“Yes, I’ve been reading the papers,” I shot back. “Despite what you think of me, I’m not illiterate. I totally expected that at some point I was going to get fucked. What I didn’t expect was to be asked to fuck myself.” I stood up, aware that I was beginning to shout, but I had no desire to control myself. “Well, you know what? It’s not going to happen. I’m not going to meekly take myself off so that the coroner can avoid a nonexistent scandal. I was held up at fucking gunpoint! Why the fuck doesn’t he grow a pair of fucking balls and come out and say that? And, y’know what? He can grow a pair of fucking balls and fire me to my goddamn face if he wants me gone!” I was beyond shouting at this point. I was shrieking like an insane bitch. Hey, at least now there was legitimate reason to fire me.

I didn’t give him a chance. I spun and stormed out, holding my fury and hurt close to me, and didn’t look around even though I knew there were plenty of shocked observers leaning out of office doors. I thought I heard Reb whisper, “Good luck, babe,” as I stormed past her and through the security door, but I couldn’t be sure. I liked to think she did.

I drove out to my storage locker and numbly counted up my stash even though I had a pretty solid idea of how much I had saved. If I was careful and wasn’t too active and didn’t get hurt, I could probably last a couple of months. And what then?

And then I’m fucked. Unless Sofia manages to get her fake brain formula right by then.

Why the hell had I gone off on Allen like that? Yeah, sure, the whole “leave without pay” thing was bullshit, but at least it would’ve most likely been temporary. Life was full of bullshit, and sometimes it was smarter to suck it up and wait for a better opportunity.

With a sense of complete despair paired with a fair amount of self-loathing, I shut and locked the freezer and the storage unit. I stopped at the first store that sold cheap clothing, bought a t-shirt, and changed out of my coroner’s office shirt. I briefly considered chucking it into the trash, but then changed my mind and shoved it into the trunk of my car. I really had loved the job, and just because Allen and the coroner were jerks didn’t mean I needed to scrub it from my entire life.

Now if I could only find something that would help take my mind off the complete clusterfuck my life had become.

I couldn’t get drunk. Drugs didn’t work on me anymore. Even cigarettes did nothing but burn my brains up and make me feel dead. And for that matter, even feeling dead wasn’t an escape since it always came with a hunger that wouldn’t go away until it was satisfied.

In other words, being bummed and depressed as a zombie sucked complete ass.

I finally stopped driving and pulled into the parking lot of Lou-Ann’s Café. That was one thing the morgue job had been good for—after so many months of working odd hours I knew where all the good greasy spoons were. Not to mention which ones had bathrooms that were fairly clean.

Lou-Ann’s had decent bathrooms, and more importantly, a really good key lime pie that would have to be my substitute for drugs and alcohol. I sat at the counter and ignored everyone else around me while I focused on enjoying every bite of the damn pie. I was vaguely aware that someone sat next to me and did his best to hit on me, but I ignored him and kept eating and eventually he got the message and slunk off.

The waitress didn’t make any attempt to engage me in conversation, which I appreciated more than she could possibly know. I made sure to give her an insanely large tip, and when I headed out I was somewhat calmer. And fuller. And at least I didn’t have to worry about diabetes.

I was nearly to my car when I heard an aggravatingly familiar voice from behind me. “Look who it is—the cunt from the newspaper.”

Looking back, I saw Clive’s sneering face. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been in the café while I was there, so I figured he was on his way in. “Get it right, Clive,” I said. “It’s ‘fucking bitch.’”

He snorted. “I’ll just go with fucking loser. It’s only a matter of time before you end up back in jail, y’know.”

I rolled my eyes and continued to my car. I’d just opened the door when he spoke again.

“Maybe you can share a cell with that fuckup loser of a dad you got.”

Goddammit, but I was getting really sick of people shitting on me and my dad. I stopped, turned, made a quick scan of the parking lot then took two steps toward him. “What did you say?”

Clive’s mouth spread into a sneering grin. He straightened his shoulders as he closed the distance between us, deliberately flexing and pushing his chest out a bit—which almost made me laugh. I weighed barely a hundred pounds. He was bowing up to me?

“I said your dad’s a fucking loser—”

That was all he got out before my fist connected with his face as hard as I could manage. I wasn’t full up on brains, but I was pretty damn close, and I was able to hit him hard enough to send him reeling back, clutching at his nose.

“You fucking bitch!” he screeched as blood began to fountain through his fingers. “You broke my fucking nose!”

