“My pleasure, Lieutenant. This is what I do best.”

Taylor left Willig smiling in the middle of her office and went to meet Baldwin at the CJC’s entrance. All in all, she felt good about her chances of making it back. The EMDR had helped a bit.

She wondered, though, how much Willig would be willing to help if she found out the whole truth about that day.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sam pulled herself together and finished the afternoon’s work. She needed to talk to someone. She didn’t have many friends; it was hard to keep folks on her side when they found out she cut up dead people for a living. No matter how politely they tried to incorporate it into conversation, they eventually came to see her as a ghoul. She was used to it now. She tended to have people around who understood why she’d chosen to become a pathologist.

She and Taylor came from the same world: wealth and privilege. But unlike Taylor’s incendiary home life, Sam’s parents had loved her to the point of smothering. They were gone now, both dead much too soon, her father of liver cancer, her mother, Sam was fully convinced, of a broken heart, less than four months later. She missed them—their enthusiastic encouragement, their grounding force.

Her father had been an inventor, with an engineering degree under his belt and multiple patents, though he rarely would discuss what they were. He’d had something to do with the modern electrical plug and some little gadget Sam barely understood. Her mother used to have a glass of wine at parties and intimate that his inventions were in every house in the world. It had made him millions on top of his already hefty trust fund.

He’d been a quirky man, lively in a way Sam rarely saw from scientists. Jovial. Outgoing. Her mother had adored him. Sam’s mom liked to joke she was at Vanderbilt getting her MRS degree when she met Stan Owens.

Despite her parents’ social conditioning of their only daughter, Sam always felt apart. An outsider, distant from those around her. She was a quiet girl, fascinated with science, biology and genetics, and determined to be a doctor. She’d decided on her course when she was five. Right around the time she met Taylor.

Sam was a better debutante than Taylor, more interested in the niceties, the responsibilities that came with affluence. But where Taylor was tall and elegant and heedless of her own beauty, Sam had to work on hers, learning how to do makeup to enhance her looks, forever fighting her too-limp hair, carefully managing her diet and exercise regimen. She envied Taylor her effortlessness, wished she could go out without makeup and her hair tossed in a lazy ponytail. Oh, she probably could, but her mother’s face popped up just as she was walking out the door in her moments of cultural defiance—honey, just a little lipstick, maybe some blush. And why don’t you let your hair down? You look like a skinned rabbit with it pulled back so tight.

She was better off with people who couldn’t talk back. There were no awkward moments with the lifeless. No worry about how they perceived her.

Sam loved Nashville, and she loved Taylor. She looked at their relationship as a partnership on several levels—best friends, sisters and responsible for the city’s people. Taylor protected the living inhabitants of Nashville; Sam uncovered the secrets of its dead.

Right now, Sam just wanted to talk to Taylor. They were family. Families found ways to put the past behind them, to forgive.

And Taylor couldn’t talk back right now. Sam could vent her frustrations on the phone, and Taylor would have to listen. She always had been a good listener. Sam’s favorite confidante.

She closed the door to her office and dialed Taylor’s cell. It rang three times, then Taylor answered, said, “Mmm,” so Sam would know it was her.

“Want to get a drink?” Sam asked.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You at home?”

The phone disconnected, then her text dinged.

So glad you called. I’m downtown at the office. Baldwin’s supposed to pick me up. Why don’t you grab me and we’ll go somewhere?

Ten minutes, Sam texted back, then stowed the phone in her bag. She was mad at Taylor, sad for Taylor, and sad for herself, but she couldn’t not see her best friend. At least Sam was getting a chance to heal; her wounds were hidden, on the inside. Taylor had to parade around town with her scars, and without her voice.

They had to find a way to lean on each other. No one else could understand exactly what it had been like in that attic.

It took her five minutes to get out of the office. She snuck out the morgue doors into the loading bay, walked around the back of the building to her car in the lot up front. She just didn’t feel like facing anyone. It was embarrassing not to have control of her emotions. Even though she wasn’t pregnant anymore, her body was still laden with crazy hormones. She was mortified by her outburst this afternoon. She didn’t like people to see her cry, and she certainly didn’t like to step out of an autopsy because she was on the verge of exploding.

The snow had begun to fall in earnest. Sam drove downtown carefully, mindful of the slick roads.

Sam saw Taylor sitting on the steps outside the CJC. Her bottom must be frozen; she only had on jeans and a short leather jacket. Sam snuggled deeper into her red down coat, chilled at the mere thought. But Taylor seemed completely unfazed. Lost in thought, actually.

She spied Sam’s car and stood up, graceful and tall, started down the stairs like a gazelle. She was in a good mood; Sam could see that from a hundred paces. She even waved and smiled. Sam waved back, felt a grin spread across her face. She’d never been able to stay mad at Taylor. She wanted to fix things between them.

She heard a car horn’s frustrated beep, then saw a low green Jaguar out of the corner of her eye. It was coming up fast, flying, actually. James Robertson Parkway was a busy street, especially with all the people parking in the garage and making their way across to the courts and the CJC. A group of people were crossing the road, but the Jaguar didn’t slow.

Sam watched in horror as the car sped through the intersection, ignoring the red light, and clipped the last person trailing across the street. A Hispanic woman, probably forty years old, took the brunt of the impact. She cartwheeled into the road, upended, a scream frozen on her lips. She hadn’t even seen the car that hit her.

Taylor took off toward the woman. Sam slammed her car into Park and got out. They made it to her at the same time. Blood spilled from her mouth and head. She needed treatment immediately. People were shouting and screaming, rushing around, and Sam flipped open her phone and dialed 911, despite the fact that she was standing outside police headquarters.

Taylor had her coat off and began CPR, though on closer inspection Sam could tell it was all a moot point. The woman had landed forehead first. Her eyes were already rolled far back in her head. The thick, ripe scent of urine and waste rose as her body gave up its fight.

Squashed her noggin, as her mom used to say.

Taylor stopped the chest compressions, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, stood up and looked east, up the street. Sam followed her gaze. The green Jaguar was long gone.

The scene was swarmed immediately. EMTs came screeching around the corner. The people who had been with the woman crowded around, their wailing cries mingling with the sirens and shouts.

Taylor stepped back with blood on her hands. Snow dusted the hair around her forehead like a silver halo.

Sam reached for Taylor’s hands and wiped the blood off with a tissue, then handed her a bottle of antiseptic gel from her purse. Taylor rubbed her palms together vigorously, then grabbed her coat from the asphalt and shrugged back into it, settling the warmth around her in consolation.