Living Dead (PsyCop #15)

Chapter One

IF IT AIN’T broke, don’t fix it. As philosophies go, that might seem a little on the dull side. But I see plenty of action. I need more excitement in my life like I need a recreational colonoscopy.

Too bad the powers that be—or whoever is running my electronics—don’t share my pragmatic point of view. Every time I turn around, my passwords need changing, my operating system is no longer supported, and my clocks are all blinking twelve. But at least my favorite app had been spared.

Until now.

I perched on the arm of the couch and glared at Mood Blaster. This tactic might not sound like it should work, but since the app talked to the sensor in my watch, it was able to measure my heart rate, body temp, and general level of pissed-offedness.

No good. Even my state of extreme mental duress wasn’t enough to make the damn thing roll back its update.

I’d never considered myself a video game person—too much lingo to learn, too little coordination, and not nearly enough naked men—but Mood Blaster was different.

The concept was simple…because the game had been designed for children.

But that didn’t mean it didn’t work. First, you’d pick from a range of simple emoji faces to choose a desired state of mind, from sleepy to mellow to calm to alert.

A tap on one of the faces brought you to a nonthreatening little game of navigating a rocket ship through a field of space junk.

Think “Asteroids” with cuter graphics and no heart-pounding music.

Binaural beats pulsed through headphones to calibrate brainwaves while biofeedback data fed in from a smartwatch sensor. Brainwave entrainment is a technique that sounds made up, until you try it. Most people chase alpha waves for relaxation. But I found they gave my psychic mojo a valuable edge.

The app wasn’t terribly accurate, at least according to Dr. K, back in the lab. But it worked for me.

At least…it used to.

Now, instead of my usual range of emoji choices, I encountered a cartoon goldfish named Blip.

His bowl was a helmet filled with water and a couple of articulated arms attached.

Space was supposed to be cold, wasn’t it?

But Blip didn’t appear to be frozen, judging by the way he bobbled side to side, encouraging me to play the “new mini-game.”

I sighed. Long, and loud.

Yes, I’d come to terms with Mood Blaster being targeted to the preliterate age category. But this fish definitely had to go.

I was glaring at the carp when Jacob came home with a bagful of Korean takeout. I knew better than to expect ribs, a.k.a. “heart attack on a plate.” But it smelled like I was at least in for some fried noodles.

All I had to do was get rid of the Blip thing….

“Vic.” The tone was edgy, like Jacob had called my name three, four times. Which, in retrospect, he technically had. I looked up. “Your food’s getting cold.”

When had he gotten a chance to slide it onto a plate?

I plunked down at the table and proceeded to start shoveling down my dinner. Jacob didn’t comment on my earbuds. His eyes were on his phone, with a sharp crease between his brows. “My annual performance report is in.”

I made a noise around a mouthful of noodle.

He said, “It doesn’t mean anything, obviously. How do you even quantify what we do when we prevent disasters instead of mopping them up? It’s the same every year. Nobody reads it, nobody cares…but it still goes in my file.”

From the corner of my eye, Blip bobbed eagerly against a sea of stars, trying to tempt me into the mini-game.

Jacob scrolled. “Case resolution rate: good. Reporting timeliness: good. Not excellent, mind you. Just…good. What, do they expect me to write up my conclusions before the investigations are even done?”

I swiped my phone with a greasy forefinger to get rid of Blip’s imploring gaze, and my screen lit up with a psychedelic rainbow of colors. Collect the Floatalongs and guide them to the Mood-O-Sphere.

Great. And now the game was running. As Jacob’s fork clacked aggressively against his plate, little candy-colored puffballs with cute button eyes poofed into existence all around Blip.

Some rocked side to side. Some fluttered.

And some were definitely giving me a “come on, dumbass, get with the program” look.

I gave it a swipe of annoyance, and the Floatalongs scattered.

Blip was not pleased.

Try smiling, the phone helpfully suggested.

Yeah. That wasn’t gonna happen.

I might not know this particular game, but I knew what the app could measure.

Behind the cheerful kid-music, my earbuds were going whub-whub-whub.

I focused in on that beat and stopped clenching, and when I did, the Floatalongs gradually drifted toward the goldfish.

