Chapter 35 Harper-Rayn #2
“No, no, no, no, no.” I repeat it like a mantra, over and over again, knowing in my gut that Laith is gone.
I saw him with my own two eyes. Felt him.
Held him. That man standing at my door, that wasn’t him.
That was my mind playing tricks on me. It had to be.
There’s no other explanation. Honestly, it’s almost ironic.
Just last night, Knight was telling me that I was imagining things, and now this morning, I actually am.
The elevator door opens, and a bunch of nurses and doctors clamber in with me, pressing the buttons so that I don’t have to worry about it.
They all mind their business, not gaping at me like the people out in the parking garage had.
It’s not the first time someone around here has shown up in their pajamas and looking worse for wear, and it won’t be the last time.
It’s a joke that goes around the hospital—if you haven’t had a little mental breakdown at some point, are you even a real doctor?
Reaching the basement floor, I slip out of the elevator and hurry down the hall to the morgue, my feet taking me faster than my body is capable of, and just as I reach the door and automatically go for the access card that usually hangs from my scrubs, I realize my mistake.
It’s laying on my entryway table, right next to where my keys usually sit.
“Fuck.”
Frustration surges through me. I could race back home and get it, risk running straight into the man who I know without a doubt wasn’t Laith, or I could take my ass up to security and ask for a new access card. Or . . .
My fists slam against the door. “Dr. McKullan,” I call out, hoping like fuck that someone’s actually in there. I never actually checked the time, but it feels quite early. He might not be in yet, but I keep trying. “Dr. McKullan. Please, open up.”
The door opens a moment later, and I find Dr. McKullan staring back at me, his brows furrowed as he takes me in. I’ve always done everything I can to appear professional in front of my boss, but right now, I couldn’t care less.
I need to know that I’m not losing my mind.
“Dr. Madden?” he grumbles, his gaze sweeping over the nasty bruises still lingering on my skin. “What are you doing here? You should be home resting. You’re in no condition to be working.”
I cringe and barge right past him. “I’m sorry,” I rush out, hurrying straight through the morgue and to the massive refrigeration unit across the back of the room. “I just . . . I need to check something. My friend, he was here. He—”
“Is everything alright, Harper?” he asks, cutting me off as he follows me deeper into the morgue, the few day shift pathologists side-eyeing me.
I shake my head, barely able to get a single thought out as I make my way down the refrigeration unit, looking for locker thirty-six. Finding it almost immediately, I grip the handle and quickly twist before yanking the door open and pulling the table right out.
Laith’s black body bag stares back at me, and I reach for the zipper without hesitation.
“Dr. Madden. What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Dr. McKullan demands, knowing damn well that I haven’t stopped to scrub in or even bothered to find a pair of gloves, let alone a pair of shoes, but that’s not important to me. I have to see Laith.
I grip the zipper tighter and pull it down, revealing the body beneath, and I suck in a loud gasp. There’s a man here, tall with dark hair. He’s attractive and has one hell of a nasty gunshot wound right in the center of his chest, but he’s not Laith.
“Where is he?” I demand, my crazed stare snapping up to Dr. McKullan as I hastily do up the bag and push the table back inside the unit.
I dive for locker thirty-seven. Maybe I made a mistake.
It’s rare, but it happens, and after performing Laith’s autopsy, I wasn’t exactly in the best head space.
Maybe I wasn’t focused. Maybe I put him in the wrong unit.
“The man who was in locker thirty-six. Laith Mitchell. Where is he?”
“What are you talking about?” Dr. McKullan questions, slowly coming closer as I pull out the next one and hastily check inside the bag, only to come up empty. “We don’t have anybody here by that name. Thirty-six belongs to a gunshot victim, James Harding.”
I stop and look back at the doctor. “No. No, that’s not right.
I put him there myself. The man who was in locker thirty-six,” I repeat just in case he’s not following.
He’s getting old so sometimes he forgets things.
“Laith Mitchell. I performed the external part of his autopsy last Monday and put him in thirty-six. I made a note of it. That number has haunted me ever since. He was my friend. One of my best friends, and now his body is not here. I need to know where he went. Where did he go?” My gaze snaps to the girls who are trying not to gawk at me. “Did one of you move him?”
Dr. McKullan shakes his head, and I groan, diving back to the refrigeration unit and pulling out the next table as dread fills me.
He can’t be lost. We don’t fuck up here.
We can’t have lost him. One after another, I search the body bags, hysteria growing thick in my chest. A lump forms in my throat, making it hard to breathe, and as I check the very last bag, the tears start to flow.
“No, no, no, no,” I cry, hurrying across the morgue to the open report files.
I start flicking through them, desperate to find anything on Laith.
Maybe his parents had him moved. Maybe he was assigned incorrectly and was transferred.
Maybe they’ve already claimed the body and buried him without me.
Did I miss it while I was in the hospital after the attack?
Fuck!
The tears are uncontrollable, and as Dr. McKullan steps in beside me and lays his hand on my arm, I lift my panicked stare, unable to make sense of anything.
“Harper, I’ve personally overlooked every case we’ve had.
Nobody by the name Laith Mitchell has come through the morgue. Perhaps you’ve got the details wrong.”
“No. I did his autopsy. I cried while I cut his clothes off him. I read the carvings on his chest, the same ones that are on my ribs. The same as the men from the double homicide and the one before that. Laith is here. He has to be. I know it.”
“What are you talking about? What carvings? We’ve had no cases with irregular markings on the bodies, and certainly no double homicide.”
“No, that’s not right,” I insist, getting angry that he’s denying any of this.
How could he? He’s the one who directly looks over my work.
“Two weeks ago. A double homicide came in. Two men. You concluded cause of death as injuries sustained in a car wreck, but you were wrong, and I don’t understand why you would put that in your report when it was so clearly not a car wreck. They were murdered.”
Dr. McKullan watches me through a narrowed stare. “I’m sorry, Harper. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shake my head when it occurs to me that this is all the stalker’s doing.
Every step along the way, my stalker has been well and truly ahead of me.
He took the bodies of the men in the club and the one before that.
He took all the evidence and wiped it from every system it could have potentially been entered into, and apparently he wiped it straight out of Dr. McKullan’s memory.
So why the hell would Laith be any different? He took him as well.
I drop to my knees, barely able to feel the way my insides scream for relief, and when Dr. McKullan comes down with me, I’ve never felt more alone.
He grips my hand in both of his as though that could somehow comfort me, but when two little words come falling out of his mouth, I realize this is how it ends.
“Call psych.”