The Megalodon Mix-Up Read online

  Her tone told me what she thought about the possibility. “That it’s a Megalodon?” I searched my heart. “No. I think that’s unlikely. I’m not entirely ready to discard it, though. Several creatures have been discovered after being declared extinct. There’s a species of elephant, for example, that was saved thanks to trades between countries.”

  Millie didn’t immediately respond, instead blinking in rapid succession. Finally, when she did find her voice, it was full of derision. “And what does that have to do with the fact that we have a tiki bar in our backyard?”

  “Nothing. I was talking about the Megalodon.”

  “Right. Here’s the thing, Charlie: A Megalodon is too big to hide.”

  “Not it if hid in deep underwater trenches where we can’t go.”

  “I read that book, too.” She patted my arm and made a clucking sound with her tongue, reminding me of the mother I’d lost when I was a teenager and momentarily causing my heart to ping. “This isn’t like the other stuff we’ve dealt with. A Megalodon can’t hide behind a tree or in the basement of an abandoned hotel.”

  “But ... .”

  “No.” She shook her head, firm. “Megalodons are well and truly gone. I draw the line at that.”

  “And I’m fine with that.” I meant it. “What if it’s a giant hammerhead? Or maybe a huge Great White ... or a mutant bull shark? Are any of those possibilities less exciting than a Megalodon?”

  “To Chris, yes. To me ... I don’t really care. I found my home with this tiki bar. I don’t ever want to leave again.”

  I quietly followed her to a small table. She ordered a rum runner without delay, snickering when I requested an iced tea, and then turned her full attention on the busy tables.

  “Do you think these are all writers?” she asked, her eyes bouncing from group to group.

  “Most of them are wearing those lanyards I saw,” I offered. “I think that means they’re with the writing conference.”

  “None of them look alike. I would think writers would look alike.”

  “Why would writers look alike?” I was genuinely curious.

  Millie held her palms out and shrugged. “I don’t know. Stephen King is pale ... and kind of looks like a serial killer. Mark Twain looked like Colonel Sanders. Charles Dickens looked like he was allergic to the sun. These people look ... normal.”

  I cringed when I realized the pimento cheese girl had noticed me and was heading my way. “They’re not normal. Trust me.” I pasted a fake smile on my face for the woman. Sarah Hilton, I reminded myself. I didn’t want to slip up and refer to her as the “pimento cheese girl.” It was doubtful she would find that complimentary.

  “It’s you.” She pulled up short and stopped in front of me. “Did you change your mind about the pimento cheese?”

  Seriously. That had to be code for something. I needed to explain things to her or she would never take the hint. “I don’t want pimento cheese,” I said finally, enunciating clearly. “I don’t need any cheese. Not any type of cheese. Okay?”

  Sarah merely nodded. “Okay. Maybe later. You remember my room number, right?”

  I didn’t, but I was opposed to the idea of her repeating it. “Absolutely.”

  “Okay.” She waved before heading to the bar.

  When I risked a glance at Millie I found her shoulders shaking with silent laughter as she wiped tears from her eyes. “What was that?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. “She keeps offering me pimento cheese.”

  “You’ve been here barely two hours.”

  “And that’s the second time she’s offered me pimento cheese.” My voice skyrocketed a notch. “It’s weird, right?”

  “It’s ... I don’t know what it is. I’ve never heard of terrorism via pimento cheese.”

  That made two of us. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Millie’s smile twisted into something I couldn’t quite identify. “Let’s talk about you and Jack. How was your first date?”

  I didn’t want to talk about that. Well, in truth, I couldn’t talk about that. I wanted to blab to someone about what happened, but it most certainly couldn’t be a co-worker. Jack would melt down. I needed to find a friend so I could talk about my feelings. I hadn’t made any outside of work since moving. Hmm. The pimento cheese girl was starting to look appealing. That was a scary thought. “I ... .”

  Luckily I didn’t get a chance to finish what I was going to say (even I didn’t know what it was), because Jack picked that moment to pick his way across the busy bar and join us. I didn’t miss the way several heads tilted in his direction, his rugged good looks calling to anyone with a hint of estrogen.

  “Are you guys done on the pier?” I asked, thankful for the interruption.

  “We are,” Jack confirmed. “What are you two doing at a bar?”

  “I’m having iced tea. Millie is ... having something else.”

  “Thank you, Little Miss Tattletale,” Millie drawled, rolling her eyes. She clearly wasn’t embarrassed at being called out because she took a long sip of her drink. “It’s hot. I’m old. I need to keep refreshed.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure rum runners will help with the dehydration problem.”

  “How did you know she was having a rum runner?” I asked. “Is that like a superhero power or something?”

  “I know lots of things,” Jack replied. “We’re heading to the medical examiner’s office to look at the body. I thought you should know in case you were looking for me.”

  “And why would I be looking for you?” Millie teased, clearly enjoying herself. “Unless ... were you talking to someone else?”

  Jack’s eyes briefly narrowed as they snagged with mine. “I was talking to both of you.”

  “Right.” Millie didn’t look convinced. “Have fun at the medical examiner’s office.”

