Fade to Black by Pryor

Author:Pryor [Pryor, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

It was a thing of beauty to see Price run. After losing to him on the treadmill five days in a row, Claire was convinced that it didn’t matter if she ran first, second or downhill. She was beginning to think that he was unbeatable. He could sustain a pace that would have qualified him for any number of Olympic events, or so it seemed. The guy was just so fit and so determined that it was like racing Secretariat. If there was one thing Claire had learned getting her ass kicked day in and day out, it was that she was an even bigger glutton for punishment than she had realized. The worse she lost, the more she pressed for a rematch. Even their post-run workouts were now presided over by a competitive atmosphere although Price was clearly her superior in every physical challenge they had so far attempted. It was fun but it was also pitiful. Claire knew that she was trying to get back what she had lost when the lights cut out. She wasn’t only competing against Price, she was competing against herself. One way or another, the outcome was the same. She was losing, and she was losing badly.

Price was coaching her through a relentless circuit of pushups, crunches and leg raises when Hatcher poked his head in the storage room door.

“DeLuca’s done with the finger,” he announced simply. “He says it’s your turn now.”

Before Claire was allowed to undertake her hunt for S. iroquoisii, DeLuca had first wanted to run some tests of his own, the most relevant of which involved establishing the victim’s identity by way of fingerprint analysis.

“It was an easy match,” he said. “But it doesn’t really help our cause all that much. The finger belonged to Northcutt. We still need to account for the whereabouts of Ellis, Schmidt, and Lim.”

“What about Leonelli?” asked Claire. “Anything else turn up yet?”

“Leonelli’s right here,” said McKenzie. “We found him during the second shift about twenty yards beyond the blast perimeter. The wind must’ve uncovered him. That’s probably why we missed him before.”

Claire was confused. McKenzie hovered over a large, rectangular Tupperware casserole that was loosely covered with one of those cheap decorative dishtowels bundled three to a pack featuring various kitchen motifs—in this case mushrooms and onions. Like a magician unveiling his latest illusion, he whipped off the dishtowel and revealed what lay beneath. Even though the gruesome artifact had been exposed to the elements for several weeks, the stench of charred flesh still hung over it. Nothing Claire imagined could have driven off the stubborn odor that flooded her nostrils and sluiced down the back of her throat like wet cremains. She clamped her hand over her mouth and nose to keep the contents of her stomach from coming up. It was the smell more than anything—the extreme caramelization of fats and proteins and chemical residues she innately recognized as those carrying on the mechanical processes of life in her own body.

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