Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #3) - Cynthia St. Aubin Page 0,12

parking lot where my metallic flake blue 67 Mustang hunkered like a wolf at the herd’s edge. The white racing stripes reflected the day’s waning light in a dull gray.

Behind the wheel, I cranked the key over, and was met by a rhythmic choking.

“Aww, come on,” I pleaded. “Don’t do this to me. Not now.”

I waited for the caravan of minivans to disperse before giving it another go. The engine sounded weaker this time, a patient in the last stages of vehicular emphysema.

I thunked my head against the cold steering wheel, worn smooth long before the Mustang had come to rest at my curb.

The horn gave an abrupt little beep, reminding of the first time I’d honked the horn of Mark’s old Rolls Phantom. He had been in front of the car at the time, an unfortunate happenstance for us both. Me, for the new pair of underwear I required, and him for punching a dent in the car’s hood that cost a nifty ten grand to replace.

Only it wasn’t Mark in front of the car now.

It was Morrison.

He had my hood popped before I could get the car door open.

If that wasn’t a metaphor for our entire relationship, I didn’t know what was. Taking a blood pressure lowering breath, I levered myself out of the car.

Morrison leaned over the exposed engine, hands planted on the chrome grill. I had often thought that Morrison looked more like a boxer than a cop and glancing at his profile in the sun’s dying light did little to change my mind. A strong nose that looked like it might or might not have been knuckle-adjusted at some point. The stony jaw capable of absorbing full force haymakers. Only his lips offered a hint of sensitive vulnerability.

“Hi,” I said.

“Battery’s dead.” He thumbed greasy dust off the battery’s terminal.

“Think so?”

“You left your lights on again.”

I began to protest and then remembered. Checking the clock radio, wanting to be in my seat at least ten minutes before class started, I had squealed into the parking lot on two wheels. “I might have forgotten to click them off,” I admitted.

“You have jumper cables? The Vic’s parked over there.” He shot his chin the direction of a Gold Crown Victoria a few rows behind us in the mostly empty parking lot. I’d once made the mistake of needling Morrison about the woes of police-issued vehicles, only to discover he owned it personally. I’d learned too slowly that the man liked his cars like he liked his women: easy to slide into, fast on the gas, and requiring little more attention than the occasional oil change.

Only managing two out of three meant I was a little too much for him to handle most days.

“Do I have jumper cables?” I scoffed. “What kind of girl do you take me for?”

This wrought the specter of his uneven smirk.

I pulled open the driver’s door to retrieve the keys and swung back to unlock the trunk.

Where I found a decapitated body hunched around the Mustang’s spare tire.

A dark suit ending in a ragged red stump, matching like a morbid puzzle piece: the head it belonged to at an impossible angle, the neck pale against drying blood. The copper clamp of one cable poked from the gory space between head and neck, looking like a failed mechanism for attachment.

Somewhere deep in my gut, I felt the spreading calm of a woman who had seen too much bloodshed. A woman who had seen scores of mangled bodies. A woman who had been bitten, beaten, and betrayed. A woman who met violence and death with the grace of eventuality.

But that was my gut. To my great regret, my gut didn’t control my gross motor functions.

Nope.

That would be my brain. My panicky, neurotic, anxiety-addled brain.

I shrieked like a banshee, slammed the trunk closed, flapped a frantic circle, and slapped death germs off on my jeans. It’s possible that I indulged in a full body shudder before I remembered Morrison, now staring at me in sudden squinty-eyed suspicion.

Shit. The cop face.

I’d fallen prey to its impossible scrutiny more times than I cared to recall.

I could show him. After all, he was a cop. He could find the bad guys that did this. They might even let him back on regular duty if he called this in. He’d be grateful. He might even forgive me.

Right, the ever-present cynic critic in my head said. You’ll just let this cop who is convinced Mark is a murderer check out this sweet