The Paramedic's Doom Read online

  Jaz was supposed to give him a personal code to get into the building, but her IT guy hadn't gotten around to creating a unique code just for Dean. Without the code, he stood and waited by the entrance knowing she should be able to see him on the security monitors mounted on the wall of her apartments foyer.

  He expected her just to buzz him up, opening the doors remotely from upstairs. He was surprised when the doors opened and Jaz stood there smiling back at him.

  She had her blonde hair pulled back in its usual ponytail tucked through the back of the baseball cap she wore. She had a towel over one shoulder and wore a gray tank top and black leggings.

  “I thought you were going to buzz me in from upstairs.”

  “I thought so too, but I’ve been spending too much time behind a desk lately. I decided to get a few more reps in on the weight bench and wait for you down here.”

  Jaz leaned in for a kiss which Dean returned, grateful as always for any contact with her.

  “You don't mind that I'm all sweaty, do you?”

  “Not at all. I kind of like my women sweaty.”

  “Eww, don't get gross,” Jaz said, laughing. She gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

  “Hey, you started it,” Dean complained, rubbing his arm as if in pain.

  “Careful, or I'll show you what I can really do if I wanted to. Come on upstairs. You did remember the leftovers, right?”

  “I did,” Dean said, holding up the bag with the plastic container Freddy put together for him.

  “Awesome, I am famished.”

  “You said you were working on something and forgot to get dinner. What's got you so tied up?”

  “It's another project to provide corporate security for an executive traveling overseas. It's pretty standard bodyguard work but they want assurances that we're providing them the very best we have. Honestly, we are spread pretty thin right now and I'm having trouble recruiting the type of people I need.”

  “I wish there was something I could do to help,” Dean said. “If you needed to hire a few tactical medics, I could put you in touch with some people, but for the kind of thing you're talking about you need a particular set of skills.”

  A thought occurred to him.

  “Have you thought of talking to Rudy? He probably has some contacts among the Lycans, if you don't mind hiring people like that.”

  “If you're trolling to see if I've overcome some of my families older prejudices against creatures of the night, I think you'll be disappointed. I actually already thought of that. A few of his people would be perfect for this job especially since the places this executive is traveling for his meetings has a large Unusual creature mob presence. It might be good to have a few werewolves around on the security team to discourage them from making a move on our client.”

  “Sounds like you got it all figured out then.”

  Jaz laughed. It was a happy chuckle that warmed Dean's heart. He liked to hear her laugh like that again. She'd been through so much over the last year and it seemed like she was finally recovering. He was glad he'd been there to see her through it.

  They rode up in the elevator to the top floor. The doors opened right into the apartment. She'd only been staying there for a few weeks and there were still unopened boxes left to unpack from her temporary apartment in the building across the street.

  “It doesn't look like you've got much unpacking done,” Dean observed. “I told you I would come by and help. You don't have to do all of this alone. That's one of the perks of having a boyfriend.”

  “I know. But you've been busy getting back into the swing of things at work since your injury and I didn't want to put anything else on your plate.”

  “Well, that's just stupid. If we’re going to spend all our time tiptoeing around trying not to bother the other one, nothing is ever going to get done. Look, I'm off for the next couple of days. I was planning on staying here anyway so why don't I start unpacking all this stuff while you get your work done? I bet I can get most of it done in a day or so. With that done, this place will feel much more like home to you.

  “I’m hoping it will feel much more like home for both of us,” Jaz said. She looked at him waiting for an answer. She didn't have to wait long.

  “I would like that a lot.”

  His confident statement, spoken without hesitation brought a beaming smile to her face. It lit up her whole expression and made him smile, too.

  “Did you at least get the kitchen stuff unpacked? The last time I was here, all of your plates and utensils were still in boxes.”

  Jaz shrugged. “I did manage to unpack a few things but not much.”

  “I'll make do. You go shower and get changed while I heat up dinner. By the time I'm finished you should be out and feeling fresher.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Be back in five.”

  Jaz headed down the hallway towards the bedroom and master bath while Dean turned to go to the kitchen. She was right. She had barely unpacked anything in here.

  He dug around until he found a couple of plates as well as the box with the eating utensils.

  Freddy had arranged the food so that all he had to do was heat up the food from the container in the microwave. One side had the pork chops and the other had the green beans almondine.

  While the food was heating up, Dean went ahead and set the small, round kitchenette table in the corner. He had to take a few boxes off the top and set them down in the dining room next door, but that only took a few minutes. By the time the food was done, he'd laid out the plates napkins and silverware for their meal.

  He pulled open the fridge and grabbed a beer for each of them, setting a bottle down next to each plate. Jaz came in just as he was dishing up the food for each of them. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts; her head tilted to one side as she dried her hair with a towel.

  “Wow, that smells delicious. I am so hungry.”

  “Well, that's what it's here for. Dig in.”