And soon, they’d formed a ragged line behind it.

Good job! my phone flashed. Jacob wasn’t the only one whose performance was being evaluated. An arrow appeared, urging me to the right. Now find the Snugglebay.

Was I supposed to move it with my mind? Oh. I could touch it now. I tapped the arrow and the little Floatalongs did a happy popcorn behind the goldfish….

“Four metrics were marked as Satisfactory.” Jacob gave a long pause. “Satisfactory.”

Dragging my finger while keeping my heart rate perfectly steady was more difficult than you’d think. But it seems to me we have more control over our own bodies than we realize. It’s just that without any way to measure it, we’re shooting in the dark.

“Obviously, I don’t expect to ever be on great terms with Laura Kim,” Jacob said. “No one just bounces back from a murder accusation. Regardless of whose finger was, technically, on the trigger.”

Before I knew it, the Snugglebay was in my sights.

“Interdepartmental Coordination—what does that even mean? I coordinate. Of course I coordinate.”

The goal pulsed with an inviting glow, and the Floatalongs quivered in anticipation of finding their way into the light.

“Laura doesn’t seem like the type to knock me down a few pegs for the sake of putting me in my place. But what if it’s subconscious?”

I must’ve been eager to get the damn mini-game over with, because a few of the Floatalongs started to drift.

I got hold of myself and focused—believe me, one of the hardest things to force yourself to do is relax—but I must have managed.

Because my puffballs got back in line, and pretty soon we were home free… .

“Vic??”

Same tone of voice he’d used when he was calling me to dinner.

Only, twice as irritated.

The puffballs scattered.

I slipped my earbuds out, clicked off my phone and stuck it in my pocket, noting Jacob’s phone was still face-up on the table…

though I didn’t call him on it. “Laura might be the most ethical person we know,” I said, and then immediately regretted it.

Because God forbid I tell Jacob any aspect of him is merely satisfactory.

“You know how hard it is to quantify anything. She’s probably working from wonky numbers. ”

Jacob’s eyes narrowed.

I hastened to add, “Not to mention the fact that we can’t let on what you can actually do.” Not unless he wanted to start a whole new life as a lab rat.

That seemed to mollify Jacob, somewhat, and he turned back to his plate.

It came as no surprise that “satisfactory” didn’t cut it for him—I’d seen one of Jacob’s second grade report cards.

His mom had jettisoned most of the childhood memorabilia when he went off to college and she filled his old bedroom with sewing stuff.

But there was one she’d kept because she thought the teacher’s comment was funny.

Reads well above grade level. Would prefer if he raised his hand before correcting me.

His marks were straight A’s.

To put it mildly…I couldn’t relate. In terms of scholastic performance, I had never aspired to be anything but mediocre.

Numbers always eluded me, while reading assignments left me bored out of my mind.

And once I flunked a grade, I focused on making wisecracks.

Because if I had a smart comeback for everything, at least no one could say I was dumb.

Was it ADD, or just the result of bouncing between foster homes? I’m not sure it matters. As loathe as Jacob might be to add a “satisfactory” to his permanent record, I was none too keen to stuff more dubious diagnoses into mine.

Besides, I was perfectly capable of learning new things. Just ask the Floatalongs who’d nearly made it to the Snugglebay. On the very first try.

Jacob was back with a damp dishcloth to mop up the soy glaze before we found it stuck to everything.

As he leaned over the table and rounded up every last noodle fragment—and as I enjoyed the view of his meticulously tended glutes—I pondered the burden of perfectionism.

Everything’s got a point of diminishing returns, and sometimes good enough is good enough.

Aiming for more will just make you crazy.

“Think about it this way,” I told him. “When you need to fly under the radar…you’ve gotta aim low.”

“But that’s the thing. I wasn’t aiming.”

I rounded the table, took him by the shoulders, and made him face me. “Look, mister, we both know you’re capable with a capital C. You’re shrewd and you’re relentless and you can reason circles around anyone.”

Uncertainty flickered in his dark, soulful eyes. In my opinion, a little bit of self-doubt is a good thing. It stops us from getting too far up our own asses. But insecurity hits him way harder than it does me.

