Page 33 of Cadaver Lab: Mind Over Murder

And damn him. It worked.

With an annoyed burst of a sigh, Natalie agreed, “Fine. I’ll find out when she can have visitors.”

As the microwave dinged, just before she turned away to get the food, she didn’t miss Liam’s smile of victory.

Infuriating man. He was just lucky he was so sexy.

Chapter Sixteen

Three whole days.

That’s how long it took before Margaret Trout was moved out of ICU and non-family members—and shopkeepers with their nosy researcher boyfriends—were allowed to visit her.

It was a long three days of Natalie’s mind working overtime. Wondering. Could Margaret see ghosts now too? Worrying. Was Harper really to blame for the heart attack? And would Margaret blame Harper even if she wasn’t responsible?

But finally Mary Brimley, who’d made it her mission to call Margaret’s husband twice daily for an update, reported to Alice who called Agnes who told Harper who texted Natalie. Margaret was now on a normal floor and was receiving visitors other than family.

Natalie weighed her options. To tell or not to tell Liam Margaret was out of ICU?

She could keep the news to herself—conveniently forget to tell him—and then she wouldn’t have to go to the hospital and visit Margaret at all. He’d been so busy in the lab with his brain he’d probably forgotten. And working cloistered away in the lab as he did, behind that locked steel door, town gossip usually didn’t reach him. At least not as quickly as it did everyone else in the village.

But Liam had been right. Someone had to ask Margaret what happened. And it was better if Natalie did the asking, just in case Margaret’s answer was, Harper happened.

So she opted for option number two. Tell Liam… and make him go with her because hospitals were not her favorite place to visit, even for someone she loved, which Margaret was not.

Liam and his relatively new-found quest for knowledge in the field of study regarding a living’s ability to see ghosts is how Natalie came to be sitting in Liam’s Jeep at six-oh-five that evening. Pretty much the moment she’d locked the door of the shop and switched off the lights, he’d shoved a bag containing a sandwich, napkins and a bottle of iced tea at her for her dinner and hustled her out the door.

Binghamton was not nearly far enough away. In just forty-five minutes, in spite of traffic, they were walking toward the main entrance of Binghamton General.

Natalie noticed the sterile smell first thing, the moment the automatic doors slowly swung wide to admit them.

How could clean smell so… bad?

As she and Liam walked across the tile floor of the lobby the specific smell ratcheted up her already existing anxiety—chemical disinfectant mixed with something else impossible to pinpoint exactly but familiar to anyone who’d ever been at any hospital at any time.

If human suffering came with a cup of stale bad coffee and an artificial lemon scent, it would smell like a hospital.

She didn’t want to face Margaret Trout at all. But doing it here specifically, the hospital where the ambulance had driven her after her own near-death experience, made it seem all the worse.

While she’d been dragging her feet, trying to ignore the visceral memories of her own internment in this institution as well as to delay the inevitable visit to Margaret’s room, Liam had gone up to the desk and checked them in.

He returned to her holding two stickers that largely proclaimed them as VISITORS. “I got the number and floor of Margaret’s room,” he told her while applying his own sticker to his broad chest.

Damn his efficiency. “Great.” She pouted and picked at the corner of the backing on the sticker without much success. Her nails were short but her patience was shorter. With a frustrated sigh, she thrust the sticker at Liam. “Can you help me?”

Without comment, except for the lift of one cocky dark brow, Liam peeled off the backing like it was nothing.

“It’s just a quick visit. It’s not going to be that bad,” he said while pressing the sticker to her jacket.

“Says you,” she mumbled with a scowl.

As if he didn’t trust her not to bolt, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and steered her in a path toward the elevator and their inevitable destination. Margaret Trout’s room.

In the handful of years Natalie had known Margaret Trout, she’d felt loathing, ire, judgment, and a whole host of other things radiating off the woman.

But today, for the first time, Natalie felt something different from her. Underneath the visible exhaustion and obvious discomfort in her slow gingerly movements, there was something else.

If Natalie had to pinpoint it, she’d have to say it was fear.