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This morning had been awkward and way out of my normal routine.

And what surprised me the most?

I kind of liked it.

13

RAIN

Deodorant applied—or reapplied, still hadn’t remembered—I locked the front door and hopped down the concrete steps. Hand on the door handle of Slade’s sedan, I tipped my face up toward the midmorning sun, soaking up the soft rays cutting through the gloomy weather. Within the next few weeks, the weather would shift to clear blue skies and all-day sun like Southern California was known for.

Today would be a good day. This was the longest I’d gone without days of solitude in what felt like years. I worked alone, hours in the morgue with only dead bodies as company. Lived alone. Zero friends. No close work colleagues.

Wait, where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, reminding myself how damn lonely my life had become. So, call me greedy or a masochist, because I would no doubt have an ulcer from nerves after spending long hours with these two, but I reveled in the constant company.

In fact, I didn’t want it to end.

Though I shouldn’t already be thinking about this one amazing reprieve from my lifestyle of solitude ending, I knew it would. Jameson would go back to…. Wait, where did he say he came in from?

And Slade would go back to being Mr. Grump with his one-syllable responses.

Though I still hadn’t figured out what caused the one-eighty shift from the grumpy detective I’d grown used to and how he acted now. He didn’t seem as concerned about it as I did. Like now, as I slid into the back seat, he didn’t even glance my way, whereas I was a bundle of nerves and excitement for the togetherness day.

Who knew spending so much time with the living could be so exciting? Well, two people I was eager to hang out with, anyway. I wouldn’t be nearly as thrilled at the prospect if it were anyone else.

“You all good?” Jameson asked, twisting in the front passenger seat with his normal simple grin.

“Yep. All set. Where to first, boys?”

“To where it all started. The alley where victim number one was found.” Jameson held up the top file, giving it a little shake, and turned back to face the windshield. “We’re good to go, driver. You may proceed to our first destination.”

My giggle filled the back seat.

“Fuck off,” Slade murmured, though I caught a hint of a smile in the rearview mirror, even him finding Jameson’s antics somewhat amusing. Though both of our smiles faded when his intense gaze shifted to look back my way, the dark-tinted sunglasses not enough to diminish the feel of his eyes on me. “You never told us what that emergency was about yesterday. Why you needed to get to know your neighbors.”

I hummed in response as I watched my neighborhood pass by the window. “I thought I left my straightening iron on.”

One dark brow rose above his wire-framed sunglasses. “And that’s what you consider an emergency?”

I rolled my eyes, not bothering to turn from the window. “Well, yeah. And it was a genuine emergency to me. You weren’t the one about to be some inmate’s bitch while serving seventy years plus multiple consecutive life sentences for involuntary manslaughter of over a thousand innocent lives.”

Silence. So much silence. Only the whir of the tires and the creak of the car’s shocks filtered through the thick silence.

After a minute, Slade pulled down his glasses and shot Jameson a confused look. “Do you understand her words?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Jameson locked those honey-brown eyes on me. “Care to share with the class about how you went from a small hair tool left on to you turning into a mass murderer?”

An amused smirk tugged at my pursed lips. With a sigh, I relaxed back into the uncomfortable seat. The car was ugly as hell, but at least the inside was clean. Spotless, actually, just like Slade’s appearance most days. In fact, I’d never noticed a single wrinkle or disheveled hair on the detective in the almost two years we’d worked together. He seemed to be perfectly put together, even his five o’clock shadow groomed instead of appearing lazy or unkept.

“It might not make sense to you two with normal thoughts, but sometimes I work things up in my mind. It wouldn’t be so bad, but once I’ve escalated the what-ifs to the improbable outcome, I can’t move on until I’ve resolved the initial trigger. In yesterday’s case, I ran home and made sure I’d turned my straightener off. And I unplugged it so later in the day when I questioned myself again, which I knew I would, I could tell myself not to freak out. Over that, at least.”

“You say ‘sometimes,’ but it must be fairly often if you’ve created a workaround to resolve the trigger of your anxious thoughts.” Jameson’s brows pulled in tight as he spoke, not in confusion, really, but more concern.

I nodded and shrugged. “It’s definitely gotten worse recently because… well, as depressing as this sounds, I think it’s because I don’t have anyone here to talk me off that ledge. If I had someone to call, anyone to listen and dispel my crazy fears over something as simple as leaving a hair straightener turned on, then it wouldn’t escalate to me googling ways to make a shank.”

Slade barked a sharp laugh while Jameson continued to study me. “You don’t have anyone to talk to?”

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