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“No,” she answered quietly.
    Her gaze shifted around the suite, found nothing in the
shadows and then settled on the corpse again. It lay as she’d left it, with the
sheet drawn down below its neck. Even from this distance, she could see the
terrible wound in the woman’s head.
    It was a hallucination. A stress-induced hallucination.
That’s all.
    “I’ve heard stories about him from the gals upstairs,”
Skitch went on. “He has some reputation, you know.”
    “Does he?” She searched the shadows again.
    “He likes the ladies and the ladies like him. Or so I’m
told. You might want to watch out for him, Doc.”
    Realizing at last what he was implying, she looked back at
him. “Skitch, please.”
    “You’re fresh meat for a guy like him. Fresh and sweet.” He
grinned down at her. “He’d eat you alive.”
    Just like my ex-husband , she thought. Then she took a
deep breath and pushed Jason MacKenzie out of her mind, along with the strange
incident with the woman. She’d simply had a hallucination brought on by nerves
and lack of sleep and if she wanted to do her job, she knew she’d better come
to terms with that.
    And her dreams… Well, they were just dreams.
    “Let’s get to work, Skitch.”
    “You got it.” He followed her inside. “We wouldn’t want to
keep Ms. Campanero waiting.”
    * * * * *
    Crossing the hot blacktop of the parking lot, Jason shoved a
hand through his hair. He’d visited the morgue several times but the place had
never caused his gut to tighten as it had today. Maybe it had something to do
with the fact that two of his friends had recently passed through there.
    Or maybe it had something to do with Emma St. Clair.
    Don’t get distracted, he warned himself.
    A breeze off the bay carried the tang of salt to him but it
didn’t cool his flesh or his mood. Shoving his left hand into a pocket of his
jeans, he dug out his car keys and headed for his Mustang. He had intended to
read Emma St. Clair the riot act for leaving the state in the middle of his
investigation. But she’d been Brian’s friend too. And when she’d run into that
chapel looking so terrified, he’d lost the ability to be the tough cop. He’d
always had a soft spot for the ladies and ignoring that soft spot wasn’t as
easy as he’d thought it would be. But was it all ladies or just this one? Even
now it was hard to recover his perspective, to forget the way she’d clung to
him, the way she’d looked at him.
    Flexing his left arm, he felt a bruise where her fingers had
dug through the fabric of his shirt and into his flesh. In his mind, he could
still see the sheen of fear that made her blue eyes shimmer. He could still
smell the scent of gardenia from her gleaming auburn hair.
    Scowling, he unlocked the driver’s door of the dusky green
classic and forced his mind back to more practical matters, like wondering what
might have disturbed the lady. According to Brian, she had a reputation for
being cool in the face of anything. Why would she get so upset about a woman
who had wandered accidentally into a restricted area?
    Pausing with his hand on the door handle, Jason gave the
parking lot a quick glance. His was the only car in the visitors’ lot. The
coroner’s staff parked at either end of the building, near secured doors that
led straight into the back area of the morgue. Whoever the mysterious elderly
woman had been, she was nowhere in sight.
    He thought again of Emma St. Clair’s eyes. She’d been more
than concerned about an old woman’s welfare. She’d been terrified. Maybe her
reaction resulted from the fact that she was just back from a lengthy
recuperation. Maybe it came from the fact that she’d nearly died, herself, so
recently. Working on dead bodies after an experience such as hers couldn’t be
easy.
    Whatever the reason, Jason had found himself wanting to
comfort her instead of interrogate her. Such consideration was more in Charlie’s
line than his. Up to now, he’d figured it