“Who is it?” My tone is too forced to sound innocent, and she fucking knows it.
Her lips curve, just slightly. “You’ll see.”
I hate that answer.
I hate the smile more.
And I hate that Skippy is still sitting there across from us, wearing sunglasses, and looking like he’s enjoying the fucking show.
* "Damn it, stop it already!"
Thecar has been idling for maybe thirty seconds when the smell finally creeps in. Not sudden. Not dramatic. Just a slow, sour-sweet curl of something wrong threading through the air vents like it’s clocking in for a shift.
I catch it the same moment Alejandro does.
We both go still.
Then, very slowly, we turn our heads toward each other.
His nose wrinkles.
My stomach drops.
Neither of us wants to look behind us but we do anyway.
Skippy sits upright in the center of the backseat, seatbelt fastened like he cares about road safety, head tipped at a disturbingly jaunty angle. His grin—once stupid, now sinister—looks even worse with his lips turning that grayish-purple shade you only see on corpses and bad Halloween makeup.
But that’s not the worst part.
Our gazes drift down to his shirt.
The white button-down isn’t white anymore. First itwas dirt-stained from the grave, and now… now it’s wet. Two bullet holes bloom dark across his chest, leaking a dark liquid that I’m going to try really hard not to think about.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter.
Alejandro lets out a strangled sigh. “He’s leaking.”
“He wasn’t leaking on the plane.”
“It was pretty cold though. He’s been dead over twenty-four hours,” he says, like that’s supposed to comfort me. “Bodies do things.”
I drag a hand down my face, trying not to gag. The smell is stronger now, mixing with the heat of the car, the Brooklyn air, and whatever died in the sewer last winter. Great. Perfect ambiance.
“Let’s hurry this up,” I say, pushing out the door before I start dry-heaving.
“Agreed.”
Alejandro heads for the trunk. I trail after him because I need to get away from this smell. He lifts the lid and stares into the mess like he’s hoping the universe packed us a solution.
Then his shoulders sag in relief.
He pulls out a puffy jacket—oversized, violently blue, and ugly enough to be a hate crime.
“Thank God,” he breathes, already shaking it out.
I blink at him. “That’s your plan? Put the corpse in a winter coat?”
He shrugs, absolutely serious. “Better than walking in with… that.”
