DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete First Book

PART 1, SECTION 7

"Here," she said, whispering. "Here. It's here."

I followed behind, trying to stay out of the way. 

When I first saw what was on the tile floor—the same place I'd stood showering a hundred times in high school—I thought maybe some kid was playing a joke, trying to scare the cheerleaders or something.

There were shards of broken glass all over the shower, and, right above, one of the big frosted windows had been broken out.

There wasn't any blood. Just a person, naked, face down. It wasn't a high-schooler at all, but a grown man, his bare ass in the air, his skin unnaturally pale from head to foot.

He was very obviously not alive.

I'd never seen a dead body before, not ever. But I was sure that no living person could lie that perfectly still. 

This definitely wasn't what Ian had expected when he'd invited us in. He rushed to the body and knelt beside it. In what seemed like one motion, he opened his medical bag and snapped on a blue latex glove. He pinched one of the body's wrists, gently, checking for a pulse, I guess. But he must not have got what he needed because he put on the other glove, grabbed one of the shoulders, and turned the whole body over.

It jostled onto its back and lay face up.

I didn't think I recognized whoever it was, but the face was so sunken and gray I wasn't sure. To me, it looked like someone that had been dead for a long time, weeks maybe. But I guess I don't know anything about how bodies decay—the cheerleaders must have used the locker room only a couple of hours earlier, and the body couldn't have been in the shower then.

Ian touched the body's throat, again checking for a pulse which I knew wouldn't be there.

I'd been so distracted by the deteriorated face, it was only now that I noticed what Ian was staring at. 

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