Elena Rostova didn’t take her eyes off the heavy steel rib-spreader.
The double-hooked blades rested barely three inches from Julian’s throat, but Julian hadn’t retreated an inch. He stood between the open cadaver tray and the towering attending surgeon, his fingers resting lightly on the cold aluminum frame of the rolling slab.
The air in Operating Amphitheater OR-00 was bitter and still. Thirty-six degrees of stagnant sub-basement cold mixed with the eye-watering stench of spilled formalin and scorched grease.
High above them, the observation tiers climbed into the shadows, forty feet of circular concrete benches looking down like an ancient Roman dissection pit. Every copper pipe running across the brick walls dripped with dirty condensation.
Above the tiers, Director Evelyn Cross’s laughter drifted through the brass intercom speaker like cold tea poured over chipped ice.
“Cat got your tongue, Mr. Vance?” Cross asked from her eighth-floor executive suite.
“Or are you calculating the arithmetic of your own anatomical demise?”
Elena stepped forward until the shoulder of her green scrub top pressed firmly against Julian’s arm. Her modified Littmann Cardiology IV stethoscope hung ready around her neck, its stainless-steel diaphragm cold against her collarbone.
