Polar Bears are Forever: Book One Supernatural Enforcers Agency (22 page)

“I saw him put the murder weapon – an ax,” she shuddered, “in a building site.  He dropped it into some drying concrete.  I could describe the buildings, and maybe they can still find it.”

“I’ll let them know.  You’re amazing, by the way.”

She flushed, but she felt joy at hearing that.  Amazing was a word he kept using to describe her, and she loved it. 
It made such a change from weird, odd, crazy and nuts.

“You have to say that because you’re my boyfriend.”

“No, I have to say that because it’s true.”

Erin pouted.  “Kiss ass.”

He leaned down to whisper in her ear.  “You mock but I seemed to recall you really enjoyed that last night.”

“Not funny!” she scolded him playfully as her cheeks burned bright red.

“Look, I’m gonna go talk to New York; you stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll go and see if I can help Jessie.”

He nodded in approval before kissing her hand one more time and walking away.  After eyeballing his butt for a few seconds –
it really was spectacular
– she shuffled from foot to foot.

Okay, she could go and see if Jessie needed any help, but, from experience, she knew that Jessie would just get frustrated with how slow Erin was with a computer.  When the squirrel got going, she had tunnel vision, and anyone else trying to interfere in her work was not a welcome distraction.

On the other hand, she could actually try to make herself useful and use one of the gifts that actually got her promoted to this team.  While she wasn’t getting anything from the doctor, and their victim’s belongings had yielded nothing helpful, there was one last avenue she could mosey on down. 
Yep, it was time to feel up a dead body.

James Silver’s body was still in their morgue.  She could go down and see if she got anything useful.  She felt vaguely uneasy about her plan of action, as she knew that Gunner was opposed to it.  But, whether he liked it or not, there were going to be times when she had to do things that he found unsavory. 
That’s just the way it was
.  She knew her abilities freaked him out, but he was strong enough to deal with it.

With determination, she strode over to the elevator and punched the down button.  Of course, she’d tell him what she’d done after she did it. 
Telling him beforehand was just downright dumb!

Chapter Twenty-One

Erin tapped on the door to the morgue.  “Hello…”

No answer.  She pushed the door opened and shivered immediately.  Darn, it was cold down there.

She was surprised no one was about.  She recalled, from the tour Avery had given her that there was a medical examiner, and he had several assistants.

She crept through the room, feeling like an intruder.  She was deliriously glad that all the cold, metal tables were empty.  Yeah, she was depressingly familiar with dead bodies, but that didn’t mean that she blasé about seeing them.

Hmmm, now where would James Silver be?

“Hey.”

Erin squeaked and clutched at one of the tables. Images of the bodies that had lain there flickered before her eyes and with a yelp she snatched her hand back.  She whirled to find an average looking man watching her detachedly.

“Hey, Erin right?”

Ah, of course, he was the medical examiner.  She knew they’d met but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember his name.  On the tour, Avery hadn’t been keen to spend much time down in the basement, or in his company.  “Yeah, and you’re… ah…”

His lips twitched ever so slightly.  “Doctor Roark Maitland, but you can call me Rory.  I’m the medical examiner.”

“Right, sorry.”

“You’re Gunner’s newest girl, right?”

“Oh, ah…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.  You’ve nothing to be embarrassed about.  You’re just going where countless other women in this building have gone before.”

Rory smirked, and Erin decided she hated him. 
Perhaps he thought he was paying her back for not remembering his name.

“What are you doing down here?”

“Well, I…”

He didn’t bother to wait for an answer.  “I heard Isis Martin was in hospital.”

“Yes.”

Rory gave her a scornful look.  “Another of Gunner’s girls.”

“You make it sound like he has a harem of women,” she grumbled folding her arms over her chest.

“They just flock to him,” he said with a small trace of bitterness.

Well, Erin couldn’t honestly blame them – she didn’t exactly play hard to get
.  He was watching her closely, and Erin realized he was trying to upset her.  Not in the bitchy, spiteful way Isis did – that Erin could handle and almost excuse because she now realized that Isis actually did have a heart.  No, this was just malevolence for the sake of being malevolent, and it kind of scared her.

She decided to ignore him and tried to act professionally.  “I actually just came down to see if I could get some kind of vision from James Silver’s body.”

