Shrouded Deception by Stella Mace

Author:Stella Mace [Mace, Stella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Deadly Confrontations

Isat in the back of an ambulance being attended to by paramedics for the usual post-trauma conditions. “Did you hit your head? Did you pass out?” The more I insisted that there was nothing wrong with me, the more questions they asked. I knew they were just doing their jobs, but all it did was aggravate me.

Adrian came out to check on me. It had only been 10 minutes since I discovered the body, but it seemed longer.

“How’s the patient doing?” he asked one of the paramedics, who side-eyed me before answering.

“Physically, she’s just a little bruised. Nothing broken or torn. But man, could her personality use a tune-up.”

“Hey!” My gaze bored holes into him. “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”

He slunk off.

“Man, you have a real way with people. Our town’s own Miss Congeniality.”

He meant it as a joke, but before I knew what was happening, I was sobbing. Like most men, he didn’t know what to do at first. Crying is kryptonite for most men, but to my surprise, he climbed into the back of the ambulance and held me. Just held me. No questions, no trying to fix it or probing. It felt good being held like that. I pulled myself together.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

He didn’t pretend to know or offer solutions. He just sat there.

“Have they taken down the body yet?”

“No, they need to be careful. It’s practically skin and bones. They have to be careful. Then some poor bastard will have to climb in there and do an evidence sweep. Looks like we’re going to be here all night.”

Suddenly a loud crash came from the school, and we both took off to find out what happened. When we got to the third floor, all there was was dust and broken panels. The techs were scrambling to make sure that they collected everything. One of the officers came up to Adrian.

“We don’t know what happened, Detective. One minute they were taking pictures and samples and the next thing it all just came down.”

He looked around to call one of the tech guys over, eager to not be blamed, but Adrian nixed it.

“Leave them to finish.” He exhaled deeply. “We can figure all that out later. It was probably just structural, too much strain from the way the body was hanging half out of the ceiling.”

“Can I have your flashlight again, please?” Before Adrian could retrieve it, the officer had already taken his out of the holster on the side of his uniform.

“There you go, miss.”

Adrian gave him a look, and the guy walked away. The hole in the ceiling was by no means small, and it was still pitch black up there, but something caught my eye. I turned the light on and cast the beam over the still intact portion, trying to find what it was that jumped out at me. A woman’s heel. She lay dead still.

“There’s someone up there,” I told Adrian, who had turned to talk to one of the tech guys.

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