Cadaver Lab: Mind Over Murder (Graveyard Secrets #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Despite the opinion of much of the Mudville community, Natalie Chase wasn’t delusional.

She knew that a naturally introverted, sometimes socially awkward, more plain Jane than femme fatale woman such as herself landing a man like Liam was pure luck. A fluke, at best.

However, as much as she didn’t want to complain about her tall, dark and handsome, brilliant boyfriend, he was far from perfect.

Former Army medic, current medical researcher, Doctor William Walsh was sometimes grumpy, often distracted and, when deep in his research, chronically late… such as tonight.

Which was why Natalie was, admittedly, stomping her way across the uneven ground and deadly train tracks between her apartment in the back of Once Upon a Vine Books & Wine and Liam’s research lab.

Braving the chill of the autumn air and the darkness of the increasingly early sundown because he hadn’t answered her texts or her calls.

All to remind her amazing, annoying, amazingly annoying boyfriend they had a social obligation tonight.

And if he didn’t hurry they were going to be late. Very late.

She reached the door of the lab and punched in the key code.

As the lock beeped once and the green light illuminated, she flung the door wide.

She swept the lab with a gaze and landed on exactly the scene she’d expected—Liam along with the reason he was completely ignoring her.

Her competition for Liam’s attention was laid out bare on the metal table. Naked. Exposed. Not even covered by a sheet.

And there was Liam, rapt. Close enough for a lover’s kiss as he leaned low. Not over another woman. Oh, no. Natalie’s nemesis tonight was worse.

It was a fresh brain, because Liam’s mistress was research.

“Ah ha! I knew it,” she accused, hands on her hips.

Liam straightened and turned to frown at her. A familiar dazed expression clouded his ocean-colored eyes.

“What?” he asked, like a man who’d been startled awake from a deep sleep.

“You’re supposed to be at my place right now so we can walk over to the Rotary meeting together.”

He visibly deflated, making his six-foot-plus frame shrink, as if that would get him out of doing something she knew he didn’t want to do. For a hulk of a man—and boy oh boy, was he all man—Liam could be very childlike sometimes. Like now with his pouting about having to go to this meeting.

“Liam. You promised.”

One dark brow lifted. “No, Natalie. I believe you promised on my behalf.”

Two could play at this game.

She lifted a brow of her own. “Fine. If you don’t want the opportunity to present the importance of your research to a group that includes Mansion Bob, the local philanthropist whose foundation gives away one million dollars a year, I’m sure he can donate his money to someone else’s project.”

“With the way you and Harper keep calling the gentleman in question Mansion Bob, I’m pretty sure my chances for securing a research grant from his foundation are nil anyway.”

Natalie matched Liam’s scowl. “We would never say it to his face. And don’t change the subject.”

“I didn’t think I was…changing the subject,” he countered like a man who lived and died by the facts. Just the facts.

“Can you please just change your clothes so we can go?” Natalie begged.

She wasn’t a bastion of punctuality herself, but still, she hated walking into things late in this town. It was sure to earn her more than a few dirty looks from the locals.

“Change?” Liam glanced down at his outfit.

He wore pretty much the usual. The man had one look, with minimal variation. Jeans or khaki pants with a black Human Institute logo shirt, sized just small enough to show off the muscles that had helped win her heart…and a few other body parts.

“Why would I change?” he continued, looking perplexed.

She cringed and tried not to let her gaze stray to the disgusting organ on the table. “You’ve been handling brains in that outfit.”

Liam leveled a stare on her. “And you’ve been handling dusty books and dirty money in your outfit. So what? You didn’t change.”

He had her there.

Didn’t it figure? The one and only thing he’d actually paid attention to today of all days, the momentous day of the arrival of a fresh brain, would be the outfit she’d put on for work this morning.

She sighed. “You’re right. Don’t change. It’ll take too long anyway. Harper’s supposed to speak first but we should still be there by now. So let’s just go.”

Glancing down at himself again, he shook his head. “No. You’re right. I should change out of jeans and put on a fresh shirt if I’m going to be meeting Mansion Bob.”

Now he listened to her? She should have kept her mouth shut and they’d be out the door already.

“Don’t take too long,” she called in the direction of the room he kept as a bedroom for when he slept in the lab.

“I’m not the one who takes forever to change,” he called back.

Left alone in the working area of the lab, she looked around. It was a bit more pleasant in there since Liam had started requesting just brains for research rather than full cadavers. Much less crowded. A bit less disturbing.

Natalie.

She spun at the sound of her name, low, in a ghostly-sounding whisper.

Turning, she saw there was no one visible. “Gabe?” she asked.

Na-ta-lie.

The hushed murmur came again, this time drawing her name out. Long. Spooky. Ominous…

She pivoted to take in all three hundred and sixty degrees of her surroundings.

Liam was still in the bedroom, too far to be the whisperer. She could hear him opening and closing the metal lab storage cabinet where, acting like the former military man he was, he kept his limited wardrobe neatly folded and regimentally stacked on shelves rather than in a real closet.

What’s wrong, Natalie?

Getting angry at the unidentified voice’s question, she planted a hand on her hip. “Gabe, stop it this instant. This isn’t funny.”

Then you should leave.

A chill ran up her spine at the eerie command.

“Gabe, I swear I’m going to tell Harper to disconnect the television in your room if you don’t stop messing around right now.”

“Who are you talking to?” Liam asked, emerging from the other room wearing khaki slacks now instead of jeans, and a twin to the shirt he’d had on before, except with long rather than short sleeves.

“I think Gabe is messing around trying to scare me. Whispering my name and stuff.”

“Gabe and Millie should be at the Rotary thing with Harper, no?” Liam asked, glancing at the watch on his wrist.

Liam had a point. Gabe had actually wanted to go to this thing tonight. Apparently he’d been a Rotarian himself before he’d died.

Natalie nodded as a thought hit. “I bet Harper sent him here to get us to move along and he decided to be funny—make that creepy—and try to scare me.”

She’d pronounced the word creepy extra loudly to let him know she wasn’t amused.

Liam tipped his head to one side. “Seriously? Nat, you’ve been seeing and hearing every ghost who’s crossed your path since your heart stopped from that electrical shock.

I think it’s going to take more to scare you than your ghost best friend whispering your name in my lab with me in the next room. ”

“You’re right. Takes more than that to scare me. Don’t you forget that, Gabe,” she announced loudly to the room at large since Gabe was apparently playing hide and seek with her today instead of showing himself. She turned to Liam. “Ready?”

“Just have to put this in the upright,” Liam said as he strode toward the brain.

He picked it up like it was nothing—no gloves, no tray, just a handful of brain—and made his way back to the freezer full of horrors…make that more brains.

She drew back, horrified at his casual handling of the brain matter.

Her boyfriend was weird…and no way was she holding his hand on the walk to the meeting tonight. No matter how many times he washed it.