"Trust me, princess. I'm not leaving and taking this dog with me."

I patted NB on his rump and held in a sneeze as I jumped out of Tony's truck. It didn't last long, though, and I sneezed two times as I ran around the building, headed for the back door.

If I entered through the front, they'd check my ID and ask me to sign in. Howard, the head mortician, put me on the blacklist after a simple misunderstanding over a missing foot last year. It wasn't even a real foot. It came from the fake anatomy skeleton, but Howard had half his personality stolen and could not handle a joke.

I reached the back door, yanked my foot from the snowbank it fell into, and slipped into the morgue. With a quick glance around the corner, I tiptoed my way down the long hallway that led to the employee spaces. With so few cars in the lot, I knew the entire crew couldn't be in the building, but I had to hope Kelvin hadn't gone home yet.

The hallway smelled like antiseptic and cold. And yes, in places like this, the cold had a smell. It was like a hospital but full of already dead people.

A television blared from the break room, and I set my feet in that direction, trying to look like I belonged. No one besides Kelvin would have the television that loud. Howard was way too ethical to get caught watching something. Or if he did, it'd be a documentary on World War II or something.

Kelvin, with his long black hair almost to his shoulders, had stretched himself out on the short couch in the employee break room. A television mounted on the wall in front of him had a movie going on the screen.

"Hey, Kelvin," I said to let him know I'd arrived for our special meeting that I'd forgotten to tell him about.

He popped up off the couch with his hand to his chest. "Holy shit, Vonnie. Don't sneak up on a man like that. I could have shot you."

"With what?" Did he plan to chuck a shoe at me?

I moved further into the room to see what he'd been watching during his break-something I suspected they got a lot of in this county, even with the number of dead people Pelican Bay provided. I fully expected to see Hans Solo flying a ship or Scotty being beamed onto a new planet, but tall talking trees took up the screen.

"Is this the one where the trees kill everyone?" I asked, leaning against the couch.

He glanced back at me with a troubled expression before grabbing the remote to turn the television off. "No."

"Yeah, that would have been a better ending." And cut half the viewing time.

"You've watched The Lord of the Rings?" Kelvin asked, standing from the couch.

It left my weight too hard on one side, and it slid an inch across the floor, almost dumping me on the ground. "You could say that."

I fixed my posture and pulled down my shirt, hoping it didn't disrupt the pep talk I'd given the boobs. One weekend I'd made the drive to Portland to see Broadrick while he was on leave, and he insisted we watch the movies together. I fell asleep halfway through the first, but woke up to see the horribly boring trek with tree piggy backs before passing out again. It wasn't the worst movie I'd ever watched but definitely top five.

I sneezed as Kelvin left the break room. "I assume you're here about Ace Ross."

Kelvin had a few inches on me, so I followed him down the hall with long strides to make up for the difference. "Who?"

"The dude from the shooting at the bed-and-breakfast. The dead one."

"Oh yes, him." Great, now I had a name. Not knowing that had made researching anything on the case extremely difficult. Impossible really. I sneezed again. Damn it. Did I have a dead person allergy?

Who named their kid Ace? "How did you ID him?"

Kelvin held open the door to the main portion of the lab. I.e., where they stored the bodies. "From the license in his wallet."

I sniffled, holding in another sneeze. "Cause of death?"

Kelvin turned back to stare at me. "Bullet wound."

He stepped around a body table and I stayed on my side, intrigued by the different instruments. A pair of tweezers with sharp points looked appealing. I could pluck that random dark hair that kept growing on the side of my chin with those bad boys.

My shoulders slumped as Kelvin stayed quiet. He was being difficult. "Man, help a woman out."

Kelvin grabbed the tweezers and placed them on a table behind him. Damn, I'd been too obvious to my staring. I'd have to grab a pair on another visit.

"The hole right between his eyes did him in quickly."

My head hurt, and I rubbed at my temple.

Kelvin grabbed a manilla folder from the table behind him and held it between us. I reached for it, but he jerked it away. "This is a copy of the report we gave the police."

"You knew I was coming." It wasn't a question.

Kelvin shrugged. "You have a habit of following the dead bodies. If you want this report, I need a favor."

I shook my head and pursed my lips. Everyone wanted something.

And since I really needed that report, I'd have to play ball. "What do you want?"

I grabbed the scalpel off the tray. It didn't look sharp enough to cut through skin.

Kelvin stole it from me and then dropped it, missing his tray. It fell to the floor, clattering with a metal-against-tile commotion. "Dinner with my family."

"Fine." I could eat some food with his mom if that's what he wanted. No biggie.

He held the file closer and then jerked it back again. "And you have to pretend to be my girlfriend if they ask."

"Are they going to ask?"

He nodded and still didn't hand over the report.

"Did we meet online? At a Lord of the Rings convention?"

Kelvin clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "No, in college. I tutored you in math."

My nose tickled, but I did the rabbit movement thing to stop the sneeze. It worked. "Whatever. I'll be your math girlfriend." What's the worst that could happen?

Kelvin handed me the folder across the dead body table. "I'll let you know the details once I have them."

"Great," I said, but I'd already flipped open the folder to read the report. My gaze skimmed the words, looking for important ones. "This is all fine. Normal even." Besides the bullet hole between his eyes that lodged in his brain.

I agreed to eat dinner with Kelvin and his family for this? He played me.

My hands were icy, so I stuck one in my pocket as I closed the folder.

"He only had the one shot to his head," Kelvin said, retrieving the scalpel from the floor. "No other wounds."

"And he ate lobster six hours earlier. For breakfast?" Honestly, I found the lobster part to be weirder than the lone bullet hole.

Kelvin threw his hands in the air. "I don't judge eating habits."

Look at all these nonjudgmental men in my life. Yay, me. Not.

Nothing about this case made sense. We had a room full of bullet holes but only one shot to our victim's head? And directly between the eyes? Either the gunman had one hell of a lucky shot or there were definitely two shooters-one who believed in the hold and spray method and one who took pride in his aim.

"Okay, well, thanks. I guess." Next time I'd demand he let me look at the file before I agreed to food consumption with him. Lesson learned.

Kelvin followed me out of the room and down the hallway I'd come in through. I hadn't seen another person in the long building since I entered, and our feet clattered on the tile floors. It'd been more than thirty minutes since I left Tony in the parking lot, but he wouldn't leave me.

"No problem. And hey, Vonnie."

"Yeah." I turned back at the exit door I used to enter the building.

Kelvin grimaced and took a step away from me. "You don't look so hot today. Get a nap or something in before family dinner."

I nodded. Kelvin needed to be real thankful I didn't carry a gun. It's possible Broadrick had a point.

Anyway, I didn't have time to kill Kelvin and hide the body. "Thanks, dude."

"I'm not saying it to be mean. It's just that my mother doesn't like women with dark circles under their eyes."

Oh, even better. "Yeah, that definitely helps."

No wonder Kelvin didn't have an actual girlfriend to parade around his mother. I used my back to open the door and slipped outside before he had the chance to send another insult my way.

I sneezed back out in the cold and shivered down into my coat. It wasn't windy at the moment, which meant the temperatures weren't horrible, but the cold still settled into my bones. My eyes watered as I rounded the building to meet Tony in the parking lot, and I sneezed again.

My feet stopped at the edge of the first parking space. Tony's truck was missing. Like aliens had swept him up for a little probing.

At least that had better be his excuse because in his parking spot sat Rachel. My black Camaro.

And in the driver's seat sat Broadrick with NB licking the passenger side window.

Broadrick spotted me to his side and tipped up his left eyebrow in his particular way.

"Shit," I whispered inside my coat.