Javier once more made introductions, introducing Lawson, Preacher, and his new husband, Memphis, as well as Nicky and Cy before Nicky forced everybody to move away from the table. He photographed the plastic trash bag before donning gloves, taking a knife from his pocket, and slitting the bag down the sides and across the top, letting the pieces fall open to finally reveal the package inside.
Javier floated closer while Bowie hovered beside Odette’s chair, anxiously playing with the girl’s hair. Linc and Cy both stood with arms crossed, close enough to observe. Wyatt and Memphis hovered by the door with Preacher. It was like everybody wanted to know, but nobody wanted to be close enough to the box to be the first one to see.
Except Javier. He couldn’t help but lean in, examining the gift. The gold paper was adorned with red hearts. The attached balloons were opaque but there was something inside, confetti maybe? “Careful. Whatever’s in there is…wet,” he warned.
Nicky nodded, expression grim as he severed the balloons, letting them float to the ceiling, before turning his attention back to the box. He carefully turned over the package, revealing the damp bloody paper at the bottom, earning more than a few groans from his audience.
“It smells like a dead body in a field of lilacs,” Lawson drawled.
“Lavender,” Memphis corrected. He was a flower guy.
Javier turned his attention back to the unveiling once more as Nicky carefully cut the tape. “Babe, can you hand me the large evidence bag?” he asked.
Cy pushed away from the wall, reaching into the case beside his husband and pulling out the see-through plastic bag. He opened it but didn’t hand it to him, instead holding it for Nicky to drop the paper inside. Javier knew they needed to be careful. Knew this required patience to not damage any possible evidence, but he just wanted to tear the box open so he could know what the threat was once and for all.
They all turned their attention to the naked cardboard box. The garbage bag beneath was now a makeshift barrier between the expensive conference room table and whatever lay within.
Nicky returned the package to its upright position, slicing the tape on the corrugated cardboard before carefully peeling back the edges. Javier wasn’t sure anybody was even breathing anymore, all of them so tense that when Odette asked, “What’s in there?” half the room jumped at the sudden question.
“I’m… I’m honestly not sure,” Nicky said.
They all crept closer as he reached in and pulled out whatever was at the bottom. “Jesus,” Lawson hissed. “What the hell?”
Javier stared at it for a full minute before it truly set in that he was staring at human skin stretched across an embroidery hoop. There was a peculiar shaped hole in the top left quadrant and somebody had crudely stitched an eye around it to make it seem like a pupil along with the words ‘see you.’
I see you.
“I think I’m going to puke,” Bowie muttered.
“Why?” Linc finally asked, clearly not asking about Bowie’s gag reflex. “What does that mean to you, Bowie?”
Bowie shook his head. “Nothing.”
“It’s for me,” Javier said. “They just don’t know it.”
Nicky set the macabre craft project into another evidence bag, placing it on the table and peering into the box. “There’s something else in there.”
“If it's a nipple belt, I’m out,” Wyatt said.
Linc gave his husband a look somewhere between intrigued and exasperated. “A nipple what?”
“A nipple belt,” Odette echoed. “Serial killer Ed Gein made one out of his victims,” she explained patiently, like she was explaining simple math to kindergartners.
“What she said,” Wyatt said, tone smug.
Nicky reached into the box once more but, this time, the object fit between his thumb and forefinger. A mangled bullet. His bullet. Yeah, this message was definitely for him.
“So, if there’s human skin and a bullet in the box…what the hell is in the balloons?” Memphis asked.
All eyes turned upwards.
“We could slowly release the helium and then shake out the insides in a controlled environment. Just to be safe,” Nicky said.
Javier snatched the knife and stabbed a balloon, tiny rolled up pieces of paper raining down on them in a mini explosion.
“Or we could just do that,” Nicky muttered.
“Glad it wasn’t anthrax,” Cy said, leaning down to pick up one of the rolled up scraps of paper.
