Zach couldn’t focus on his yoga.
He’d let down Grace. Some part of him, not his rational brain, but some part of him knew she was right. She wasn’t a killer and what she’d said about rewinding did ring true.
“But how could it,” he said to his rice and beans dinner.
The meal, one of his favorites, tasted like melted plastic. He shoved it away from him while grabbing for the phone. He had to make good with her.
Her phone went straight to voicemail. “It’s Grace, leave a message.”
“Grace, its’ Zach. Call me. I’m sorry.”
Grace managed to get herself and Mark through the hospital and to the morgue, despite tight security that had been implemented since 9/11.
Now she stood before the door to where Dolores’ body would be stored until the Medical Examiner came down from Newark. She shouldn’t be here.
“You ready?”
Mark showed no trace of fear. She figured he was used to nefarious goings on so, but that was only a theory. He didn’t talk to her about major portions of his life.
Like why he was passing through New Jersey and not stopping to see her.
“Ready as I’ll ever be. You got your story straight, Mark?”
“Yes, Dolores was my sister. I’ll ask to see her alone and then let you in the back door.”
She left him to his tale and walked out onto a loading dock. After five and no one there expecting deliveries, she made it to the outside door of the morgue, unaccosted.
Looking through the window she saw Mark by the drawer that must have held Dolores.
“Miss Harmony?”
A security guard had sneaked up behind her. Did she know him?
“You need to come with me?”
“Why?”
She couldn’t imagine where he’d come from and how he knew her name.
“Don’t make it worse. You aren’t supposed to be at the morgue. The tech called and said you were trying to break in.”
He tugged at her arm as a police car rolled onto the scene. She stared at them wide eyed. What had gone wrong? Who knew she was here?
“I wasn’t. I didn’t even see the attendant,” she said.
“Come now, Miss Harmony, we know you’re distraught.”
Distraught? Who would have said that?
“We can get you help.”
She realized, all of a sudden, that she was being arrested for something she didn’t do. If they succeeded then she wouldn’t get into see Dolores. She’d be stuck in this version of the scenario.
With a yank, she retrieved her arm from the security guard then sprinted away from him. The only person who knew she was here must be the one person who could rewind.
One name came to her lips as she ran breathless from the shouting men.
Mark.
Not one to drive aimlessly, Zach couldn’t stay in his apartment. He’d called Grace back with his cell phone number.
But she still hadn’t called him.
Some force sent him towards his office. As he turned onto Main Street, he spotted Grace out jogging, but not in running clothes.
He slammed on the brakes and rolled down the window. “Grace,” he shouted.
She turned towards him, her step faltering, but she recovered and changed direction. Her breath took minutes to return as he sat in the car next to him. “Go,” she gasped out.
Making a u-turn he opted to go to a coffee shop. They needed to talk.
“What were you running from?”
She bit her lip. “Something spooked me.”
“Dead people talk to you, but other things spook you?”
She chuckled, a nervous twitter at best. “Odd, I know.”
The lie hung between them like crepe paper in the rain. Should he call her on it? He hadn’t given her any reason to trust him.
“What’s going on?”
“Zach you have to get me in to see Dolores. I know who is rewinding.”
“Who?”
“Mark.”
“How do you know?”
He parked diagonally in front of Bean There Drank That. His gaze studied her.
“He called the cops on my when I was trying to get into the morgue.”
“You’re running from the cops?”
“Yes.”
“Grace, we need to go back and straighten this out.”
“No, they’ll arrest me.”
“Won’t Mark explain?”
Bitterness tinged her voice. “I’m sure Mark’s long gone.”
He put a hand on hers. “Sucks to trust the wrong person.”
“Yeah, guess you know all about that with Dolores.”
A stab of pain went through him, not so much for what she’d been, but what she could have been. “Yep. Now let’s get back to the cops and explain everything.”
“No,” she said, then leapt out of the car.
Grace ran to her hotel, hoping she was ahead of the cops. A patrol car sat in the parking lot. Her frazzled brain searched for an alternate route inside the building.
