She sighed and put Deacon out of her mind, and then she peeked out the door and down the hallway again to make sure she was alone. What if they hadn't brought the dead guy into the house at all? What if it was just a terrible coincidence and she'd been caught in the middle of some kind of horrible crime?
Her palms were damp with nerves and she again wiped them on her jeans, debating whether or not to close the door. Of course, then she wouldn't have an escape if the body turned out to be a zombie and tried to eat her face off.
"I should probably cut back on the caffeine," she muttered. "Though I haven't had any coffee this morning, so maybe I need to increase the caffeine."
She left the door open and headed back to the body, determined not to let her imagination get the best of her.
"No need to complicate matters. I'm sure I'm completely safe and that there's a reasonable explanation for this."
The body on the table didn't seem to have an opinion one way or the other, but she liked to think he'd agree with her.
"This is what I do," she explained to the corpse apologetically. "I reason things out. I'm all about the logic. Why can't I fantasize about Deacon without wondering if he is a criminal? Why won't my subconscious let me be wild and crazy? It's damned irritating if you ask me. Being responsible is for the birds."
She sighed and then pursed her lips together. "And I don't need your silent judgment either. I know that one of the reasons Henry broke up with me is because I talk to dead people." She bit her lip and moved closer to the table. "Of course, Henry was the type of man who made lists of my faults, so Henry can suck it. There's nothing wrong with talking to the dead. Unless they start talking back. Don't do that, okay?"
The silver necklace around the man's neck immediately caught her attention. Not because the Star of David was unusual, but because the hospital always removed all personal belongings from the body and gave them to the immediate family. And if there was no immediate family to sign the paperwork for the body, they sent personal items along with the body in a labeled plastic bag.
It wasn't just the jewelry-where the hospital normally removed the corpse's clothing, this one was wearing what looked like a flight suit in dark gray. One of the sleeves had been rolled up and the front zipper had been pulled down to his navel, showing a patch of dark chest hair. There was a needle mark in the arm with the rolled-up sleeve.
"So weird," she whispered.
He didn't look like the normal bodies she worked on. This man was massive in size, but not with fat. The flight suit strained over muscular thighs and broad shoulders. He barely fit on the metal embalming table. He looked like one of . . . them. Except dead. His skin was cold to the touch, and though he looked to be Hispanic or Middle Eastern, he had the grayish hue of the recently deceased.
He had a puckered scar on his chest that was no doubt from a bullet, and she pressed her lips together tightly, thinking this was a man who'd cheated death on more than one occasion and now it had caught up with him. He was too young to be on her table. That was for damned sure. He looked to be in his mid- to late thirties, though death often made people look older than they were.
She spread the flight suit a little farther apart to get a better look at the scar on his chest, and maybe see whether cause of death was visible. The unease in the pit of her stomach had only intensified. Dead men without paperwork were nothing but trouble. She didn't know that from experience, but common sense told her that was the case. She bent over to get a closer look, but there were no recent wounds that she could see.
Tess rose again and moved to zip the flight suit back up, but as soon as she tugged at the zipper the man on the table gave a great gasping wheeze and his hand clamped around her wrist. The force of his grip brought her to her knees, and terror clawed at her as his body went into a seizure, his legs jerking uncontrollably as his grip on her wrist grew tighter. It wouldn't take much more to break it.
And then he did the unthinkable. Something none of her dead bodies had ever done before.
He sat up and stared at her out of eyes that were very much alive and very, very angry, his grip so strong she bit her lip to keep from crying out.
"You ever heard the saying about curiosity killing the cat?" a graveled voice asked from the doorway.
Her eyes wheeled around and she stared incredulously at Deacon from her crouched position on the floor. "Seriously? That's what you're going to say?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time." He came toward her, and she felt the space close in with every step he took. Maybe she was the one who was dead and she'd been transported to Valhalla. It would certainly explain why she was surrounded by giant men who looked like gods.