Read Online Covert M.D. by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online Page B

would one day work side by side as partners. Lovers.
    The reality was nothing like those dreams had been. The fantasy had been a silly amalgam of fleeting touches and hot, whispered promises. Of partnership and communication. The reality was damp, echoing hallways and strained silence.
    And why was she thinking of this at all? He’d pushed her away. Worse, he’d pushed her father away when it counted most.
    That was something Nia shouldn’t forgive.
    Repeating that thought in her mind, though it didn’t echo as loudly as it had two days earlier, she pushed open the first door to begin the search. Rathe moved off down the hall while she checked her small room for anything suspicious—like a pile of the missing items from Talbot’s list. But no such luck. The small space was a storage area of sorts, with row upon row of empty metal shelves. She sighed, locked the door and moved on to the next, preternaturally aware of Rathe’s exact position relative to hers.
    With her previous partners, Nia had consciously kept tabs on them in case they needed her help or she needed theirs. But with Rathe…she knew where he was at every moment. It was as though special McKay receptors hadprickled to life on her skin, alerting her to his every motion, his every expression. Though she had her back to him, she could swear he was pensive.
    Her left eyelid twitched.
    “Hey!” Nia jerked a hand to her eye.
    “What?” He was at her side in an instant. “What have you got?”
    “I…I’m not sure. What were you looking at?” She prowled slowly up the corridor to where he’d been standing. He trailed her too close, and she almost asked him to back off. To give her room.
    “I was checking out the end of the hallway. Something bothers me about it, but I can’t quite figure out what.” He moved past her and touched the wall with gentle, questing fingers.
    Suddenly a long-suppressed sensory image of those fingers moving over her body swamped Nia. She pressed a hand to her jittery stomach and inhaled sharply.
    A tendril of scent invaded her nostrils, sweet and tangy. Horribly familiar.
    Blood. Death.
    “Rathe, do you smell it?” She was almost unaware of him as she followed the scent to the third-to-last door.
    “Nia, don’t. Let me.” His low, urgent words were lost to the tic of her eyelid and a feeling of impending panic. She shook off his restraining hand, opened the door, flicked on the light—
    And screamed.
     
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    Nia staggered back, away from the corpse. The man’s throat was slashed from ear to ear. His clothes were soaked with blood, though the room was clean. And his eyes…his eyes had been cut from his head.
    “Oh, God! It’s Short Whiny Guy.” Without thinking, without caring about what he thought of her, Nia grabbed on to Rathe and buried her face in his shirt, barely noticing when his arms came up and held her hard.
    He cursed and toed the door shut with his boot before he bundled her toward the center of the building, half dragging her to the service elevators. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
    Nia let herself be shepherded for a moment. Then she dug in her heels and pulled away, stomach roiling. “Like hell. We need to stay down here and secure the scene. We have to call the cops so they can look at…at…” She held the back of her hand against her mouth, hoping the pressure could keep the nausea in.
    She’d seen dead men before—the bodies of sick patients, victims of natural disasters, even soldiers killedby enemy fire. But this was different. This was cold. The throat wound was a single clean slice. The cuts that had removed Short Whiny Guy’s eyes had been neat and precise. Almost surgical. Twin trickles of blood had run from the stark dark holes in his head and dried on his cheeks.
    Like tears.
    “Nia.” Rathe’s voice was quiet. Gentle. “You don’t have to be here. I’ll take you upstairs. We can call the others from there.”
    She stepped away and breathed