The sound of clanging above their heads had all three of them looking up and then shielding their eyes as a shower of fine particles sifted loose from the ceiling squares.
“How long’s this construction been going on?” Tony asked while a shrill grind of a saw played chaser.
“For. Ever.” The man lined up the photographs on the table. “Anyway, disclaimers aside, here’s what I think. From what I can see under the scope, it appears as if there was no retouching done—but that’s not really saying much, given that I only have the printouts, and people can do some pretty subtle, sophisticated stuff with images if they have good enough equipment.”
Mels inhaled deeply. “Well, thank you—”
Suraj put up his palm. “Wait, I’m not finished. I saw that body. There was a rash in the abdominal area, but obviously that’s not what’s in these photographs. And I remember that pattern—it’s also on the girl who was found in the quarry—”
Another sound, louder, like thunder, reverberated through the ceiling…as if something had been dropped on the tiles directly overhead.
The last thing Jim saw before all hell broke loose was Mels sending a glare heavenward. One second later, a six-by-eight-foot section of the suspended ceiling broke free of its maze of girders and swung down in one piece, hinging on where it was still attached.
Firing right at Mels.
Jim flipped into action, surging forward, shoving her off that orange chair and out of the way. His back and shoulders took the brunt of the impact, the sharp-edged weight cutting into him, drawing blood as everyone in the room shouted and ducked for cover.
The pain caused him to reveal himself, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. Looking up through the dark hole in the ceiling, he locked eyes with…a construction worker who was illuminated by the light flooding upward from the break room.
Standing with his boots planted on the rafters and his hands on his hips in the vast space above, the man was not right.
His eyes were black as the depths of Hell.
“Devina,” Jim hissed.
All at once, the worker grabbed his chest and started falling forward, his body slumping with a curious grace, the ends of all those tools on his belt flaring out like a model’s hair in front of a fan.
Jim played buck-stops-here for the second time, catching the guy in a sloppy grab because loose, limp bodies, though they weighed less, were messier than hunks of ceiling.
There was an abrupt explosion of talk, but Jim didn’t pay any attention to it. He was too busy easing the unconscious worker onto the floor—and sensing Devina’s abrupt departure.
Damn it…
“Oh, dear God,” Mels said, crouching down.
A sharp elbow pushed Jim aside, the man with the hospital badge getting on his knees and putting fingertips to the side of the construction guy’s throat. As Jim stepped out of the way—
“Jim Heron.”
Jim looked at the reporter, who was staring up at him as she rose from the floor. Fucking hell, he thought as she squared off at him.
“Well?” she demanded, seemingly undaunted by the fact that she’d nearly been killed. “And don’t deny it. I’ve seen your picture in a lot of places.”
“I’m his twin brother.”
“Really.”
The medical guy looked up. “Someone call extension nine-zero-zero-zero on that phone. Tell them we’re outside the morgue.”
Matthias’s girl snapped into gear, discharging the directive calmly and quickly. When she came back, she went over to her newspaper colleague, who, in spite of the drama, had managed to peel back the wrapper of a Snickers bar and get munching.
“You okay?” she asked him.
“Close call,” he muttered, staring at the medical drama on the floor at his feet.
Mels relocked her eyes on Jim, and then she grimaced and rubbed her temple like it was aching.
Things turned into a convention at that point, with other construction people arriving, along with hospital staff, security, and a couple of cops who’d heard the crash.
When the worker who’d fallen through the ceiling was finally put on the stretcher, he opened his eyes. Blue as the sky now. Not black.
Not a surprise.
Man, that demon had some kind of balls: If the conventional theory of a higher power held true, then the Big Guy Upstairs knew everything that happened, at every moment, all over the planet—from each blossom that bloomed to the feathers on a sparrow, to…big hulking construction workers who free-fell into break rooms at major metropolitan hospitals because they’d been temporarily possessed.
No doubt Devina had intended that chunk of the building to fall down on Mels. And wouldn’t that have been a destabilizer in the game: Matthias finally bonds with a chick, and then she dies on him?
Great setup for decision making.
And to think Jim had assumed the demon was being too quiet?
Keeping free of the congestion, he disappeared himself, figuring that Mels would assume he’d walked off. Instead, he stayed put, and stuck close to that reporter—and had to admit he was impressed. She was a tough bird, answering the questions that hospital security gave her, keeping tight for her friend as well as the guy who’d done the microscoping, working with crowd control as the injured SOB on the stretcher was removed from the scene.
She looked around from time to time, as if she were searching for someone, but in the end, all she could do was describe her “savior” to the St. Francis security set. She didn’t name names, however. Then again, she didn’t really know who he was, did she.
As far as Matthias’s reporter was concerned, he just bore a striking resemblance to a dead man. That was it.
Funny, much as Jim didn’t approve of so much his old boss had done over the years, he found himself not faulting the guy’s taste in the opposite sex.
And he was going to have to get her and Matthias together ASAP. Not just because it would make defending them easier, but who knew when the crossroads would come…and Matthias would have to choose his way.
The more time his former boss spent with that female…the better off they were all going to be.
Where the hell was “Jim Heron,” Mels wondered when she and Tony were finally free to go.
“Good thing I had that food,” her buddy said as they got back on the elevator they’d taken down to the basement a lifetime ago. “It’s frickin’ eight o’clock.”
“Yeah.” She pushed the up button. “Yeah…”