6

“I’m not sure I’m going to be very helpful,” Madison told Jimmy Gates. As planned, he’d picked her up on Monday morning. However, she hadn’t known that they were going to the morgue. She’d never gone with him to the morgue; he’d always taken her to crime scenes.

Of course, it wasn’t that she never came to the medical examiner’s office. And that wasn’t because she had taken to visiting the dead, but because Jassy worked here.

Still, Madison didn’t often walk down these corridors. She met her sister in her office when they were going to go to lunch.

Jimmy glanced at Madison, and she gazed back at him. He had just celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday, and he still looked like a kid, with his continually tousled reddish hair, freckles and warm brown eyes. But those looks were deceptive. He could be relentless, ruthless, tough as nails, when it came to hunting down a killer. Luckily, his looks had kept him out of a trouble a few times when he sidestepped the law to get the information he wanted.

“Bear with me, Madison, huh? I just have a hunch on this one.”

“Okay.”

A morgue, despite the best efforts of the cleaning crews, smelled like a morgue. Looking at tile, stainless steel and glass, Madison felt a chilling sensation.

Creepy, Carrie Anne would have called it.

Jimmy pushed open a door and they were in a fairly large room. An autopsy room, Madison thought. There were stainless-steel gurneys set beneath microphones. In a far corner, a group of four, covered in hospital greens, were working over the naked body of a man. To the side, their backs to her, a couple of suits—plainclothes cops?—were watching and listening as a man’s voice droned into the microphone with the details of death.

Death. So damned impersonal. Stripping the last vestiges of dignity from the human soul.

“Madison.” Jimmy tapped her on the shoulder. He was speaking in a soft whisper. “Here. Right here.”

He led her through a doorway into a side room, turning her around. There was a lump on one of the antiseptic stainless-steel tables, covered with a green sheet. A mousy-looking female pathology assistant, apparently impatient with her work, stood by the lump. Jimmy stared at Madison.

She looked from him to the lump, feeling a chilling, trembling sensation sweep over her.

Jimmy’s hunch had been right. She could already feel something. Something she didn’t want to feel…but she was going to be able to see something.

Oh, God.

But perhaps she could help.

But she didn’t like this. She didn’t like this at all.

“Uh…uh, brace yourself,” he warned Madison, and nodded to the pathology assistant.

The woman pulled the sheet back. Madison’s first instinct was to be sick. Violently sick. The lump was a head. Set up at an angle, but obviously gnawed at the neck. The eyes had been eaten away. The flesh was so pasty that it might not have been real; it should have come out of some special-effects studio.

A sound escaped Madison; she gripped her stomach and closed her eyes, afraid that she going to pass out. Her knees were buckling; she was going to fall….

She suddenly felt rough arms around her, holding her up. To her astonishment, she heard Kyle Montgomery’s voice.

“Jimmy, what the hell’s the matter with you, bringing her in here to see something like that?” He was furious.

“Oh, come on, Kyle! She might be able to help.”

“Jimmy, Jesus Christ!” Kyle was still holding her, supporting her.

“Kyle, damn it, this is Madison, not some squeamish little kid. Her sister is one of the leading forensic scientists here. She knows what blood looks like. It’s not like I’m going to shock her or anything.”

“Damn you, Jimmy, that head shocked me, and I promise you, I’ve seen some of the worst.”

Madison didn’t want them fighting, and she didn’t want to stare at the head.

But she stood, stiffening her spine to steel, determined to be strong enough to stand without Kyle’s help—despite the fact that she had to stare at the heart-wrenching sight before her.

She couldn’t help herself, because a chilling sensation had settled over her, and though she was staring, the sight of the head was fading; she wasn’t seeing what was in front of her. She was seeing a pretty, vivacious redhead. She wasn’t sure if it was the same woman she had seen before, but if not, she was similar in height and build, and she had the same beautiful, streaming hair. She was laughing as she opened a car door and slipped into the driver’s seat. Someone was with her. They were driving…on the highway. Then they were on another road. There was an occasional huge bird’s nest up on a telephone pole on one side of the road. There was water on both sides, as well….

They passed a sign. Lake Surprise. She knew the exact spot they were driving by; it was on U.S. 1, on the way to Key Largo.

“The Keys,” she said suddenly.

“What?” Kyle said.

“The Keys,” she repeated, still staring at the head.

“Will you please cover that up?” Kyle demanded of the mousy little pathologist.

The woman started to oblige.

“Wait a minute,” Jimmy protested. “Madison is getting something, she’s seeing things.”

The sheet came back up.

“She isn’t seeing anything else!” Kyle snapped. Which was true, but how he could possibly know, Madison had no idea.

“I’m all right!” Madison lied. She was going to be strong. She was determined.

Like Jassy. Madison wasn’t going to fall apart like a fragile female so she had to be held up by the strong male. Kyle.

“I’m all right,” she repeated, and it sounded much better.

It didn’t matter.

Kyle led her out of the room and back into the corridor. Jimmy followed irritably behind, but Kyle didn’t stop until they had left the corridor of death and come to an employees’ lounge. It was empty except for a tattered sofa, which Kyle forced her down on.

He ran his fingers through his dark hair. “Madison, you’re as white as a sheet. Are you sure you’re all right?”

She nodded.

“Of course she’s all right,” Jimmy said impatiently. “Right, Madison?”

She wasn’t, of course. She was shaky, damned shaky. But she didn’t want Kyle to know that fact.

“I’m fine. Perfectly fine,” she said, staring at Kyle. “I don’t need a big brother looking out for me.” She lowered her head quickly. She was doing it again. Lashing out. Acting like a two-year-old, when what she wanted to be was aloof and remote and dignified.

“Madison,” Kyle said impatiently, “even the pathologists cringe at some sights. Cops who think they’ve seen everything see something else and get weak knees and throw up all over. You don’t have to be the damned Rock of Gibraltar.”

She shook her head slightly. “I really am all right.”

“What did you see, Madison?” Jimmy demanded impatiently.

Again, she hesitated. She could have killed Jimmy. This wasn’t playing fair. He’d asked for her help. He hadn’t told her that Kyle might be involved. She didn’t want Kyle here. She didn’t want him seeing her in action and thinking, as he had thought when his wife died, that she was some kind of a…

Freak.

“Madison? Please, Madison, for the love of God, this is a bad one, a real bad one. We think it’s part of the case we asked for Kyle’s help on.”

Her head jerked up, and she stared at Kyle.

“I didn’t want her involved in this, Jimmy,” Kyle said.

“It isn’t your call,” Madison informed him, but she could tell by the way he was looking at Jimmy that it wasn’t going to end there. Maybe it was Kyle’s call. He was FBI, and Jimmy was a local cop. She frowned, watching him. “I—I didn’t even see you when we first came in.”

“I was watching the autopsy in process.”

He’d been one of the suits. Of course.

“Madison…” Jimmy said, pressuring her.