What We Lost in the Dark Read Online Free Page A

by scuttling little crabs.
    “You were here for Juliet’s … autopsy?” The word was straightforward. It was a word I would have to get used to in my major.
    “I wasn’t here for that purpose,” he said. “But I was in the building, yes. Are you sure you want to know about it?
    “Not how you tell it. But the dead do speak to the living. Not by
leaving phone messages …
”
    Did he blink?
    He did. He flinched. No one else might have noticed it.
    But I did.
    I dug in. “The dead speak. They tell you how they died by what they leave behind. If anybody ever stops people like you, it’s going to be with evidence.”
    “Evidence is what landed you right here, Allie, I’m sad to say.”
    “That ski mask was Juliet’s. It was mine once. But we switched ski masks. Hers was plain. She wanted the one my grandma sewed with fake rhinestones. She liked bling. But you know that.”
    “I know that. I know all that, Allie. I know just what Juliet liked.”
    Had he actually forgotten himself for a moment? My heart leapt. For a split second I rejoiced, wanting to do a little entrechat with a victory fist in the air. Garrett Tabor would keep on talking. And this dumpy place, after all, was more than a research lab or a morgue; it was an official government office. Everything would be on videotape. Garrett Tabor was putting the noose around his own neck. I had a short fantasy in which I presented my professor and advisor, Dr. Barry Yashida, with those tapes—skipping neatly around the roughnecks in what I thought about later being able to bring that proof to Juliet’s father. But not now. Now, I would bide my time.
    “I have work to do,” I said.
    “Yes, like putting death certificates in envelopes and sweeping the floor? Better get to it! We’re both serving our community tonight, me as a healer and you as a … little drone.”
    “Maybe,” I began. I took a deep breath. “Maybe it’sgood I’m here. Maybe I can keep an eye on you. Did you ever think of that?”
    Garrett Tabor turned away and shrugged in his white lab coat. “I think of everything, Allie.”
    Tears stabbed the backs of my eyes. “You … you pig,” I said.
    “Oh, don’t be nasty. You’re not supposed to talk trash to your superiors.”
    “I don’t see anyone like that here. You’re not superior. You’re just old.”
    “And yet I’ll last longer, Allie. I’ll be going strong when you’re just like Juliet.”
    “We’ll see. We’ll see who has the last word.”
    He turned back and nodded toward the surveillance camera, perched above the door. “Well, all these words would look bad if they were being recorded. But the little video cameras don’t work. I think they’re just for show. They’ve never worked. You know our hometown. Everything’s a little down market in Iron Harbor. So, like I said. It’s just you and me—”
    “And me,” said a mild voice.
    A blast of cold air announced the arrival of my doctor, Bonnie Sommers Olsen. Not my XP doctor: that was Dr. Stephen’s brother and Garrett’s uncle, Andrew Tabor. Rather, my doctor for what little regular life I had.
    “I’m here, too.” Bonnie put her coat on the hook. The heavy steel door swung shut behind her. “The weather snapped. Cold out,” she added. “Did you notice it was starting to snow?”
    The night was filled with surprises. And yet, at that moment, I couldn’t have been happier to see her if she’d jumped out of from behind a desk wearing a superhero cape.
    “Why are you here?” I asked.
    “Filling in,” she said. “I’m subbing in as the supervisor while Dr. Stephen’s gone, and I’ll be working here a few nights a week on and off. Chris is at Northwestern. I’ll be paying his tuition with my life insurance.”
    I loved Bonnie, even though she was a Daytimer—our term for people who lived on the regular clock instead of getting up when the sun went down. She was one of the few doctors on earth who didn’t try to tell me, a chronically