She shakes her head. “They’d never have a reason to come here.” Now finished wiping up the blood, she absentmindedly tosses the blood-soaked rags onto the dead guy’s body. She turns and grabs a velvet tablecloth from the shelf. one I’ve seen dozens of times in her videos. She spreads it over the table, and, indeed, no one would ever know.
I shouldn’t be impressed. I really shouldn’t. But damn, if it doesn’t light something hot and wrong inside me.
“Fine,” I mutter, crouching to the side of her, spraying an errant splatter of blood on the floor. I don’t just wipe back and forth. I wipe it up and off. “But vinegar for metal. Otherwise, the residue lingers.”
She shoots me a look like I just told her how to boil water. “I know how to clean steel.”
“Do you?” I glance at the daggers lying on a rag on the floor. “Because those don’t look polished enough to pass a forensic test.”
Her jaw tightens. “I never said I was finished cleaning them. You’re awfully sure of yourself for a stranger who just barged into my shop.”
“And you’re awfully defensive for someone who just nailed a guy’s hands to a table like it was amateur night at the Crucifixion Club.”
Her eyes narrow into accusatory slits. “Why are you good at this?”
“Do you want to interrogate the person trying to help you, or do you want to get away with murder tonight? Because time’s running out to do both,” I snap.
That shuts her up. For now.
In less than five minutes, I’m confident we’ve gotten every speck of blood cleaned up. I have to give it to her; she’s efficient. If she’s going to spill any blood, she’s at least kept it to a manageable amount. Suffocation is a nice, clean touch.
With every bit of evidence wiped and cleaned up, Willow wraps the body and all the cleanup supplies in the tarp. She snaps her fingers at me, pointing to a roll of duct tape in the cabinet. I grab it and hand it over. It’s the good stuff, the kind you could fix a sinking ship with. And I can’t help but watch in admiration as Willow expertly seals the guy up inside. There isn’t a prayer of even one drop of blood escaping once she’s done.
That murder tarp burrito? It’s seriously secure.
But the body’s still here, the worst evidence of all.
“All right, you know what you’re doing,” I say, voice clipped. “What are you doing with this asshole?”
She swallows, and I see her hesitation. She doesn’t want to keep giving me details, digging her own grave deeper and deeper. But I’m here. I’ve seen it all. So, she presses on. “My truck. Out back.”
I simply nod and crouch, gripping the edge of the tarp, and haul.
Her eyes track me the whole way as I drag the wrapped body toward the back door, plastic crunching against the wood floor. She’s watching how easily I do it. Watching the practice in it.
And I can feel the questions piling up behind her lips like IEDs waiting to go off.
I back into the door, pushing it open with my ass, and let the night air wash over us. The neon glow from the Strip cuts across the alley, painting the tarp bundle in jagged pinks and blues.
Her truck waits, dark and hulking.
I adjust my grip, bending him into a kind of sitting position, and then dead heft the burrito. The crinkle of the tarp scrapes my side as I lift and carry. Damn, this asshole is heavy when you have to lift him up and into a truck bed.
The tarp bundle lands in the truck bed with a heavythud,rattling the metal. I grunt, wiping the sweat off my brow, tugging my shirt back down?—
Oh, fuck.
Willow’s eyes are wide, locked—not on the body, not on the blood—but on me. On the strip of skin I just flashed, the ink etched into it: a four-leaf clover.
Her voice cracks the silence like glass. “You’re… Holy shit. You’reSaint Shade.”
It’s not a question. It’s a revelation.
Every hair on my body stands on end. My blood goes cold. For a second, I swear I stop breathing.
Fuck.
Fuck.
