery. The email was vaguer than usual, the prickle of foreboding refusing to go away. Just an address, and a note that it was a man I’d be reanimating, who had been dead for a couple of hours.

I groaned at the address. I was in West London and the address Cade had given me was in Hackney, which was East. I’d only just be getting there when I should have been knocking off for the day. Yeah, thanks for that, Cade. I hope you have a nice fucking evening too. It wasn’t like the dead body was going anywhere. It could have waited another hour for Calisto.

As dodgy areas in London went, the place I’d been sent to had to be up there. The woman on the corner curled a long strand of her wig—it had to be a wig; there was no way the brassy red could be real—around her finger and tipped her hip up coquettishly, her dangerously short skirt riding up so high that I almost closed my eyes for fear of being treated to my first glimpse of vagina in years. Thankfully, it stopped just short of showing me if she was wearing underwear. My money was on not. “Fifty for a fuck!”

I fixed a smile on my face. “Sorry, I’m as gay as the day is long.”

“You can do me up the arse for ten quid more.”

My smile wavered. “That, is an incredibly generous offer, but I’m working, so I’m afraid I’ll have to turn it down.”

---