  Dean sat down across from Jaz. His stomach growled loud enough that even she heard it. They both stared at each other for a second and then started laughing.

  “Sounds like I'm not the only one who's starving.”

  “Not at all,” Dean said. “We ran all day without a break. Things have been very busy lately.”

  “Anything strange I should be aware of?” Jaz always tried to keep abreast of anything going on within the Unusual community. She was the head of a Hunter clan, after all.

  “There was one thing. Have you ever heard of a sin eater?”

  Jaz shot him an alarmed glance. “Why, is there one in town?”

  “Maybe,” Dean said. “At least that's what Gibbie thinks.”

  Dean recounted the events surrounding Stacey and the missing angel she had stashed in her apartment.

  “So this Reggie person, if he exists, is the sin eater?”

  “That's the theory so far. I'm not sure there's much to it though. We only have a little bit of evidence he even exists.”

  “Maybe not on your end, but on my end, there are a few things that showed up on my radar recently that might point to a sin eater being in the area.”

  “Like what?” Dean asked. He hadn't expected to find corroboration from Jaz's side of things.

  “Just rumblings from some of our contacts. I didn't think much of it until you said something about a sin eater being in town. Now that you say it, some of these other things are starting to make sense. You know how some Unusuals are more sensitive than others to supernatural phenomena, right?”

  Dean nodded.

  “I got word that one of our secretaries, a member of a banshee family, turned in her notice yesterday. When she was asked why she quit, she said she had the sudden urge to move far away from here. She told her supervisor to pack up his family and move away, too, if he knew what was good for him.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Dean replied, concern in his voice.

  “It does, especially in light of what you just told me.”

  “Gibbie said the sin eaters show up right before something bad happens.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Jaz said. “You’ve heard of the Black Plague? Well, there was a rash of sin eaters all over Europe right before the plague spread throughout the area. It was so bad; people started associating the plague with the sin-eaters. I know because the Hunter clans were tasked with tracking them down and dealing with them.”

  “But the plague is spread by fleas on rats, not people, and certainly not angels.”

  “We know that now but it was a different time and people didn’t understand disease and germs the way we do now. They saw correlation as cause and effect.” Jaz shook her head. “I agree. It wasn’t our finest hour.”

  “It’s stuff like that which causes all the bad blood between you and your Hunters and the rest of the Unusual community.”

  “I know it and I’m trying to be better, really I am.”

  Dean reached out and took her hand in his.

  “I know you are. You’ve come a long way since we first met a year ago.”

  Jaz squeezed his fingers in hers.

  “Who knew when we met back then we’d end up here? We didn’t really hit it off all that well.”

  “That’s an understatement. So much has happened over the last year between us, good and bad. No matter what has happened, I wouldn’t want to change where we are now, not for anything.”

  “I’d like to have my family back.”

  Dean’s heart sank. He was being selfish again. He saw Jaz as the best thing that ever happened to him, despite their rocky beginning. When she thought back to the first few times she met him, it only reminded her of the bomb that killed her parents and older siblings.

  “I’m sorry, I just meant…”

&
nbsp; “I know what you meant, Dean. It’s alright. I’m grateful to have you in my life now, too.”

  She gave his fingers another squeeze then let go of his hand so she could go back to eating. She tried to change the subject.

  “Freddy has done it again. I don’t usually like pork chops but these are amazing, juicy, and tender. I’m used to pork that is dry and chews like shoe leather.”

  “Having a zombie chef who used to have two Michelin stars does have its perks.” Freddy had taken to staying at the station after terrorist vandals burned down his house trailer. He paid for his room with his prodigious cooking skills, making meals for the paramedics on shift during the day.

  “Make sure you tell him how much I appreciate him making enough for you to bring home to me. I can’t help but think I’d be wasting away to nothing if it weren’t for his leftovers.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  They finished dinner and Dean helped Jaz clean up. Afterward, the two of them spent an hour unpacking the remaining kitchen boxes until that room’s stuff was put away in the custom cabinets lining the walls.

  “See, I told you it wouldn’t take too long. Imagine how much I’ll get done tomorrow while you’re downstairs in your office.”

  “I feel bad putting you to work like that,” Jaz said. She threw her arms over his shoulders and pulled him close. He was always surprised by how strong she was.

  “I suppose you could find a way to make it up to me.”

  She leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

  “I’m sure I can think of something.”

  She tugged him by the hand back to the hallway and the bedroom beyond with a mischievous grin on her face.

  Dean smiled and went along willingly.

  Chapter 4

  The next two days flew by for Dean. It surprised him when it took him most of both days to get everything put away and the boxes carted down to the recycling bin in the parking lot. He was proud of how much he’d accomplished, though. The apartment was much more homey now that everything was put away in its proper place. Jaz was happy with the results, too. Dean knew she hated everything to do with getting her apartment set up. She wasn’t terribly domestic.

