The talk of heritage and children often led to her grandmother asking if she was any closer to giving her great-grandchildren, and if not, she knew of a nice young man or two who could probably get the job done. Russians were hardcore. And Russian women were worse than hardcore. Tess would rather face an alley full of maniacs than cross a Russian woman during the wrong week of the month. Or her grandmother any day of the month. So the suggestion of her having children wasn't really a suggestion, but more of an order. And Tess wouldn't put it past her grandmother to hire a man to show up on her doorstep one day ready to get the job done.
The longer she searched the house the more uneasy she felt. There were no beams from flashlights or headlights that she could see. It was nothing but darkness, the raging storm, and the occasional flash of lightning. It was moments like these when she wished she had a dog to keep her company instead of a satanic cat.
"Oh, for Pete's sake," she whispered. And then she wondered why she was whispering. "Because I'm losing my mind."
She'd seen the van coming straight toward her with her own eyes. They were around here somewhere, and they couldn't hide from her forever. She wanted explanations.
Tess moved quickly through the kitchen and into the long hallway that led to the embalming room and attached garage. Those rooms hadn't been part of the original structure and had a much more modern and clinical feel to them.
The hall floors were tile, and she'd once had hall runners put down, but the gurneys got snagged on them when she tried to wheel a body from the garage to the embalming room. It had only taken once for a body to almost tip over before she'd rolled the rugs back up and shoved them in a closet.
If people knew some of the things that happened behind closed doors at a funeral home, they'd more than likely opt to give their loved one a Viking funeral complete with flaming arrows. She'd heard some doozies of stories when she'd gone to a mortician's convention, and she prayed she never had to explain to a family why their loved one had accidentally been cremated or why the wrong body was in the coffin.
The embalming room always stayed locked since there were thousands of dollars' worth of equipment inside-not to mention a body-but she checked the doorknob anyway just to make sure.
Locked.
She wiped her sweaty palm on her jeans and moved across to the door that led into the garage. She fully expected to find the transport van inside, along with whoever had taken it out for a spin. But when she opened the door, the space where the van should've been was empty.
The garage was oversized so they could maneuver bodies between the vehicles, and her voice echoed as she shone the flashlight into the cavernous space and said, "Hello?"
Nothing but silence answered her back.
The black Suburban she used for funerals was parked in the middle space, and the twelve-year-old Corolla that only started if she put a screwdriver in the ignition was in the far space. But the transport van was gone.
She pointed the flashlight over the concrete and noticed the floor was wet with shoe prints, tire tracks, and mud.
"See, Tess? Not crazy," she said, feeling vindicated.
So now what? She'd proven they'd been out with the van. And obviously they'd come back, at least for a short time. But why would they leave again? She looked at the time on her cell phone and saw it was just after six in the morning. None of it made any sense.
Eve Winter might own the place, but Eve wasn't here, and Tess had only seen her the one time in two years. Tess was the funeral home director. Everything that happened within those walls was her responsibility, including the employees. And employees didn't have carte blanche to use the funeral home's equipment at their whim.
The hum of electricity filled the room just before the lights flickered back on. She blinked a couple of times and then turned off the flashlight. When she looked at the shoe prints a little closer, she realized they led right to where she was standing. At least a couple of the guys had come inside. But she hadn't seen any sign of them.
Tess turned back inside the house to follow the prints, but the tile floor had been wiped clean. She could practically feel the electricity crackling around her. She wasn't sure if it was because of the storm or her temper. Either way, her hair felt as if it were standing on end, and every time she touched something she got a quick jolt.
She closed the door to the garage and dug her keys out of her jeans pocket as she went to the embalming room door. Since no one was in the house, and she didn't feel like going out in the rain to bang on their door to ask about the missing transport van, she decided to get to work. They'd have to bring it back at some point, and when they did, she'd be ready to pounce.