“Well, then,” she said. “We’ll leave you to it.”

Colson moved over to the desk in the corner and started pulling on a pair of latex gloves, purposefully ignoring us. I snapped my briefcase shut and jerked my head at Bria. She slid the envelope full of cash into her back pocket, and we walked over to the door. I pulled it open, letting her step through first as I glanced back over my shoulder.

Colson was still standing at the desk, but he’d put his gloved, fisted hands down on the metal, as if he were propping himself up. His gaze was locked on a framed photo sitting on the corner of the desk—one of two boys laughing and sitting on a stoop in front of a store.

He realized that I was watching him. After a moment, he tipped his head at me. I returned the gesture, then let the door swing shut behind me.

*  *  *

We stepped back out into the front room.

Bria waited until the door had shut behind us before she turned to me. “Ryan told me once about his brother’s murder. He said that it was one of the reasons he decided to become a coroner. So he could help find answers for people about what happened to their loved ones. Give them some closure.”

“I can understand that.”

“I can’t believe that he agreed to help us,” she said. “I never thought he would, but then I didn’t know that you’d killed the people who’d murdered his brother. Was that your backup plan if he’d said no? Reminding him of that?”

I shrugged. “Someone that you helped returned the favor to me when Dobson was searching the Pork Pit. That got me thinking about Colson. He’s always been respectful to me whenever we’ve crossed paths. I wondered why, and then I remembered this particular job that Fletcher had sent me on. That’s why I brought the newspaper clippings.”

“But he said yes before that. You didn’t have to tell him any of that stuff about his brother.”

“Yeah. But he deserved to know, regardless of whether he helped us or not.”

We left the coroner’s office, stepped back out into the hallway, and headed down the corridor. Bria rounded the corner just as the elevator chimed out its arrival. My sister stopped, then lurched back, keeping me from entering the next hallway.

“What—”

“Emery’s here,” Bria hissed.

“Where is this place?” Emery’s voice boomed out.

“It’s right up ahead, ma’am,” a male voice murmured in response. “This way.”

Two sets of footsteps slapped against the floor, heading in our direction.

Bria stabbed her finger at my heels. I slipped off the shoes, then the two of us turned and ran back the way we’d come. Even though I was still wearing my disguise, we couldn’t afford to let Emery see us anywhere near the coroner’s office. At the very least, she’d report Bria’s presence to Madeline, who would realize that my sister had tried to influence the autopsy results and that I was still alive after all.

“Over there!” Bria hissed. “The stairwell!”

We reached the end of the hall and skidded to a stop, but the stairwell door featured the same kind of ID scanner that had been in the coroner’s office. Bria fumbled in her jeans pocket for her card.

In the distance, I could see shadows sliding across the floor, growing larger and larger as Emery and her escort headed this way. Another thirty seconds, and they would round the hallway corner and see Bria and me standing at the far end.

Twenty seconds . . .

Bria yanked her card out of her pocket.

Fifteen . . .

She slid it through the scanner, but the light stayed red.

Ten . . . seven . . . five . . .

Bria muttered a curse and ran the card through the reader again. The light turned green, and she yanked the door open.

Three . . . two . . . one . . .

We stepped into the stairwell, the door swinging shut behind us, just as Emery appeared at the other end of the corridor, along with a uniformed officer.

Bria started up the stairs, but I grabbed her arm and yanked her back against the wall with me.

“Wait,” I whispered.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, a shadow moved in front of the narrow glass strip in the door, as though someone was peering inside to see if anyone was going up the steps.

“Something wrong?” the officer asked.

Silence. Bria and I flattened ourselves against the wall, holding our positions.

“Nah,” Emery finally said. “Must just be all the weird echoes down here.”

She moved away from the glass. I waited ten seconds, then looked out through the opening. Emery headed back toward the coroner’s office, threw the door open, and stepped inside. The officer followed her, and the two of them disappeared from view.

Bria and I both let out tense breaths.

“Come on,” I said, stooping to put my heels back on. “Let’s get out of here.”

21

Bria and I slipped out of the police station with no more problems, and she drove me back to Jo-Jo’s house. After that, the next few days dragged by in a slow, morbid blur.

It was hard being dead.

Mostly because I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t go home to Fletcher’s, I couldn’t go back to the Pork Pit to survey the damage, and I certainly couldn’t return to my tree house in the woods outside the Monroe mansion to spy on Madeline.

I couldn’t do anything but hide in one of the bedrooms above Jo-Jo’s salon and plot my revenge. A pleasant enough pastime to be sure, but once my plans had been laid, all I could do was wait and see if they would come to fruition. The lack of activity tested even my patience.

So did the incessant news coverage. Story after story dominated the newspapers and airwaves about me supposedly murdering Dobson, setting fire to my own restaurant, and perishing in the blaze. That was bad enough, but the reporters hounded my friends, constantly calling, texting, and following them around, trying to get exclusive interviews and wanting to know just how shocked they were that I’d turned out to be a stone-cold killer. One of them even had the audacity to book an appointment with Jo-Jo in hopes of picking up a juicy bit of info at the salon. But the dwarf realized what the reporter was up to and dyed her hair a lovely shade of pea green. The reporter never came back after that.

Finally, though, the day of my funeral arrived.

The others protested that it wasn’t safe, that it wasn’t smart, going to my own funeral. They were right, but I was determined to do it all the same. I hadn’t been out of the house in days, but more than that, I wanted to see Madeline and her reactions for myself and not hear about them secondhand from my friends.