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in this closed metal drawer. Why?
    Roy Chopin had almost asked if anything had been taken from Krystal’s body. Faith felt sure of that. But shouldn’t he be asking about Krystal’s personal possessions rather than her corpse? What could be—
    Taken from a corpse?
    Oh, God. A trophy.
    When the bodies on the slabs had merely been things, the empty remains of crime victims, hiding made sense. But when Faith thought of them being further victimized—here, where they should at least be safe—she couldn’t stand it.
    She might already be too late. Safety be damned. Planting her hands on the sides of the drawer, wincing to imagine whatever else might have touched the same spot, she pushed forward—
    And bumped her head on steel.
    No.
    She was locked in?
    No! Barely swallowing back an embarrassing whimper, she fumbled at the front of the drawer. Oh, God, no. She couldn’t have made such a horrible mistake. What if she suffocated in here? What if nobody found her for days? She would never have a chance to make up with her mother. She would die a virgin. It would be like being buried alive!
    When her hands encountered a latch, her relief was dizzying. Her reaction to the snick of that latch, to the rush of air that now smelled fresh in comparison to where she’d been, was heaven itself. But she didn’t have time to savor it as she threw open the door to the body drawer. She pushed the tray that held her forward, rolled stiffly off it, braced herself for an attack from—
    From nobody.
    Faith crouched there beside the open drawer, her heart pounding, her hands fisted, and faced an empty examination room. She spun one direction. Turned the other. Nothing.
    Had she imagined it?
    But no. She wasn’t imagining the scent that lingered beneath this smell of antiseptics and death. It didn’t matter if most normal people wouldn’t be able to smell it; many smokers couldn’t discern scents like baking bread or cheap perfume either, but that didn’t mean the smells weren’t there. This smell was here, too. Part musk, part heat. Power. Dominance. Evil.
    If Faith needed further proof of intrusion, Krystal’s corpse now stared blankly at the ceiling.
    Someone had moved the sheet from her blue-lipped face.
    Still catching her shuddering breath, skin crawling from her momentary entombment, Faith took a hesitant step closer to her friend’s remains. The bruised horror that had once been Krystal’s slim, smooth neck seemed all the more blasphemous. Her eyes were open, blank. Her pale blond hair…
    Was something different about her hair?
    Faith bent closer, peering at it. There was definitely a blunt wedge where a chunk of hair by Krystal’s temple had been inexpertly sliced away. Someone had taken—
    A knock at the open doorway startled her so badly, Faith sprang back from the corpse with a cry. Then she stared at her boss, confused. How had Greg gotten so close without her hearing him?
    Just how upset was she?
    Still, now that she did notice him, his heartbeat sounded comfortingly, familiarly like Greg. He wore Nikes, not boots. He, at least, wasn’t the killer.
    “This is your version of keeping distance from the case?” he asked, pale eyes frowning behind his glasses.
    Faith flushed. “I came looking for you and I…I found her like this.” It was technically the truth. She was just leaving out the middle part, where a more honest woman would say, and I heard someone coming and hid in the drawer and then climbed back out once he was gone and then I found her like this.
    “Like what?” He came closer. He had a clipboard in one hand, a pen behind his ear, fresh gloves flapping out of his pocket. That was so Greg. Now that she’d noticed him, he wasn’t the least bit silent. Just…quiet-natured.
    Easy to be with.
    “Uncovered. And…some of her hair’s been cut off. Did the medical examiner take it to run tests?”
    Greg took her by the shoulders—luckily his hands made contact with her sleeves, not her bare skin, but