Blood Legacy: The Story of Ryan Read Free

held out her arms and he ran into them, his little padded feet slipping and sliding on the floor. She picked him up, hugging him tightly.
    “Did you sleep well, munchkin?”
    He tried to appear petulant, but his effort was comical. “No, I was waiting for you to come home.”
    “Now don’t you act that way,” said the large, genial woman in the doorway. She moved into the kitchen, patting Susan on the shoulder. “Your mommy works very hard.”
    Susan smiled at the older woman, grateful for her support. “I’m sorry, Neda. I should have called—”
    Neda gently cut her off. “I know how you are when you work. I slept in the spare bedroom. And little bossy boy here,” she said, affectionately ruffling Jason’s tousled hair, “was asleep at 8 o’clock.” She held out her arms for the boy, addressing Susan. “You’re very tired. Why don’t you go to bed and I’ll get Jason breakfast and get him to school.”
    Susan hugged her son tightly, then gratefully handed him over to the woman. “You’re a godsend, Neda. I’ll set the alarm so I can pick him up.”

CHAPTER 3
    SUSAN TOOK A FEW DAYS RESPITE FROM WORK to spend with Jason, then returned to the lab. It was one of the benefits of being a prime producer for the hospital; she could name her own hours.
    She donned her lab coat, making a mental note to call Mason in a few hours and make arrangements to get the body. She hoped he still had it in the icebox. She settled down to review her notes.
     
     
     
    Mason pulled his latex gloves from his fingers with a snap. He pulled hard on the fingers of the gloves, then released them. They shot across the room like a rubber band, bounced against the wall, then slid down the wall into the waste receptacle.
    “Two points.”
    He meandered down the dimly lit hallway to his office. He turned on the small lamp on his desk, then killed the overhead flourescents.
    “That’s more like it. A little ambiance.”
    He stretched out on the worn couch next to his desk. A short nap wouldn’t hurt anything; he didn’t have any pressing cases right now and it had been slow the night before. He pulled a tattered pillow to his chest.
    He was just beginning to relax and drift off to sleep when suddenly he was jerked rudely awake. Something was not quite right. He listened intently, but it wasn’t really a sound that he was listening for.
    Mason sat up. If it wasn’t a sound he was listening for, then what the hell was it? That didn’t make any sense. He started to settle back in the couch, rearranging the pillow.
    He sat back up. What the hell was that smell?
    Mason was so used to the odors associated with the morgue he could no longer smell the formaldehyde. But that wasn’t formaldehyde he was smelling now.
    “Shit.”
    He tossed the pillow to the floor. His bet was those computers had gone off-line again, and that was bad news.
    He walked down the hallway, turning right at the elevators. Ever since they had changed the refrigeration units from manual to computerized, they had been nothing but trouble. It had been a simple thing for him to check the temperature gauge every few hours and adjust the thermostat accordingly, but no, they decided they could save pennies, hell, even nickels a month in energy bills if a computer did it for him.
    He pushed through the door of the control room. The first time this baby had gone down, the icebox had pretty much melted. Next-of-kin identification had not been pleasant that week.
    Mason examined the controls thoughtfully. Everything appeared to be functioning properly. All temperature levels read normal. All computers seemed to be on-line.
    His puzzlement growing, Mason pushed through the doors to the icebox and caught his breath. The smell was definitely coming from in here. He flipped the switch to his right, but nothing happened.
    Oh, that’s right, he thought sarcastically, another energy saving device. The lights are controlled by computer, another cost efficient and totally