Page 35 of Cadaver Lab: Mind Over Murder

Liam leaned in closer, putting him nearly eye-to-eye with Margaret, his gaze calm in direct opposition to hers as it continued to dart around the room.

“Margaret, what are you seeing?”

“Nothing… here.”

He nodded. “Then where?”

“On the sidewalk,” she breathed barely audibly.

“What did you see on the sidewalk?” he asked.

“Something. I don’t know what,” she said shakily. “But it wanted to kill me.”

Something?

And it had wanted to kill her?

Natalie’s questions over Margaret’s recounting of the final moments before her heart stopped was interrupted by a nurse entering the room.

Make that a ghost nurse, because the closed door had never opened but the nurse was now inside checking Margaret’s vital signs on the monitors.

This spirit was an early twentieth-century era ghost judging by the uniform. She wore a full apron and a tiny hat perched on her head, both which made her look more like a maid than a medical professional to Natalie’s modern eye.

But apparently decades of being on duty for an eternally long shift at the hospital that had modernized around her must have taught her something. She nodded at the numbers on the twenty-first century monitors like she understood them perfectly, then exited the room… Meanwhile Natalie kept her gaze lowered, tracking the ghost nurse in her peripheral vision while staunchly refusing to make eye-contact with the spirit and tip her off to the fact there was a living in the room who could see her.

A living in the room. One. Not two. Because during the whole encounter, Margaret’s eyes never left Liam, who still sat on the bed holding her hand in both of his. And she had to ignore he was in bed with the woman.

The annoyance of that was overshadowed by the knowledge Margaret didn’t notice the nurse. Not her arrival or exit through the closed door. Not her circling the bed to check the monitor. Not even when the nurse pressed a palm against her forehead.

Still, Natalie needed to be sure. Perhaps Margaret was so mesmerized by Liam’s extreme hotness at this close proximity she was simply ignoring the movements of the nurse altogether. She seemed the type to expect people to wait on her in the background while she remained undisturbed. Waitstaff. Hospital staff.

“Margaret,” Natalie began, standing and moving closer to the bed.

She reached out and placed one proprietary hand on Liam’s shoulder. A signal to the patient currently clutching Liam’s hand that her boyfriend was on loan only.

“Have you seen anything strange here in the hospital at all since you arrived?”

Margaret frowned through the tears. “No.”

Natalie realized she might need to define strange for Margaret. Her own level of strange had altered quite a bit in the past few years. “Hey, did you see that nurse wearing an old-timey apron and one of those little caps?” she asked, touching her own head where the cap would have rested.

The frown deepened. “No.”

“Okay.” Natalie sent Liam a glance that she hoped told him Margaret was not seeing ghosts. At least not in the hospital.

But the question remained. If it wasn’t the prior argument with Harper that had caused her heart to stop, if it was something with evil intent, what in the world—or in Hell—was it?

Chapter Seventeen

The next evening, the meeting room at the shop was filled once again, this time with those who had become Harper’s ad hoc legal defense team.

Natalie, with a few interruptions for corrections from Liam, had just relayed the story Margaret had told them at the hospital.

Harper, Agnes and Dee sat in stunned silence. Natalie couldn’t blame them. It was a hell of a tale.

While they wrapped their head around the recent disclosure, Natalie turned to Liam. “Is it physically possible that Margaret, Doug too actually, were both… scared to death?”

Liam nodded. “Very possible. Medically, an extreme surge of adrenaline can actually trigger a fatal heart arrhythmia.”