Chapter 4

Leo drove like he was a man on a mission. He did not hit the brakes when he reached a bend, and he did not flinch when the truck opposite honked and flashed at him. He sped past everything with a sharp turn of the steering wheel.

I grabbed my seat, and my nails dug into the upholstery as I stared at the GPS. Two miles. One point seven miles. “Hurry up, Leo.”

Leo stayed silent as he increased the speed from seventy-five miles per hour to eighty-five miles per hour.

It was six oh five in the morning when the metal gates of the funeral parlor appeared through the mist in front of us, locked. Before I said anything, Leo stepped on the gas, and his car crashed into the metal gates. The sound of metal cracking echoed through the streets. The railings were pulled out of the ground and dragged below the car as sparks flew everywhere.

Leo pulled the emergency brake right outside Building B, and I dashed out of the car. The metal doors were closed, and four people stood outside. They were Edie, her brother-in-law, her cousin, and a staff member from the funeral parlor.

Edie blocked the door with her arms crossed. She panicked for a second before putting up a fierce front. “Are you crazy, Nina? You just destroyed public property. I’ve already called the police. Be prepared to go to prison.”

I did not look at her. I looked past her shoulder at the metal doors behind her. My daughter was inside with a body temperature of ninety-two degrees and a heartbeat of forty-eight beats per minute. I moved forward, and Edie’s brother-in-law reached out with his thick arms to stop me. He was five feet nine and weighed about one hundred ninety pounds, which made him big enough to block my way completely. “You should know what is good for you and stay where you are.”

Leo grabbed him by the back of the neck before he finished speaking, and his feet left the ground. Leo flung him into a nearby flower bed like a sandbag, and the vases broke into pieces. “Anyone who stands in the way should get lost.”

Edie lunged forward with a scream and scratched my neck, leaving three bloody marks with her nails. I grabbed her wrist and flung it away. “Get lost.”

She crashed into the wall and fell to the ground, howling. Her cousin took a small step forward, then backed off when Leo glanced at him.

The first door was locked with an industry-grade metal chain through the handles. There was a fire hydrant box at the corner of the wall, and I opened the glass box with my bare hands. The metal sides cut my palm, and blood streamed down, but I did not care.

I grabbed the bolt cutter and tried to cut the chain with every ounce of strength in my arms. Leo came to help me press down on the bolt cutter, and the wound on my hand tore open again. Blood dripped down the bolt cutter.

Crack. The chain finally broke, and I pulled it out to open the door. Edie screamed behind me. “I’ll sue all of you for trespassing.”

The corridor was dark and cold, and the smell of formalin filled our nostrils. When we reached the second door at the end of the corridor, we found an electronic lock that could not be destroyed.

I flung the bolt cutter at it, and sparks flew everywhere. I smashed the LED screen, and the electronic lock kept beeping, but the door stayed locked. Leo and I tried to destroy it by inserting the bolt cutter into a space in between. Our sweat and blood dripped onto the cement ground, and finally, we heard a crack.

We widened the space in between and jerked the bolt cutter at the same time. The aluminum doorframe bent out of shape. We dashed inside.

It was the holding space of the mortuary refrigerator with two rows of stainless steel cadaver storage units. A pale emergency green light shone on the storage unit doors.

At the end of the corridor was a third door. It was a walk-in mortuary refrigerator with a metal stick stuck through the handles in a deadlock. I ran forward to pull out the metal stick, but my fingers were covered with blood, and my grip was slippery.

I used the bolt cutter to grip the end of the stick, hitting it hard and pulling it over and over. Leo and I took turns, and the metal stick slowly loosened. It snapped out of the door handle with a loud crack. The door handle was circular, and I turned it once, twice, and at the third turn, the door opened with a hiss.

The freezing air of forty degrees hit us, and the emergency light turned off. The doors on both sides of the cadaver storage units were half-open, revealing corners of white-cloth-covered corpses.

When I rushed into the deepest corner of the room, I found Dottie curled up in a ball on the floor between two storage units. She was not wearing shoes, and her thin dress was covered with dirt and dust.

Dottie looked extremely pale, and her lips had turned gray. Frost covered her lashes, and her fingernails were purple. She was not moving at all. I dashed toward her, and my knees hit the cold ground as I picked her up in my arms.

She was light. Too light. She was cold as ice from inside to outside. I touched her face, which no longer had warmth. “Dottie. Dottie. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s right here.”

There was no response. I placed my ear against her chest, but my heartbeat was too loud to hear anything, so I held my breath.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

A very weak heartbeat could still be heard, but it was beating too slowly. I took off my jacket to wrap it around her and ran out with Dottie in my arms. “Call 911. Quick.”