Chapter 243

INT. - SILVER CITY MORGUE - EARLY EVENING

Ray avoided Robert's eyes, not wanting to have to explain where she'd been. That she'd rented a cheap hotel room on Cici's request and met her lover there, the by-the-hour dive seeming to make the passionate woman even more driven to claim Ray for her own.

No sleep, not yet. Just bone-heavy weariness, as though sex with the woman she loved devoured parts of her soul every time they were together. And yet, Ray was as insatiable as Cici.

She really needed to find time to sleep eventually.

When CSI Cat Chase burst into the morgue, Ray perked briefly at the woman's flustered concern. Her own stunned silence met Chase's admission she missed a key point of evidence. She slammed down a thermometer, locked onto a number. Seventy degrees.

"That," Chase said in a shaking voice, "is the present temperature of the water circulating in the fountain at the college."