It was quick, but she could have sworn that she saw a look of abject hatred flutter through his face.  She almost thought that she’d imagined it, but she was getting a very bad vibe from this guy.

“Yes, I heard that you were psychic, I didn’t believe it though,” he said, almost casually.

“It’s hit and miss,” she admitted hedging.

“So how can I help you?” he asked condescendingly.

“I’d like to see James Silver’s body,” she declared, ignoring the jitters in her stomach.

“Oh, I’m sorry, the body has already been released to the family,” he told her smugly.

Crud
.  “But, on whose authority?”

“Mine,” he hissed.

“Shouldn’t you have checked with the Director or Gunner?”

“That bear is not my boss!” snapped Rory as he absently rubbed his neck.

“But…”

“I’ve told you that the body isn’t here so you should go.”

Rory stomped to the door and held it open for her.  She bit her lip. 
Well, if the body really isn’t there, there was no point in hanging around
.  She sighed and was about to leave when a flicker caught her eye.

A ghost materialized next to Rory.  The specter ignored her and instead stared at Rory,
for all the good it did.
  Erin almost gasped as she recognized him as James Silver.  Their victim’s ghost was hanging around the morgue and he did he seem to be focusing on the medical examiner. 

Rory tapped his foot impatiently.  “I don’t have all day.”

It was this moment that James noticed that Erin was staring straight at him.  “You can see me?”

Erin parted her lips and inclined her head ever so slightly to say yes.

James looked between her and the increasingly short-tempered Rory.  “You need to leave.”

Oh, she desperately wanted to ask why, she desperately wanted to ask him some questions, but for some reason, she felt afraid of doing it in front of Rory.

Slowly as his lips curled upwards, Rory closed the door.  “What’s wrong Erin?  Have you seen something you shouldn’t have?”

Oh, crap.

She didn’t need James’ ghost to tell her.  She already knew.  “You’re the one who’s been kidnapping shifters and taking their organs.”

Rory cocked his head on one side.  “Yes,” he replied simply.

Erin edged backward slightly. 
Alone in a morgue with a murderer was a very bad place to be.
  “But why?”

He locked the door.  The snick of the lock echoed sickeningly throughout the room.  “Money, of course.  Why else?”

“But I don’t understand…”

“There’s nothing to understand.  The idea came to me when I was working on a dead body about a year ago.  All of the guy’s organs were intact, and he would have been a perfect donor, except for the fact that he was a murder victim, and therefore none of his organs could be touched.  It seemed like such a waste.  So then I started thinking about how much people would be willing to pay to get organs they needed.  I looked into what the donor market was like – and for shifters it was pretty much non-existent.  It was kind of sad.”

He looked at her as if he truly wanted her to believe that he had feelings. 
Please!  He was a monster!

“At first, I was trying to match people up with dead bodies, but the timing was never right.  I could never find the right donor and get their organ quickly enough.  So, it became clear that I had to use live donors.”

“So you just killed whoever you felt like?” murmured Erin.

“Well, it’s not like any of them were exactly setting the world on fire.  They were no great loss.  I mean, James Silver was a womanizing hippo shifter – who gives a fuck about him?  And as for Isis, wouldn’t you have felt better with that whore cat out of the way?”

“No!” she exclaimed.

He snorted in disbelief.  “Right, sure.  It was a surprisingly easy endeavor.  All I needed was an empty hospital wing – I had the old mental institution that was closed for giving its patients lobotomies renovated.  Then I just needed to muscle to grab the victims, and my old friend Melvin was willing to do anything for me, given how much help I’d provided in escaping the little matter of going to jail for killing his wife.”

“That guy tortured and killed his ex-wife, you should have let him go to jail.”

“She had it coming,” he said nastily.

She suspected he felt that way about most women…

“How did you get rid of the bodies?”

Yes, keep him talking.

“Easy, I just got that Cinderella company to pick them up when they collected the rest of SEA’s trash.  The camera in the loading bay is broken, and they never look too closely at what they’re collecting, so it was perfect.  It was a shame that Silver’s body wasn’t disposed of, but no matter, now.”

“How did you choose your victims?”

Someone – Gunner at least – was bound to notice she was missing soon.

“I had to degrade myself to do that – don’t think I haven’t suffered in this whole thing!  I was going to take everyone from the SEA roster, but I thought that would be too obvious.  So I had to volunteer at a free clinic every Saturday to find the correct matches, plus Melvin found a couple through his clinic.  Now, have you any more questions?”

