Til Death Undo Us. Morgan Q O'Reilly

watched as he drew the map in his head. A crease formed between his heavy black eye brows. It took a minute, but he had it.

      “That’s the Oak Knoll Cemetery.”

      “Precisely.”

      “Why that address?”

      “Look, Mr. Malone, agent whomever, hear me clearly. I won’t say it again, because if this is a joke it’s in poor taste.” I’d begun to tremble and Jacob’s hand tightened as I wrapped my arms across my stomach. “Twenty-two months ago he moved into that cemetery and is saving me a spot next to him. My husband, Mr. Malone, is a permanent resident at Oak Knoll. Six feet under.”

      I hadn’t cried in months–okay days–but I felt the tears burning at the back of my throat.

      “He’s deceased?”

      “My, they must hire only the quickest wits at the department of…”

      “Security Division at the Lab,” Jacob supplied.

      Niall Malone flushed, from anger or embarrassment, I couldn’t tell. “That’s just not possible. Your husband is not dead.”

      “I don’t know who is pulling your leg, but if you’re trying to pull mine, I don’t find it funny and I don’t appreciate it. But I do assure you, Mr. Malone, my husband is very much deceased. I held his hand as he died, and I held it for a solid hour afterward. Unless vampires really do walk this earth, there is no way he’s risen from the dead. Only one man was good enough to pull that off, and while Ryan was a good man, he wasn’t that good.”

      Malone reached into the breast pocket of his coat and extracted a photo, which he held out to me. “Then explain how a security camera picked him up on the premises of the lab two weeks ago.”