style="font-size:15px;"> Nina had focused all her attention out the car window as if she were trying not to listen to the conversation.
Ryan couldn’t help himself. He reached down and grasped the hand she had fisted on the seat between them. To his surprise, she didn’t jerk it away, but opened her hand and clutched his fingers like a lifeline. She didn’t look at him or acknowledge his gesture of comfort in any way whatsoever. But she was damn near cracking his knuckles.
“It’ll be okay,” he told her, inane as it sounded.
She didn’t answer, and neither of them said another word for the rest of the ride over to the hospital, but she kept that death grip on his hand.
Damn. He knew what this felt like to her and wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. Well, at least it wasn’t a husband she was going to have to look at. It wasn’t her child.
The sudden image and echo of a laughing little girl, blond hair flying in the breeze as she ran, skittered through his mind. Ryan gritted his teeth and forced his mind away from the past. Six long years had given him lots of practice, and he should have been more successful at avoidance by this time.
When the car stopped in front of the hospital, Ryan exited with a calmness he did not feel. He knew his face showed nothing that would betray the roiling in his gut.
He focused on the nearby man-made lake, the precision of the landscaping surrounding King Augustus Hospital, the pink marble of its unusual structure. All the beauty that disguised an approaching nightmare.
Automatically he opened the car door for Nina Caruso and gave her his hand again, this time to assist her out. He let her go as soon as she was steady.
But he needed the connection, even if she didn’t, and placed his hand under her elbow. Yeah. Gentleman to the core, official as the day was long, a steady rock to lean on. A consummate liar and a fraud. He was shaking inside like he had d.t.’ s. He was dreading the morgue, possibly more than she was.
He had been there before in the course of his duties. The reaction was nothing new. He had dealt with it and would again, but he knew it would always be the same. The memories would flood right through that dam he had laboriously constructed. And then he’d have to rebuild it.
Maybe if he concentrated on her reaction, he wouldn’t be dwelling on his own so intensely. With that in mind, he was maybe a bit too solicitous on the way through the hospital and in the elevator that led to the lower level.
“Just try to focus on the fact that what you’re going to see is not really your brother,” he advised, still holding on to her arm. “It’s just a lifeless shell he once used. Disassociate if you can.”
She frowned at him, her dark eyes curious. “Are you all right?”
Ryan took a deep breath and tried a smile that felt unsuccessful, more like a grimace. “Yeah, sure. You?”
“I’m okay,” she replied, still frowning as they stepped out of the elevator.
The smell hit him, and they weren’t even close to the lab. She looked as if she’d noticed it, too. “Chemicals,” he explained. A lie. It was the smell of death. “Breathe through your mouth.”
Her lips opened as she complied. Full, tremulous lips that begged him to draw closer, to warm them. To warm his own.
Yeah, he thought, go ahead and think about that, fight the other thoughts. No, he reminded himself, her lips were definitely off-limits. Better lock on to something else.
But what? The odor of the place seemed to seep into him, to permeate his sinuses, to leave its taste on his tongue. Nothing was audible but their determined breathing, the echoes of his footsteps and the click of her high heels on the tiles.
Someone had placed pictures along the corridor, perhaps to distract visitors from what was to come, but the paintings were made up of shapes he didn’t recognize, done in vapid tints that reminded him of badly colored Easter eggs.
Nina removed her elbow from his grasp and took his hand as if she, too, were looking for a port in a storm. He laced his fingers through hers.
They halted in front of a door marked Laboratory, next to which was a window set into the wall. The window had kept distance between the viewer and the body before modern technology, with its camera equipment, had made it unnecessary. The blinds were drawn on the inside.
He gave Nina’s hand a bracing little squeeze and then released it as he tapped on the door with one knuckle.
Doc opened it and stood back to allow them entrance. Ryan forced himself to enter before Nina, as if he could police up the area and make it less terrible if Doc had not. Of course there was nothing he could do about it at that point, but he’d have acted the same upon entering any room with a woman where there was a chance of anything threatening. The urge to run interference for a female had been ingrained from childhood, and he’d never been able to shake it. Thank you, Mama.
Doc had removed the body from the drawer, had placed it on a table and had covered it with a pale green sheet. There was nothing else in view—no instruments or other cadavers—to cause her any horror, but Ryan supposed the remains of her brother would be enough to do that.
Even though they weren’t touching now, he could feel her tension. Or maybe it was his. Ryan couldn’t tell. She appeared calm enough, though the lights in the lab faded her complexion to white.
Doc stood waiting to be introduced. Ryan jerked his attention to that chore and kept it brief. “Nina Caruso, Dr. Angelo.”
They nodded to one another and Doc spoke in that deep, resonant voice that reminded Ryan of Boris Karloff. “My condolences, Ms. Caruso.” He looked a bit like Boris, come to think of it.
“Thank you,” she said in automatic response. “May I see him now?”
She wanted to do her duty and get the hell out of there, Ryan thought, but no more than he did. He fought the flashes of memory and pain associated with another time, another morgue, two pull-out, refrigerated drawers containing… He shook his head, cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind of his own feelings so he could observe hers. After all, that’s the reason he’d let her come, he reminded himself. She looked up at him, silently asking him to accompany her to the table. Ryan slid an arm around her, his hand at her waist, and guided her to the examination table.
Doc turned back the sheet so that only the head and shoulders were visible. Thank God he’d done everything he could. There was no blood. Even the gash on the temple, deep as it was, didn’t look particularly lethal now that it had been cleaned up.
Contrary to Ryan’s warning to Nina, the body didn’t look radically different from what she might have viewed if it had been prepared for a funeral and lying in a casket, except for the absence of a suit and tie and a bit of flesh putty to fill in the wound. Ryan had not been involved in the case or seen the body at the crime scene before it had been removed and brought here. But even there it wouldn’t have been nearly as gruesome as some he’d seen.
Nina stepped closer and touched the forehead, brushing a lock of dark hair from the brow. “He’s… so cold.” Two tears made tracks down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. For a long moment, she stood looking down at the remains and mouthed the word goodbye.
So much for disassociation.