  “I want to go with you,” I said, hurriedly getting to my feet. “I want to hear what they have to say about the bite marks.”

  Jack shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Charlie.”

  “Why not? I’ve been to a medical examiner’s office before.”

  “This is different.”

  “Why?”

  He heaved out a long-suffering sigh. “Because this body will be in rough shape compared to the others we’ve found.”

  “He’s saying the body was partially chewed, Charlie,” Millie offered. “Do you really want to see that?”

  I most definitely didn’t want to see that. I had to if I expected to get a possible reading off the body, though. “I’m fine seeing it.” I hoped I sounded more convincing than I felt. “I’m part of the team. You can’t just cut me out of this.”

  Jack looked caught. “Fine,” he said finally, shaking his head. “But if you pass out I’m not carrying you back to the hotel.”

  “I’m sure I’ll manage.”

  “I guess we’ll see.”

  I WASN’T A BIG FAN of morgues.

  That should probably go without saying, but visiting the cold laboratories where dead bodies went to be ripped apart when something suspicious happened was the thing I liked least about my job. It was necessary. Occasionally I could see things in my head when I touched things — people, objects, corpses — so I had no choice but to make the attempt, no matter how shaky the prospect left me feeling.

  “We’re still trying to ascertain exactly what happened,” Dr. Peabody explained, forcing a smile as he led us through the sterile room and toward the wall of refrigerated drawers. “I understand you’re with the Legacy Foundation.”

  “We are,” Chris confirmed, remaining close to Hannah. They didn’t hold hands or anything, which was a relief, but Chris’s protective instincts were on full display as he kept her pinned to his side.

  Jack, on the other hand, didn’t crowd me, and offered only one sentence of advice before focusing on the medical examiner. “Don’t touch anything ... or break anything ... or
throw up on anything.”

  Jack wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, so I couldn’t exactly hold it against him.

  “I’ve heard great things about the Legacy Foundation,” Peabody enthused. He’d decided upon meeting us that Hannah and Chris were worth his time and Jack and I weren’t. Since then, he’d completely focused on them while jabbering away and ignored us. “You must think something interesting is going on here if you took time out of your busy schedule to visit.”

  “It’s weird enough that we thought we should check it out,” Chris agreed, pulling up short when we reached the drawers. “We need to see what happened to the victim if we expect to move forward. There’s no way around that.”

  “Thank you for letting us see the remains,” Hannah said, her smile friendly and warm as she snapped on plastic gloves and prepared to go to work. Her inner scientist was on full display.

  Peabody sent her a charming grin, perhaps responding to her latent sexual appeal. Hannah had no idea how pretty she was (something I found unbelievably annoying), and she merely smiled back and waited for him to open the drawer.

  “Last chance,” Jack whispered, taking me by surprise when he sidled up behind me. “You don’t want to see this, Charlie.”

  I ignored his admonishment and focused on the drawer.

  I don’t know what I expected. Peabody was all business as he opened the drawer and tugged on the retractable gurney. Hannah was intense as she stepped forward to draw back the sheet. Chris was professional as he stoically looked over the remains.

  What was left of the body wasn’t only vaguely human. The first thought that entered my head was that the body was too short. Of course, there was a reason for that. Everything below the chest had been eaten.

  A body left in water loses color, bloats and other gross things that I don’t want to discuss. Shayne Rivers suffered from every horrendous thing water could do to a body ... and perhaps ten that I never considered.

  “Oh, wow.”

  “If you’re going to throw up, head to the bathroom now,” Jack growled. He remained close to me instead of with the body, but I had a feeling that was because he was convinced I would screw things up and embarrass him.

  “I’m not going to throw up.” I squared my shoulders and took a deliberate step forward. “I can handle this. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I can’t seem to stop myself from worrying about you.”

  The statement wasn’t a compliment, and yet it warmed me. “Thank you.”

  Jack merely shook his head, although a small smile played at the corners of his lips. “You’re welcome. Now ... shh.”

  I was happy to let the others do the talking as I focused on the body ... and calmed the nerves that threatened to overwhelm me. I sucked in a series of relaxing breaths as I willed myself to keep from losing it.

  “How long do you think she was in the water?” Chris asked as Hannah poked her gloved fingers into the woman’s body. I had no idea what she was looking for but she seemed to have a basic idea what she was dealing with.

  “We’re looking at between midnight and two,” Peabody replied. “I’m leaning toward two.”

  “That would be about the time the bars close down,” Jack noted.

  “Do you think that has something to do with this?” Chris asked, intrigued.

  “Probably not the way you think,” Jack hedged. “It’s just ... there’s a tiki bar on the beach. That’s where I picked up Charlie. You can see the pier from the bar. It would’ve been dark, so visibility wouldn’t have been great, but it was still a pretty big chance to take.”

  “What was a big chance to take?” Peabody asked.

  “Killing her,” Jack replied without hesitation. “I’m assuming she was murdered on land and then dumped in the water to cover it up.”