I grimaced and looked down at my right hand. I’d never really learned how to punch, and it showed. Two of the bones in my hand were clearly bent at angles that weren’t supposed to be there, and blood seeped from a wide cut across my knuckles. It hurt like fuck-all but even as I peered at it, the pain began to fade to a dull background ache.

Clive let out a wheezing noise that I suddenly realized was him laughing. “You stupid bitch,” he gurgled through his bloody fingers. “I’m calling the cops. I’m pressing charges. And your loser ass will be going back to jail.”

I lifted my eyes to his. “Okay. Call them,” I said, absolutely loving how calm I sounded. “I’ll wait right here.”

Clive fumbled his phone out of his pocket. I watched him thumb nine-one-one on the keypad, listened to him tell the dispatcher that he’d been attacked and was holding the perpetrator—me—and needed the cops to come so that I could be properly arrested. While he did this, I casually reached into my car and pulled my bottle of brain smoothie out of the cup holder. I took several long gulps, resisting the urge to grin as I felt the bones pulling back together.

“Don’t you fucking try and run from me, bitch,” Clive told me after he disconnected. “They said they have a unit right around the corner.”

I shrugged and took another pull from the bottle. Might as well finish it off just in case he decided he didn’t want to wait for the cops and would rather take his fury out on me in person. I was careful to hold the bottle in my left hand, and deliberately kept my right cradled against me to make it look as if it was still hurt.

He fumbled his car open and snagged a towel out of the backseat, held it to his face. “Then again,” he said, “maybe you should run.” He let out a nasty laugh. “Y’ever been tasered? I’d fucking pay money to see that.”

I set the empty bottle back in the cup holder. A quick glance told me that there was still a smear of blood on my knuckle, which I left there for now. But when the two sheriff’s cars pulled into the parking lot, and Clive took his eyes from me, I took that chance to quickly lick the blood off. Gross, I know, but I didn’t want to wipe the blood on my clothes anywhere it might show.

I vaguely recognized the deputies who stepped out, but I doubted that they could do the same with me since I wasn’t dressed in my coroner’s office gear anymore. I didn’t say anything while Clive indignantly told them the story of how I’d hauled off and slugged him. He actually stayed pretty close to the truth, probably because it really didn’t need any sort of elaboration. He knew perfectly well that even a misdemeanor battery arrest would violate my probation. And, with the damage to his nose, it could possibly even be considered a felony.

The two deputies listened to his account with the occasional glance toward me, clearly thinking something on the order of, “this tiny thing broke your nose?” But they let him finish before turning to me.

“He made the whole thing up,” I said before they could speak. “I was out here making a phone call when he came stumbling around the corner with a bloody nose, then he started babbling about how I’d hit him.”

Clive puffed up. “Oh yeah? Check her hand! She broke her fucking hand on my nose!”

I locked eyes with Clive and extended both my hands to the deputies. I didn’t say a word while they carefully examined my knuckles, fingers, and the condition of the various bones.

They exchanged a look, then turned back to Clive. “Not a damn thing wrong with her hands, sir,” one said. “There’s no possible way she punched you—and certainly not hard enough to break your nose. Why don’t you tell us what really happened?”

Things really went downhill for Clive after that, though for me it was a truly beautiful thing. I watched in serene glee as he argued, then frothed, then, when they attempted to cite him for disturbing the peace, he fought, which earned him the tasering he’d taunted me about.

And, on top of all that, they found steroids and painkillers in his vehicle—enough to get him charged with possession with intent to distribute.

All in all it was the best high I could have ever asked for.

Chapter 19

As I drove home, distant flashes of lightning were putting on a spectacular show in the clouds to the west. And, at least for the moment, I was in the perfect mood to appreciate the beauty of it. Every time I started to think about how badly I’d screwed the pooch with my job, I summoned up the memory of Clive shrieking like a little bitch as the Taser probes hit him. Yeah, I’d lectured my dad about being forgiving and all that shit, but sometimes forgiveness was overrated.

My phone rang, and I was more than a little surprised to see that it was Sofia. I made a face, regretting my decision to actually put her number into my contacts list. I was in a really good mood right now, and I doubted that she had anything to say to me that would keep that good mood going. And I sure as hell didn’t want to get sucked into a “Let’s do coffee” date or something equally lame. Therefore, I channeled my pettiness and immaturity and let it go to voicemail. That was a decent compromise, right? I was willing to listen to a recording of her. I simply didn’t want to actually talk to her.