  Dean stopped by Jaz's office on his last trip up from the recycling dumpster. She hunched over her desk, buried in paperwork with her reading glasses on. He knew she was self-conscious when wearing her glasses. Dean didn’t understand what the big deal was. He kind of liked the bookish look on her.

  “Hey, I just wanted to let you know I'm all finished upstairs. Maybe we can plan to go out tonight and celebrate?”

  Jaz looked up from her work. She shook her head.

  “I’m not sure I'm going to be able to get away early enough for dinner. Maybe we can schedule it for another time?”

  Dean was a little disappointed, but he tried not to show it. He knew how busy she was with getting security operations ramped back up to the level they were at before her family died.

  “We can do that. I do go back to work starting tomorrow night. But maybe after the next round of shifts we can plan to celebrate getting the move completed. Does that work for you?”

  “Honestly, Dean, that would be perfect. I should have everything for this new project completed by then. Thank you for understanding.”

  “Hey, what kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn't cut you some slack for being the upwardly mobile career woman? Since you're working late though, I think I'll head back to my apartment for the night I haven’t been there for a few days. I need to check the mail and look in on the Baxters.”

  “That works. I'll call you tomorrow before you go to work.”

  Dean smiled and leaned over her desk, Sharing a brief kiss before he turned and left.

  He didn't like how the work stressed her out. She'd never planned to be the executive in charge of her family's security business. That had always been her brother. She was digging in with gusto, though, which he appreciated. Hard work had rewards of its own and he knew it would pay off for her in the end.

  Dean headed out, driving across town to go back to his place. He wasn’t sure his plan would work and he was glad he’d been able to keep the secret of why he really wanted to stay at home tomorrow.

  He planned to meet with Gibbie to get together with a diamond merchant the vampire knew in the Unusual community. He knew almost nothing about jewelry but Gibbie’s long experience with all of his girlfriends over the years had made many connections with various jewelers in the area. He'd offered to introduce Dean to one of them and promised to get him a nice discount, too.

  The first thing he did when he got home was throw a load of his uniform shirts and pants into the laundry. His landlords, the Baxters, had recently put in a second clothes washer and dryer in the back of their garage right below his apartment. They told him it didn't make any sense for him to go and spend all his time off at the laundromat when he could do laundry at home.

  The Baxters where a sweet old couple who rented him the apartment over their detached garage. They both treated Dean like he was the son they never had. At first, it made him uncomfortable, but over time, he grew to appreciate the way they looked in on him and took the time to get to know the young man who lived over their Garage. He’d resolved to pay them back for their kindness with extra chores around their property and home just like he thought a dutiful son would do.

  Dean was going to miss living here after he and Jaz got married. He thought they'd miss him, too, though Mrs. Baxter had told him on numerous occasions how much she liked that nice girl he was seeing.

  While he was waiting for the laundry to get finished, Dean went ahead and logged in to his work email account from home. On the screen, there were the usual announcements and calendar item emails notifying him of updated training and protocol options for him to get his continuing education credits. He flagged them to look at later while he checked the other two emails that caught his attention. They were both from Tammy and the subject line read “Sin Eater.”

  Both emails contained links to patient care reports on calls she and Brooke had been on while he was off. He was logged in to the secure portal system allowing him full access so he clicked on the links and brought up the confidential medical reports on the two patients.

  The first was a twenty-two-year-old woman who suddenly displayed cutting behaviors that alarmed her parents. When the paramedics arrived, the woman was carving designs that looked like runes of some kind in her forearm with a box cutter. Tammy had made a note in the report that she could not find any reference to the specific runes during her brief search. The woman had spoken about the need to atone for her past transgressions.

  The second report linked dealt with an elderly man who had taken an overdose of pain medication in an attempt to kill himself. When Tammy and Brooke revived him, he told them he had to die to pay for all the people he'd cheated as a banker in the community over the years. There was a note in that report that local police had been informed and we're looking into the possibility of criminal activity in the man's past.

  After looking through the reports, Dean agreed with Tammy's assessment that these both sounded like people who had run-ins with the sin eater loose in the community.

  On a hunch, Dean pulled up a map of Elk City on the screen and looked up the locations of the two ambulance calls. He also cross-referenced the workplaces listed for each person in an effort to see if their paths might have crossed during the course of the day. While their homes were nowhere near each other, they both worked within a couple of blocks of each other which might indicate the sin eater was somewhere in and around the downtown business district.

  It wasn't much to go on, but Dean figured he and Barry could head out on their shift and pick up a meal in that area while he scouted around to see if he could spot anyone matching the vague description they had for the sin eater.

  Dean tapped a reply to one of the emails thanking Tammy for sending him the information. Anything they could do to cut down on the call volume they’d seen over the last several weeks would help. Even fewer ambulance calls translated to a break in their already busy days.