What if I can’t give you red or green?

That had been Sally’s response to Derek's question about becoming his submissive. He ordered her to make a choice. One opened doors. The other ended everything before it even began. She’d never know if she belonged in Derek's world unless she took a leap of faith, but she was smart enough to appreciate the inherent dangers of moving too fast.

Red or Green. She needed a middle ground. A yellow would have been nice, but he’d only offered red or green. Had that been intentional?

Make a choice, he’d said.

Her decision hung somewhere between yes and no. She'd inadvertently found something worth living for in Derek, or rather had been surprised he’d brought such a richness of flavor back into her dull existence. He’d promised her a taste of something more, and she wanted to savor it, explore it, and perhaps live it, too.

The force of his personality intrigued her, and he had an uncanny ability to delve deep inside her mind and know exactly what she would do, sometimes before she even knew which way she would jump. What he offered promised to spice up an otherwise bland and flavorless existence. Red or green?

However, as tantalizing as that night on his yacht had been, his ultimatum gave her pause.

You know what I want, he said. You need to decide two things.

His words repeated in her mind, turning over and over, twisting around and around, generating more questions than she had answers.

She’d tried to give Derek a knee-jerk response at Del Mar’s diner. Beating on the window of the town car, she’d ordered the driver, Dan, to take her back. Again, Derek had read her mind, knowing what she would do before she’d even formulated the thoughts. Perhaps in ordering Dan to ignore her, Derek had forced a pause on what they were becoming.

Dan, however, turned mute on her, ignoring her demand to turn around and take her back to Derek. Adhering to Derek’s orders, Dan kept driving. He didn’t take her to the garage where she’d left her car after last night’s ballet but drove her to the Medical Examiner’s office, where a dead body and a long afternoon of work waited.

It didn’t matter that she understood the why behind Derek’s actions. His decision to overrule her choice was a difficult pill to swallow. Nevertheless, there was nothing she could do about it.

Dan drove, parked, and opened her door.

“Miss Sally…” Dan was all brusque and business-like, except for the odd address: not Doctor Levenson, but Miss Sally, which implied he, too, was involved in the lifestyle. “Your car will be delivered in a few hours."

Was that a smirk on his face? Yes? No? Great, now she was imagining things. But damn if that didn’t look like amusement twitching at the corners of his eyes. It didn’t escape her notice that by not having her car, Derek had effectively trapped her at work.

"You do realize you basically kidnapped me?” Crossing her arms over her chest, she straightened to her full height, falling far short of Dan’s six-foot-plus frame. Her attempt to stare him down failed.

That twitching turned into a full-bodied smirk. Yeah, he was having fun with this. "I'm not in the business of kidnapping unwilling women."

"Take me back." At least her voice held firm. This man had an undeniable presence about him, too, but she refused to be bullied by him. Dan lacked the overwhelming-ness of Derek but still exuded a gentle power. It felt very different, softer than Derek, more of a caregiver than a master.

He shut the back door of the town car and placed a hand on top of the roof. “Master Derek has instructed me to remind you about the case you have waiting."

Of course she had a case waiting. The panicked tone of her office assistant, Bruce, had her itching to see what it was about this body that had him on edge. He'd been at the office for five years. Mostly clerical in nature, his duties extended to the care and maintenance of the lab’s equipment, body preparation and disposition once she completed her exams, and whatever odd jobs required attention.

Dead bodies were a part of the job. As they came and went, he'd seen his share of mutilations, stabbings, gunshots, and worse. Why this particular body had him on edge had her concerned.

Derek and Dan were correct on that front. She did have a job to do, and it wasn't something she’d walk away from. Actually, right now, she could use the distraction.

Derek’s words whispered in her head. You need to decide…Are you willing to surrender your will? That question tunneled straight to her gut, twisting into a tangled mess, but that was nothing compared to what it had done to her heart. He’d burrowed deep with those words and lodged his presence firmly in her life. However, it was the second question that gave her the greatest pause.

And why?

Hell if she knew. Maybe Derek had been on to something? That second question needed to be answered before she answered the first. Until she discovered the answer to why, there wouldn’t be a way to answer about surrendering to him.

A gust of wind tickled her cheek, blew hair into her mouth, and flicked at her eyes. She gathered the long length of her hair and secured it into a ponytail. Maybe her subconscious would stew over Derek’s questions while she lost herself in work.

Tugging in a deep breath, she blew it out in a huff. “Fine,” she said, “but don’t think this is over.”

“Miss Sally…” Dan’s brows tugged together, a deep furrow creasing his forehead, “I’m supposed to remind you to look over the websites Master Derek assigned.” Dan seemed to know a great deal about Derek’s plans.

“I’m well aware of his assignments,” she snapped, then turned, leaving Dan at the curb.

Breezing into the front office, she was surprised to find it empty. She headed to the locker room to change and grabbed a pair of scrubs from the rack of clean laundry. A few minutes later, she’d changed and tied her ponytail into a messy bun. That was the only drawback of this job. She had to keep her hair up.

Grabbing a cap and mask, she headed into the exam room, startling poor Bruce with her sudden appearance. The tray in his hands fell to the floor with a loud crash. Instruments spilled across the linoleum.

Bruce spun around. “For the love of God, why do you always do that to me?”

“Sorry.” She headed to the rack of gloves attached to the wall and snapped on a pair of size small, blue nitrile gloves. Ah, the smell of rubber. So it begins. “Let me help you with that.”

She bent down to help gather up the instruments. He’d have to get another set. Sterility didn’t matter with the dead, but they needed a clean set to avoid contamination of potential evidence. Her methods and practices were pristine, and she didn’t want to think about what could be on this floor.