“I, ummm…”

Oh hell, think of something!

“No?  Well, thank you for listening; you know it’s actually been quite beneficial to admit this to you.  It’s been like a weight off my chest.”

“Oh, my pleasure, I’ll just let myself out…”

Rory took a step closer to her.  “I don’t think so.”

Unbeknown to him, James Silver’s ghost took that moment to throw himself in front of Erin, trying to protect.  “Stay back from her,” he commanded.

Sadly, only Erin could hear him.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but that’s not going to help,” she whispered frantically.

“What?” snapped Rory.

She inched her way around one of the tables, putting it firmly between the two of them.

“Whatever drove you to do this…”

Rory hooted with laughter.  “I wouldn’t bother.”

“What?”

“Trying to figure me out.  There is no sad, pathetic childhood story behind what I do.  I wasn’t abused, I wasn’t unwanted or unloved, and I wasn’t a nerd who harbored unrequited love for the head cheerleader who wouldn’t give me the time of day.  I had a normal, healthy life.  I’m a normal person.  I just did this for the money, which I will now be taking with me when I retire to a nice Caribbean island with no extradition to the US.”

“Normal people don’t kidnap others and harvest their organs,” Erin scoffed.

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to goad him, but Rory seemed unperturbed.

He shrugged.  “Because they’re not smart enough and don’t have the requisite skills to do it.  Ordinary, idiotic criminals rob stores and pick the pockets of old women.  No, no one else could have pulled this off.  You think your idiot bear boyfriend could have done all this?”

“He wouldn’t want to,” she cried indignantly.

Rory snickered.  “Oh, I’m just sorry that you’re not going to live long enough to have your heart broken by that idiot.  He’d have gotten tired of you and thrown you over as soon as something more interesting came along.”

He sobered a little and actually smiled a little sadly.  “I’m sorry I have to do this to you; I’d prefer it if Gunner were here instead.  You seem so nice, but I can’t change that now.”

Rory made a lunge for her, and she shrieked, running away as quickly as she could.  She was extremely thankful that he wasn’t exactly graceful, or fast. 
Because she was neither of those things either.

She ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her, pleased when she heard a thump and a scream.  Yep, she got him.  She ran through a series of interconnecting offices. 
Oh, why couldn’t she remember the way back to the elevators?
The basement was like a maze, and her navigation skills were questionable at best.

She needed a phone or an exit.  Her eyes darted round but she couldn’t see anything.  No, but she did hear Rory’s feet pounding after her.

Erin ducked into a room and swiftly closed the door.  She backed up slowly, praying he just went past.

“Hi.”

She slapped her hands over her mouth to muffle her scream.  James Silver’s ghost had chosen that moment to reappear.

“Don’t do that!” she whispered furiously.

The ghost shrugged.  “You need to get out of here; he’s a bad man.”

“Yes, I had noticed!”

Why had she come down here without her gun or her phone? 
It was like she was determined to get herself into trouble!

James disappeared for a few seconds before reappearing again.  “He’s gone back to the morgue, go now.”

“Thanks,” she breathed, yanking the door open.

She got a jolt as James appeared in front of her again and pointed in the direction she should go.  She nodded and pelted that way. 

“Erin!”

A familiar roar echoed throughout the basement, making everything shake.

Gunner!  Yes, he was here - he was coming for her!

Erin stopped and tried to listen for his voice.  Suddenly the door to her left burst open, and a manic looking Rory flew at her.  He knocked her to the ground, and they grappled with one another as he tried to pin her down.

Crap he was strong!
  He was soon restraining her, and he wrapped his hands around her neck.

“I’m going to fucking kill you, you bitch!” he snarled.

She gasped and scratched at his hands.  “And when I’m done maybe I’ll kill that fucking polar bear, too!”

That was it!
  No one threatened her polar bear.  She grabbed one of his fingers and sharply tugged it, bending it back at an abnormal angle.  He yelped and loosened his grasp.  She took that moment to hit him where it hurts. 
Yep, she punched him in the crotch.

Rory went limp; his face went green, and she pushed him off her body.  He made a desultory grab for her, and she sucker punched him in the face.  He tumbled to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

“Erin!”

They were quickly surrounded by other SEA agents.  Gunner swept her up into his arms and gave a swift kick to Rory.