The woman was naked, her skin melted as if it were hot wax. Her face was almost totally distorted; it would be difficult to identify her without dental records. Mia turned away with a moan. Søren couldn’t.
“My sister is twenty-seven,” he told the other man. “Does that-”
“Yes. According to the ME, she’s between twenty-five and thirty-two.”
He noticed-though the other man didn’t-that Mia was checking her hands. She turned each palm over as if looking for something, and then he froze. A symbol was branded into the woman’s skin: a stylized U with a curved tail attached. He’d never seen anything like it. Mia quietly let go and stepped back.
“Well, you were right,” he said. “I can’t tell. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
“That’s what I’m here for. If you two want to head on out, I’ll finish up here.”
Put the dead back in their boxes, you mean. When Søren turned off Lexie’s machines, she would wind up in a place like this. And then he’d have to choose between letting her rot slowly in the ground and burning her to ash. The prospect made him sick.
This time, Mia led the way out. “Personal items don’t just vanish like that.”
“Not unless they’re trying to hide something.”
“You think Micor had something to do with it?” she asked as they got in the lift.
“There’s a good chance of it.”
“It seems like the discovery of the body was a mistake. I can’t imagine that’s the way they usually work.”
He frowned. “Not at all. It’s sloppy.”
“But maybe they didn’t dump the body or kill that woman. Maybe she died as a result of-”
“Someone they experimented on,” he finished with a nod. “It makes sense. And now they’re trying to clean up the evidence. What are the chances her body will be there tomorrow?”
“I’d lay money on someone claiming her for a quiet burial.”
“Safe bet.”
“We need to figure out how to use this,” Mia said as she slid into the driver’s seat, and he found her use of the word we seductive. “That brand means something.”
“What made you check?” He was impressed she had.
“The guy mentioned a ring and a pendant. I thought her jewelry might’ve left a trace somewhere. I didn’t expect that.”
“If she was clutching the pendant-”
“Like a talisman.”
“-when she died, it would explain the burn pattern.”
Mia pulled out of the hospital parking lot. “Maybe the symbol has a protective meaning. I’ll check into it.”
“If we ID the victim, we can dig into her life, find out who she knew. Once we do that, we might be able to locate her attacker.”
“You think someone did that to her on purpose?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible. Maybe he took advantage of the chance to feel powerful. The abused often grow up to be abusers themselves.”
“Catching this guy isn’t your priority, though.” The chill of her tone drew his attention.
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know what you are.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “You’re a shade, Søren. Nothing in the world is real to you anymore. Or maybe not a shade… a revenant.”
“A revenant.”
“It’s a creature from mythology that returns from the dead for revenge.”
Except for the returning from the dead part, that assessment sounded about right. “It’s just as well you know as much going in. There will be no misunderstandings.”
“No. There can’t be. I see you too clearly now.”
He turned to her, frowning. “What’s the matter?”
“You just examined the ravaged body of a young woman… and I saw nothing. No revulsion, no compassion. Nothing. All you can think about is finding the bastard who did it-and not to punish him, mind you-but in hopes he can lead you back to the ones who run Micor. You don’t care how much damage he does, whether this death was accidental or for the joy of it.”
With a burst of self loathing, he realized she was right. “Would it help if I said we’ll stop him when we find him?”
Mia didn’t answer. She kept her eyes fixed on the road, but in the gleam of passing headlights, he saw the telltale glimmer in her eyes. God, he didn’t want her hurt. Her heart wasn’t encased in ice like his. She didn’t have his layer of detachment, and he didn’t like seeing the monster he’d become reflected in her eyes.
As they reached her condo, she said quietly, “It would help if you weren’t saying so to appease me. It would help if you cared. Do you?”
When he couldn’t answer, she slid out of the car and walked off without looking back.
CHAPTER 16
Mia analyzed the data Søren had left on her laptop, and she was forced to agree with his conclusions. The four suspects she’d targeted were clean, which left her nowhere. If it wasn’t a matter of pride and a blotch on her record, she might give notice and move on. Micor stunk, and she felt dirty working for them.
But the woman in the morgue haunted her.
If she walked now, she’d feel like she was giving up on her. Somewhere, she might have a family who was worried about her. So at midnight, she was still searching on the Internet, trying to figure out what the symbol meant. Really, she needed a more sophisticated setup, where she could scan the sketch she’d made and look for matches that way. Unfortunately, she wasn’t running a portable crime lab.
Eyes gritty, she caught a few hours sleep, and then she headed off to work, where the tedium just might kill her. Greg was already waiting when she arrived, so bright-eyed that she figured he intended to stick her with a particularly boring project.
That intuition was borne out when he said, “I want you to generate a list-” Mia stared at her organizer, ostensibly taking notes, while she tuned him out. “Is that clear?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“And you’ll have it on my desk by the end of the day?”
She drew a picture of a man with a knife in his head. “Of course. You can count on me, sir.”
At last, he left her desk and went back into his office. To appease him, she ran the search he’d requested-users with more than ten consecutive minutes of Internet access-and let it percolate. She’d print it later. Ordinarily, her time was her own when she worked an investigation, and she could go where she wanted, when she wanted. Belatedly, it occurred to Mia that rather than wanting discretion-which was a plausible motive-maybe someone on the board didn’t want her to succeed, thus her current situation.
By noon, she had a headache, and she was no closer to solving the problem. Mia was forced to confront the fact that she wasn’t motivated on this contract. She didn’t want to know who was stealing from Micor, because if they had that money back, they’d only use it for bad ends. Talk about a rock and a hard place.
All morning, she expected a phone call or an e-mail. She didn’t know how to feel about the silence. Maybe he was giving her time to regret marching off the night before. But who knew how a man like him operated? He might not give her a second thought. And maybe she shouldn’t give him one, either. If she’d learned anything over the years, it was that you couldn’t change someone. That metamorphosis had to come from within.
Just before she went to lunch, the lab tech-Kelly-came into IT, looking nervous. Everyone else was already gone. When she saw nobody but Mia in the room, the woman seemed to relax.
“Did you ever find your files?” Mia asked by way of greeting.
Kelly’s voice was hushed. “No. And more of my work has gone missing. I wondered if you could get me another log-in list for my username.”