They placed the instruments back on the metal tray. She stood and stretched, turning to take in the body while Bruce went to grab another set of instruments.

Unremarkable in appearance, the victim appeared to be late thirties. He looked oddly reposed in death, peaceful. A stark contrast to the ragged gash over his abdomen, and yes, there was indeed a white, creamy substance leaking out from the edges of the wound.

A white sheet covered his waist. Why Bruce insisted on maintaining the dignity of the dead confused her to no end, but he did. He did it with an almost religious fanaticism which was odd considering the first step of her exam was always a full series of photographs. For that, everybody got stripped. The dead had no need for modesty. One of the things she loved about Bruce, he didn’t discriminate. He covered the women as well, drawing a sheet over their hips and using smaller towels to drape across their breasts.

“Tell me about him.” She walked over to her desk and grabbed the camera.

“He was found in a back alley.”

“And why the urgency?”

Rushing a report helped no one. Meticulous adherence to protocols ensured the information she gathered allowed the District Attorneys to successfully prosecute their cases. She also worked closely with Homicide. People like Detective Mackenzie were crucial to the successful gathering of evidence. They were all critical links in that ever-important chain of custody for evidence collection.

Whoever had a bug up their butt, and thought they could pressure her through Bruce to rush this exam, could cool their heels. This exam would take as long as it took.

Already past noon, complicated autopsies like this one would keep her well into the evening hours, and she probably wouldn’t finish processing all the slides until Friday.

With a sigh, she stepped close. At first, she did nothing, taking a moment to form initial impressions. The man had been dead for some time. Lividity had set in hours ago.

“Did they take liver temps?” She turned to Bruce, hoping those on scene had followed procedure.

“They did. Liver temp on scene was 19.5 Celsius.”

She did the math. Every hour past death, core body heat dropped by one-and-a-half degrees Celsius until it equilibrated with ambient temperatures. Holding out her hand, she asked. “Get me the temperature probe.”

Ever helpful, Bruce handed over the slim metal probe.

“Can you get me a report on the last 48-hours of ambient temperatures, please?”

“On it,” he said, sitting at the desktop computer. The tapping of the keys, as he searched relevant information, broke up the silence of the sterile exam room.

She inserted the temperature probe through the same hole the on sight examiner had used, making certain to hit the center of the liver. The temperature stabilized at 17 Celsius.

The deceased’s face had taken on the classic grimace associated with contractions as the protein, ATP, drained from his muscles’ cells. Rigor had set in.

“Can I have my recorder?”

Bruce handed over her voice recorder, and she settled it around her neck.

“Temps last night were in the low fifties,” he said.

“Fahrenheit?” He’d have to convert that.

“Sorry. Ten Celsius.”

“Check the math on the liver temps, please.”

With a push of a button, she spoke into the recorder using a clear voice. “Body is clearly in the rigid stage of rigor mortis. Facial, upper neck, and shoulder muscles are tense.” She lifted an arm and checked bicep and wrist flexor movement. Completely fixed. “Lower arms as well.”

Pinching the toes, she moved to push on the ankles which completed her assessment. “Entire body is stiff, which is in line with whole body rigidity occurring eight to twelve hours after death. That with liver temperatures…” She glanced at Bruce.

“If we assume 10 Celsius as an average temperature…” He pulled out a calculator and did the math. “If the liver temp was 19.5 Celsius on scene, then time of death was…” He glanced at the screen.

She completed the calculations in her head. “Time of death is approximately eleven hours from when the team arrived on scene.” The body had dropped another two and a half degrees since then, which meant the man had died around midnight last night.

Bruce nodded, his calculator confirming what she already knew.

“Okay,” she said, more to herself than to Bruce. “Let’s do this.”

She snapped an initial set of pictures, making certain to get quality images of lividity. It was impossible to know what the prosecuting team would find useful in their case. In her line of work, more was always better.

“Interesting tattoos,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, incredible really.”

“They have the same three-dimensional effect as that junkie we looked at. Remember? The one with the rose thorns?” Bruce added.

“Yeah, that must be like a new trend.” She handed the camera to Bruce. “Get a good set of pictures of the tattoo, please.”

In cases of unknown identity, standard procedure required dental molds and X-rays, in addition to finger prints. In recent years, with the prevalence of tattoos invading mainstream society, they had better luck if they used tattoos to identify bodies.

It was still a long, laborious process, but fortunately not one she had to worry about. Bruce would turn over the photographs of the tattoos to the crime scene investigators. They would do the legwork and track down the tattoo parlor that had inked it and hopefully match receipts to discover who John or Jane Doe might be.

Bruce took the camera and clicked away, leaving her a moment to admire the skill of the artist who’d inked the tattoo. Another three-dimensional rendering, this man had a scorpion crawling over his left shoulder. The shadowing made it look as if it were real, rather than inked into the skin. Over the right bicep, a black widow had a foreleg lifted, and silken strands jetted backward, forming a web over the man’s shoulder. It curved around to his scapula. As impressive as that one was, the one that took her breath away was the raw, ragged edges of skin peeling back to reveal a metallic framework inside. It looked so real, she had to touch it to convince herself it was simply a tattoo.

Instead of the ghost inside the machine, this was a depiction of the machine inside the man. It was at once poetic and profound.

There was a gash over the abdomen. A real one. Congealed blood had crusted at the skin edges, and with the contraction of tissues, a creamy, white substance oozed out of the cut. No wonder it had Bruce on edge.

She tented her fingers and forced herself to ignore the obvious. That gash would have her full attention soon enough. For now, she fell back on her highly-structured exam protocols and moved to the head of the bed to begin.