  Peabody scrubbed his cheek. “I guess that’s possible. We haven’t found proof that’s what happened, though.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  Peabody shrugged and pointed toward the body. “Pinpointing a cause of death won’t be easy. Most of her major organs are gone. Even those that you might think are there — like the heart — didn’t survive what happened to her body.”

  “What can you say with any certainty?” Chris asked.

  “She was definitely gnawed on by sharks,” Hannah answered for Peabody, straightening. “There are bite marks here and here.” She indicated the lower part of the body, the skin I was desperate to keep from seeing. “What type of shark is beyond my expertise. There’s also no way of knowing if she was dead when she hit the water or if that came after.”

  Jack made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “You’re going to keep thinking this was a Megalodon, aren’t you?”

  I tuned out Chris’s answer and tentatively stepped forward, the courage I’d been trying to gather finally taking shape. It helped to think of Shayne Rivers as a prop, something that I was looking at through the lens of a camera, like being trapped in a movie. When I tried to think of her as a person, the pain I was convinced she must have felt as she was being ripped apart in the water became almost too much to bear.

  “What are you doing?” Jack hissed, moving to cross to the other side of the metal table to stop me from getting up close and personal. “Charlie ... don’t!”

  It was already too late. I couldn’t stop myself. I raised my bare hand and drew the corner of the sheet that was obstructing my view.

  Things happened quickly after that.

  Jack yelled, as was his way.

  Chris barked at both of us to be quiet even though I hadn’t said a word.

  Hannah warned that we shouldn’t jostle the body because it wouldn’t hold together long if we damaged it.

  Peabody gave me a look that reminded me of a middle school teacher I loathed. He always thought I was giggling because I liked being disruptive. In truth, I was simply nervous all the time and giggling was my way of coping.

  As for me, I only wanted one thing. To stay on my feet as the noises I heard in my head assailed my senses and threatened to bring me to my knees.

  “Charlie!”

  I heard screaming ... and swearing ... and yelling. There were angry voices, accusations and a loud noise I couldn’t identify. It sounded like the chomping of giant shark jaws. Of course, that could’ve been my imagination playing havoc with my low level of practicality.

  My mind went black, my knees weak, and I was already halfway to the floor when I realized I was about to lose consciousness. Somehow Jack managed to catch me before I hit, probably those superior reflexes of his, and my head miraculously didn’t smack against the hard cement floor.

  The last thing I remembered was looking into his freaked eyes as he clutched me against him.

  Then things went quiet in the real world and the screaming ramped up in the visions I could no longer stop careening through my head.

  It was terrible ... and every circuit I had overloaded.

  Five

  I didn’t lose consciousness, which was a blessing.

  The noises in my head simply overwhelmed me. It was one image after the other, a cascade of shadows and raised voices. I couldn’t make out the words – they were muffled – and the faces were too rounded to be recognizable. Then there was running and darkness and the sound of water on the shore. The one thing I managed to pick out of the din was terror, and I was fairly certain Shayne Rivers was the one screaming as the terror turned to despair … and ultimately death.

  Jack freaked out. He was barking orders, demanding I look at him, and when someone waved a plastic container full of foul-smelling liquid under my nose I jolted back to reality.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Jack announced when I finally focused on him. “I told you this was a bad idea.”

  He assumed I lost it because of the body. In his defense, that was a definite possibility. That wasn’t what took me down, though.

  “I’m okay,” I said automatically, recovering. “I ... I’m fine. It wa
s a momentary thing.”

  “I told you not to come,” he hissed.

  Hannah, who was much more pragmatic and sympathetic, shot Jack a warning look as she knelt in front of me. “It’s okay.” Her smile was serene. “Seeing a body in this condition has brought three-hundred-pound men to their knees. There’s nothing to be ashamed about. People pass out when looking at bodies all the time.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Have you passed out?”

  “No. But I’m different. You didn’t attend medical school, take classes on autopsies or even flip through random medical journals.”

  Because those classes – and, yes, the periodicals, too – sounded gross. “I’m fine. I just started thinking about what it must have been like to be eaten alive and my head went a little ... woohoo.”

  That was a ridiculous lie. That wasn’t what I saw in my head. Sadly, the images I did see were fleeting. It was the noises that brought me down, the anger and resentment, the overpowering terror. Ultimately it was the fear that caused my head to implode. “I’m fine.”

  I moved to sit up, but Jack kept a firm grip on me. “Don’t even think about it.” He inclined his chin toward Peabody. “Do you have some water? I want to make sure she’s solid before I let her up.”

  “Of course.” Peabody’s expression was sympathetic when he returned with a bottle of water seconds later. “You scared ten years off me, young lady. I’m not used to the living going rigid in my laboratory.”

  That was a weird thing to say. “Well ... at least you’ll have a story to tell at your holiday parties this year,” I offered, tilting my head up so I could accept the water Jack insisted on pouring down my throat. I drank half the bottle before speaking again. “So ... we’re definitely thinking it was a big shark, right?”

  Jack scowled. “No.”

  “Yes,” Chris countered, bobbing his head. “It was definitely a big shark. We’re in the right place. This is going to be a monumental discovery, Charlie.”

  He was always glad when I joined his side in an argument, so I flashed him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Awesome.”