“Forget about the FPMP.” My hand wandered across his broad shoulder and settled against his cheek, cupping his jaw. My thumb traced his lower lip. “I just so happen to have the results in from the annual husband report. And it looks like you crushed it.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. I restrained myself from kissing it.

“It’s true,” I said. “Top score in the categories of ‘gets me,’ ‘backs me up,’ and ‘laughs at the same bad joke more than once.’” My willpower ebbed, and I tilted my head to angle my mouth toward his. “Benefit package is officially renewed.”

Our mouths met, familiar and easy…and good. I didn’t always understand how someone like him ended up with someone like me—but in moments like this, I didn’t need to. I just had to show up, lean in, and not screw it all up.

When we came up for air, Jacob tossed the rag in his hands toward the kitchenette.

It slid off the countertop and pooled on the tile floor.

His now-free hand was easing its way around my hip.

His fingertips traced the cleft of my ass with unflinching precision, and he palmed the right cheek in a possessive squeeze.

“So, this benefit package you mentioned…is it all-access?”

“I think that can be arranged.”

Without losing a beat, Jacob backed me into the table and unhitched my pants. He shoved them down around my thighs as he folded to his knees. Maybe I’d been offering encouragement, not fishing for sex—but, hell, I wasn’t about to turn down a blowjob.

He wet my cockhead with a quick swipe of his tongue and then moistened his lips…just as his phone rang.

And I immediately recognized the ringtone as the office.

It was tempting to tell him to ignore the call, especially with his breath ghosting over the wetness of his spit on the most sensitive part of my anatomy—though for all we knew, some grave matter of security was at stake.

Of course, Jacob couldn’t just let it go to voicemail and finish what he’d started.

But I had to wonder, if not for the “satisfactory” rating…

might he have at least considered letting it wait?

At least he had the courtesy to be annoyed. “Great timing,” he said with some chagrin before he got up and answered with a clipped, “Marks.”

I tucked myself away and headed to the kitchen. There, I retrieved the dropped dishtowel before I slid halfway across the cannery on it on my way to the coffee pot the next morning as Jacob fielded some Internal Affairs question.

“No, I’m not saying the agent is lying, just that he edited. Uh-huh. Right. But if his report is accurate, he shouldn’t be worried about a second assessment.”

As I always did my best not to land in the crosshairs with IA, I had no idea if Jacob was always so strict…or if he was reacting to some “satisfactory” assessments that were no doubt totally baseless.

It must really suck to care so much about how you stack up.

At least that was one neurosis of which I was, thankfully, free.

I was never destined to be top of the class.

If flunking fourth grade didn’t clue me in, repeating the spectacle in sixth grade put it on a billboard with flashing lights.

The one thing I was good at—seeing ghosts—was impossible to measure.

Fine by me. There’s not a competitive bone in my body.

I shoved a couple of Oreos in my mouth—stale, but good enough—and wrangled the last straggling bits of daily clutter while Jacob paced back and forth on the phone. He sounded just a bit too patient. Probably mapping out which department he should coordinate with to raise his satisfactory to a good.

Better him than me. I didn’t need a gold star or a pat on the head. I was glad enough to make it through the day intact. Mediocrity suited me just fine—

My phone gave off a little pulse. I dug it out of my pocket…and there, staring at me from the notification screen, was Blip.

Why did you give up?

His articulated fishbowl arms shrugged.

Just what I needed. A passive-aggressive goldfish.

Still, I had been just half a second away from corralling the Floatalongs. I swiped open the app, relaxed into alpha, and nudged the puffballs the rest of the way. Ba-ding! The app made a happy sound. Big freaking deal. Now I could grab a couple more stale Oreos and—

Great job! Now check your progress!

How could there be progress? What progress was there to measure?

I’d only done the thing one time. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I tapped the button, only to find a timed graph of my alpha state.

Which, I reminded myself, wasn’t even very accurate.

Interesting to note, though, that eating didn’t put me in the zone.

Neither did getting serviced. Just imagine if I’d had my happy ending… .

“Vic? Are you coming to bed?”

I glanced up, blinking, and wondered exactly how long I’d been scrutinizing my graph.

Right. Good thing I’m not competitive.