Vandermein

XV

I gripped the blanket like a drowning man to a buoy. I couldn't get warm fast enough, but I instinctively curled around the thin white sheet, trying to squeeze every ouch of heat from it.

"Here, stick this in his thigh."

I recognized the voice. Kenzie was holding an armful of my vials, reaching a red one toward Boone. He took the glass bottle from her and unceremoniously thrust it into the meat of my thigh.

Immediately, warmth began to radiate through my body, starting with my legs then spreading up into my torso, my arms, and finally the crown of my head.

It was a false warmth, however--a chemical trick to fool my body out of its freezing panic. I stopped shaking and relaxed, but I still needed to get my body back to a safe temperature.

"I need a hot bath, detective," I told the worse-for-wear man beside me. "And it looks like you need a stitch or two."

"Maybe that and a stiff drink," he agreed. "We can't go back to my apartment for it, though. As you know, it's compromised. As is your house."

"My house?" I whipped my head to Kenzie.

"Don't worry, the kids are at my mom's."

At her mom's was a code phrase that meant the kids were at a safe house, with her mom (who was ten times the villain I'd ever been).

At that moment I took in the situation more clearly. Kenzie was dressed in her old gigs: black tights, a thick, dark coat, and a face mask that was pulled down around her neck. It was from her art thievery days.

Unlike me and my extra-legal hobbies, Kenzie was never defined by her life of crime--it was merely a means to an end, a path to escape poverty. She was more than happy to settle down and hang up her work clothes when I offered her the ring (which I had stolen).

But now, in the span of a day, she was right back to her old ways, ready and willing to pick any lock or hack any computer to get the job done.

"So you two are working together now?" I asked the odd pair.

"He's not my nemesis," Kenzie told me casually.

"Desperate time," Boone shrugged a single shoulder as his eyes shifted to the morgue's door. Had the detective broken in? Had he violated the law? I'll make a villain of him yet. "We can't stay long. This place isn't heavily guarded, but it's not unguarded either. We should move."

Kenzie helped me up off the steel bench. I was still quite stiff and sluggish; my mind might have believed that I was warm, but my body wasn't convinced.

"There's a hotel not far from here," Kenzie told us. "They have a jacuzzi inside. We can pay for a room with a false credit card and warm you up without being traced."

It was a good idea; anyone looking for me would not check a two-star hotel down the street from the morgue. I only hoped that the woman--that transparent thing--didn't have so many tricks up her sleeve that she could hack my home computer. If she could do that... Well, best not to catastrophize.

"Come on. I don't want to spend any more time here than I have to," Boone said with a hint of fear.

"Afraid of dead bodies or guards?" I asked him.

In an instant of uncommon vulnerable sincerity, he said, "I'll never be comfortable around dead kids."

It registered then that I was not the only one locked away in a freezer. The victims of that terrible crime, the many missing children, were stored here as well. A different kind of cold ran through my spine then, and I wanted to leave quickly as well.