CHAPTER 1
THE DEAD DON’T BREATHE
Dr. Mara Voss had learned years ago that dead people rarely looked peaceful. Television lied about that. Death slackened mouths, changed color, settled blood into bruised-looking pools beneath skin. It exaggerated every ordinary indignity of the human body until there was very little romantic left about it. Mara preferred that. The dead did not require comforting, did not change their stories, and did not cry when she told them something they did not want to hear. They simply waited for her to figure out what had happened.
At 11:43 on a Thursday night in February, the newest arrival to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office was doing an unusually poor job of behaving like one.
“John Doe,” Kevin said as he rolled the gurney in. “Found in an alley in Old City. No wallet, no phone, no coat.”
It was twenty-eight degrees outside. Mara was fourteen hours into her shift and irritated enough to be interested. The dead man looked about forty, perhaps younger, with dark hair, expensive clothes, no obvious trauma, and skin that was cold without looking dead. That last part bothered her.
“Estimated time?”
“Pronounced at ten fifty-eight.”
Less than an hour, yet his body temperature read 68.2 degrees. No rigor. No pulse. No heartbeat. But when Mara pressed his lower lip, color returned after blanching. When she shone a penlight into his eye, the pupil contracted.
“That cannot be right.”
Kevin had already left by then, muttering something about medical examiners who said strange at midnight. Mara stood alone beneath the fluorescent lights, listening to the refrigeration units hum. She tried his carotid again. Nothing.
Then she heard a breath. She waited. Nothing moved. Exhaustion, she told herself. She reached for the phone.
His hand closed around her wrist. Mara screamed with no dignity at all. The dead man’s eyes opened. Nearly black. Focused. Intelligent.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
He released her and sat up.
“Where am I?”
“The medical examiner’s office.”
“Which city?”
“Philadelphia.”
His irritation at that answer was somehow worse than confusion would have been. Mara edged toward the alarm.
“Do not,” he said.
“Do not what?”
“Run.”
“I’m not running.”
“You are four feet from an alarm.”
He noticed everything. So did Mara. The old scars beneath his collarbone. The small narrow wound above his hip. The complete absence of blood where there should have been plenty.
“You cannot leave,” she said.
“Watch me.”
Then he stopped. His head turned toward the refrigeration room.
“Who else is here?”
“Employees?”
“Bodies.”
Something in his face changed.
“How many arrived tonight?”
Mara folded her arms. “I am not discussing confidential cases with a man who was legally dead six minutes ago.” His eyes flicked to her badge. “Mara.”
Then he moved. Too fast. One second he was near the table. The next Mara was against the wall, his hand at the back of her neck, his face inches from hers. His eyes had changed from dark brown to a deep unnatural silver.
She saw hunger there. Actual hunger, with something disturbingly close to attraction threaded through it. He released her abruptly.
“Open the refrigeration room.”
“No.”
“Open it.”
“Why?”
He looked at her with a patience that had already run out.
“Because I was not the only one they found tonight.”
From behind the steel refrigeration door came three slow knocks. Mara studied. Another knock. Then another.
The man closed his eyes.
“Too late.”