Maybe the cops hadn’t gone to her room, yet.
Circling the building she found three guys sitting on a dock smoking cigarettes. After some cajoling and a little flirting she had on a set of kitchen whites.
Grabbing a tray with plates as she walked through the kitchen, she hoped she looked sufficiently like staff to get past anyone.
And she did, making it all the way to the elevator before a manager stopped her. But only to give her a dirty dish he found.
She smiled at the man, then kept going up to her floor.
No police waited outside in the hallway so she slipped into the room. Clothes were in odd places as if the cops had been here. “Why are they looking so hard for me?”
She jammed stuff into her bag and hiked it over her shoulder. Dropping the pretense of being a kitchen worker, she left the whites on the bed, hoping they’d find their way back to the owner.
“Disguise,” she said to her reflection in the elevator mirror.
Stopping in the gift shop, she bought a big hat and a pair of dark sunglasses. She tucked her hair into the head covering and limped out of the hotel.
Safely into a cab, she let out the breath she’d been holding, then directed the driver to her car. Which ended up being surrounded by cops.
“Damn.”
She couldn’t turn to Mark because he’d betrayed her. She’d have to come back during the night. So the cabbie took her to a park where she hoped she could spend the day in solitude.
Zach didn’t call and tell the police that he’d seen Grace. He should have. He’d be aiding a fugitive, not that he knew where she was.
But he had to find her and help her. Some primitive part of him knew she was innocent and needed to be protected. For once he wasn’t being a cop first.
He drove without direction, going on instinct as if with just his gut feeling he could find his mate. Grace.
Where would she be?
He hadn’t gotten to know her well enough to be acquainted with her habits.
He cursed his inability to see what had been in front of him. “Grace, where are you.”
As if on cue he pulled into the Glen Hills Municipal Park and there she sat alone in a tree grove. He walked towards her thinking she might be skittish.
She didn’t run when she saw him. Instead she sighed, her resignation to his presence a severe emotion on her face.
“Grace.”
She came into his arms. “Zach.”
His lips captured hers and she responded, her tongue licking out between them. “Don’t leave me.”
“I have to go back and find Dolores’ killer. I need to prevent her death,” she said.
“Not that I want Dolores dead, but will I remember you? I don’t want to lose you. I haven’t felt like this ever.”
“Zach it’s my destiny.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe you haven’t prevented it so we could be together.”
She stepped away from him, shaking her head. “It can’t be, Zach.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was given a gift for a reason.”
“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”
But he knew she would go back. His head dropped to look at the ground. A breeze stirred the trees around them. “What can I do?”
“I need to get into see Dolores.”
His gaze went through her, his tough cop stare, but she didn’t back down, didn’t change her mind. He reached out a hand to her. “We’ll find a way, then.”
No cops guarded the front entrance of the emergency department of Centre Community Hospital. Grace and Zach walked in among the bustling nurses as if they belonged there, too.
The multi-casualty accident whose patients had just rolled into the hospital were a godsend to the plan she’d hatched with Zach.
Without anyone noticing, she and Zach made their way to the morgue which sat in the bowels of the hospital. No one passed them in the lime green hallway behind the kitchen.
One of the patients from the car accident had died and his body lay outside the morgue door which stood ajar. Grace eased her way in behind Zach.
She slipped into a closet she knew sat by the front door while Zach asked to see Dolores.
“You’ll have to go yourself, I need to make copies of this paperwork and ours is jammed. Just stay until I get back so I can log in your visit,” the attendant said before pushing out into the hallway.
Grace came out of her hiding place. Zach’s gaze studied her. “Last chance to change your mind.”
“I won’t Zach.”
He kissed her as if he wouldn’t see her again, then she walked into the cold storage room.
Pausing before Dolores’ door, Grace drew in a deep, steadying breath. “Here goes,” she said to no one.
She rolled open the drawer and uncovered Dolores who must have been expecting her. Without hesitation, the dead woman grabbed Grace’s hand and spoke.
The colors swirled and Grace held onto her sanity with a nail. Where would she end up this time?