Lover Avenged by J. R. Ward

position. The doctor who’d spoken to her held his ground, but seemed surprised.
    “Whoa. Easy, there.”
    “Sorry.” She dropped her arms and read the lapel of his white coat: MANUEL MANELLO, M.D., CHIEF OF SURGERY. She frowned as she sensed him, smelled him.
    “You okay?”
    Whatever. None of her biz. “I need to go to the morgue.”
    The guy didn’t seem shocked, as if someone with her kind of moves might well know a couple of toe-tagged stiffs. “Yeah, okay, that hallway over there? Take it all the way back. You’ll see a sign for the morgue on the door. Just follow the arrows from there. It’s in the basement.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    The doctor walked out the revolving door she’d come in, and she went through the metal detector he’d just passed through. Not a peep, and she shot a tight smile at the rent-a-cop who was once-overing her.
    The knife she carried at the small of her back was ceramic and she’d replaced her metal cilices with ones made of leather and stone. No probs.
    “Evenin’, Officer,” she said.
    The guy nodded her along, but kept his hand on the butt of his gun.
    Down at the end of the hallway, she found the door she was looking for, punched through it, and hit the stairs, tracking the red arrows like the doctor had said. When she hit a stretch of whitewashed concrete wall she figured she was getting close, and she was right. Detective de la Cruz was standing farther down the corridor, next to a pair of double stainless-steel doors marked with the words MORGUE and AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.
    “Thank you for coming,” he said as she got closer. “We’re going into the viewing room farther down. I’ll just tell them you’re here.”
    The detective pushed open one side of the doors, and through the crack she saw a fleet of metal tables with blocks for the heads of the dead.
    Her heart stopped, then roared, even though she told herself over and over again that this wasn’t her damage. She wasn’t in there. This wasn’t the past. There was no one with a white coat standing over her doing things “in the name of science.”
    And besides, she’d gotten over all of that, like, a decade ago-
    A sound started off softly and grew in volume, echoing from behind her. She spun around and froze, fear so strong it stuck her feet to the floor…
    But it was just a janitor coming around the corner, pushing a laundry bin the size of a car. He was leaning forward against the rim, throwing his back into it, and he didn’t look up as he passed.
    For a moment, Xhex blinked and saw another rolling cart. One full of tangled, unmoving limbs, the legs and arms of the dead bodies overlapping like kindling.
    She rubbed her eyes. Okay, she had gotten over what had happened…as long as she wasn’t in a clinic or a hospital.
    Jesus Christ…she had to get the fuck out of here.
    “You okay to do this?” de la Cruz asked from right next to her.
    She swallowed hard, and manned up, doubting the guy would understand that what was spooking her was a pile of sheets on a ride, not the corpse she was about to see. “Yup. Can we go in now?”
    He stared at her for a moment. “Listen, you want to take a minute? Have some coffee?”
    “Nope.” When he didn’t move, she headed to the door marked PRIVATE VIEWING herself.
    De la Cruz scooted in front of her and opened the way. The anteroom beyond had three black plastic chairs and two doors and it smelled like chemical strawberries, the result of formaldehyde mixing with a Glade PlugIn. Over in the corner, away from the seats, there was a short table with a pair of paper cups half-filled with what looked like mud-puddle coffee.
    Apparently, you had pacers and sitters, and if you were a sitter, you were expected to balance your vending-machine caffeine on your knee.
    As she looked around, the emotions that had been felt in the space lingered, like mold left after fetid water. Bad things happened here for people who walked through that door. Hearts