Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
“Did you?” I press my lips together for a beat. “I heard that too.”
He laughs, angling his body a little more.
“Eating alone?” I eye his table set for one.
“I am. I’m comfortable in my own skin. Besides, I like listening to the interesting conversations around me. A pathologist. That’s impressive, Josie. Well done. I can see you hunched over a microscope.”
“Good to know you heard I went to medical school, and you can see me hunched over a microscope. Are your other senses working well too?”
Colten laughs again.
I’ve always been his favorite source of amusement. It started in fourth grade. The seventeen-year break from his torment has been nice.
“Still quick-witted. I’d forgotten how much I loved your feistiness.”
“Ready?” Paul saves the day with his return.
“Absolutely.” I stand, tossing my napkin on the table.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Colten has the nerve to ask me.
“No,” I say, hooking my handbag onto my shoulder while glaring at him. More than a decade and a half should be long enough to bury all hatchets, yet I feel eighteen again and equally as livid. No scientist has been able to prove the existence of time, so in some ways, I am and always will be eighteen and despise Colten Mosley.
He knows what he did. And he knows where he can go for it.
As soon as I escape Colten and step out into the early June sunset, Paul invites me to his place. It’s a no-brainer. I’m thirty-five. What I do with my body is no longer a measure of my virtue. However, when Paul makes me breakfast Saturday morning, it’s a positive measure of his virtue. After a long kiss at his door, we make plans for dinner midweek. This might be something.
Monday morning, I sweat at Pilates, grab a breakfast sandwich and coffee, meet in the conference room with twelve other pathologists, and then gown up in the county medical examiner’s locker room in time to meet my two bodies for the day.
A possible overdose and a suspected homicide.
I start with the suspected homicide because there’s something about the missing legs that calls to me. An hour later, I nearly bobble the liver right onto the floor when I hear an unwelcome voice behind me.
“Never saw this coming. Dr. Josephine Watts, M.D. Assistant Medical Examiner? No fucking way.” Colten Mosley chuckles.
I recover the liver before it slips past my clawing fingers and secure it at the end of the table where the decedent’s legs should be. Then I glance over my shoulder while a masked Colten makes his way into my view—suit, tie, and that messy excuse for a hairstyle. “What are you doing here?”
“Detective Mosley…” he flashes his badge “…homicide. I started last week after working in Indianapolis for five years. I wanted to move closer to home. The real question is what are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I’d say you’re up to your elbows in vital organs, but you told your Friday night fling that you work in a lab. A nerd hunched over a microscope. This is … not the same thing, Josie.”
“I’m a pathologist. And I do have a lab with a microscope. What’s your point?” I glance up and reach for my scalpel.
“This is not what your date pictured. I can guarantee that. Not gonna lie … this isn’t what I pictured either when my mom told me you got into medical school.”
“I don’t care what you pic—”
“I pictured…” he cuts me off, sliding his hands into his pockets “…a dress hugging your curves, stopping right above the knees, high heels, sexy lab coat, hair down, maybe nerdy glasses sitting low on your nose. Not this astronaut getup with a black apron, goggles, and a face shield. And I guarantee Mr. Friday Night didn’t picture you in this. Unless … did you tell him the rest? Did you tell him you’re not just a pathologist, but a forensic pathologist who plays around in the cavities of dead bodies like a toddler in a sandbox?”
“What do you want, Mosley? I’m too busy with my real job to play cops and robbers with you today. So if that badge is real, then you’d better have a good reason for interrupting me.” I glance around the autopsy suite for Alicia or one of the other assistants, someone to force Detective Mosley to get to his point and leave me alone.
“We canvassed the entire area, and we can’t find a weapon. I thought you might tell me what we’re looking for.”
“An eighteen-volt circular saw with a seven-and-a-quarter inch blade. Six-foot cord. Zero to fifty-one degree bevel angle range. Adjustable cutting depth. Red handle.”
“How do you know the handle’s red?” Colten asks.
I grin behind my mask and shield. I’ve waited for what seems like forever to be the one on top. “Because you don’t saw off two legs without a little blood splatter. But really, your question should be how I know the cord is six feet long.”