Allison Brennan - Playing Dead

“What’s your name?”

“Niki.”

“Where’re you going?”

“San Francisco.”

“I’ll take you as far as Sacramento.”

“Great.”

“What’ll you give me?”

She rolled her eyes, then smiled. “How about a blow job?”

“Deal.”

He drove forty minutes. They were still east of Auburn. “Let’s pull over here.”

“I’ll do it while you drive.”

“I don’t want to crash the car.”

“Oh, you really get into it.”

Yes, he did. And he knew what he really wanted from this cheap whore who offered him a blow job for a ride. Girls like Niki would do anything.

He turned off the highway, then made a couple turns and parked off the road among the redwood trees. Perfect. He unzipped his pants and his semi-hard dick popped out.

He looked at her. “It’s all yours.”

“I don’t think so.”

She had a gun in her hand. It was pointed at his lap. “You guys are all the same. You’ll do anything to have your cock sucked. Get out. You can hitch your way home. Maybe offer to eat out some lonely housewife.” She laughed.

No one, no girl, talked to him like that. No woman pulled a gun on him.

He opened the door slowly. Got out of the car, hand on the door. Niki slid over to the driver’s seat, grinning, like she’d bested him.

“Sorry, Jeff, you’ll learn not to pick up hitchhi-”

He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her out of the car. She screamed, and turned the gun toward him. He grabbed her wrist with his other hand and slammed it against the car. He disarmed her easily.

And if he had just hit her and left her, he wouldn’t have needed Hamilton to clean up his mess.

But Niki had promised him a blow job, and she was going to give him one.

He picked up the gun and pointed it at her head.

“I’ll take that blow job now. And you so much as nip me, I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

She was crying. Crying! The bitch had pulled a gun on him and she was crying because he’d taken it away? But she got down on her knees and took him in her mouth and he was happy. When he was hard, he pushed her away. “Take off your pants.”

“Please, don’t. Just go-”

“Now.”

She did. She looked pathetic with her shirt and jacket and a naked ass.

“All fours like the bitch you are.”

She complied. He almost wished she would fight him.

He knelt behind her and raped her. Rape? No, he didn’t think so. She’d offered her mouth, this was just another female hole.

He closed his eyes. He put the gun behind him, but said, “If you try to get away, I’ll break your neck.”

She didn’t try. She’d accepted the fact that she’d fucked with the wrong person.

He pushed down on her shoulders to get better leverage. She wasn’t very big, he realized. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen, you fucking pervert.”

“You started it.”

Sixteen. Perfect. He shouldn’t do this, this was forbidden. The forbidden excited him. He came much too quickly.

He withdrew, getting hard again. He’d take her twice. She owed him.

She jumped up. He reached for the gun and held it on her. She was sniffing, her eyes red, leaves in her hair. She pulled on her pants.

“Don’t,” he commanded.

“Leave me alone. Go away.”

“I’m not done.”

“Yes you are. Done for good, Mr. Jeffrey Riordan, license number 3ABB688.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

She realized she’d made a mistake. She turned to run.

He shot her in the back.

He almost didn’t believe he’d shot her. He walked over to her body. Her mouth was moving, but only blood came out. She tried to get up, then collapsed. He couldn’t stop staring at the dying girl.

He called Hamilton from his cell phone. “I have a bit of a problem.”

Jeffrey shook his head to clear his mind when he heard a voice. Julie was talking to him. “Jeffrey?”

He was ready.

“Get down,” he growled.

She knelt in front of him. As soon as her mouth wrapped around his cock he came.

He held her head to him for a long moment. He had a solution to their problem. Why did he always have to make the tough decisions?

If Tom O’Brien were dead, none of this would have happened. But since Hamilton had fucked that up, the next person in the food chain had to go. The only person, really, who could be a threat to them.

Claire O’Brien.

Claire drove around to the back of the Sacramento County Morgue. Most people-unless they were cops or morticians-didn’t know about the rear entrance. But Claire had met the head supervising pathologist when she was working a life insurance case for Rogan-Caruso a couple years ago. She’d witnessed her first autopsy then, and she and Phineas Ward hit it off. They’d never been romantically involved, but a few times they’d hit the club scene together platonically.

She handed her card to the receptionist, who said without looking up, “Paperwork and name of the deceased.”

“I’m here for Phin Ward, not a body.”

The woman glanced up, then called over her shoulder, “Phineas, you have a visitor.”

Claire glanced around. The office was cluttered but organized. In the far corner was a fish tank with goldfish and a submerged plastic skeleton. Similar pathologist humor added levity to what could have been a depressing place to work, including a fake brain that looked real on a shelf, next to the snack food, and a life-size artificial skeleton hanging in the corner wearing a pirate’s hat and eye patch and holding a plastic sword.

Phin emerged from the rear office and smiled at Claire as surprise lit his eyes. “It’s been awhile.” He walked out and greeted her with a hug, then escorted her into the staging area. This was where they first tagged, weighed, and logged in the bodies.

“I know, I know. I’ve missed hanging out with you. How’ve you been?”

“Sad and lonely without you, but I’ll live. Better than being him.” He jerked his thumb toward a cadaver in the hall outside the freezer. “Came in fifteen minutes ago. John Doe, hit and run.”

A mortician walked by pushing a cadaver on a trolley. He handed his paperwork to Phin. Without looking at it, Phin walked back into the office, handed it to the woman, and returned.

“Is there a place we can go talk in private?” she asked.

He reached into a box and tossed her two booties for her shoes. She slipped them on, then followed him through the large autopsy room-currently unused-to a small office on the far side. The smell was mostly clean and antiseptic, with a very faint, underlying hint of something akin to rotten eggs. Like the first time she’d been here, Claire didn’t think it was that bad.

The office was crammed with equipment used to preserve tissue samples and containers with a colored fluid that held, primarily, brains. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No,” she said, partly lying. Phin had a morbid sense of humor and probably wanted to get a rise out of her. “What’s this room used for?”

“We have a neurologist who comes in every Tuesday to examine abnormalities in autopsied brains. Primarily for genetic research.”

She picked up a jar, brows furrowed. “Don’t tell me this is from a child.”