This was my church. This was where I made sense.
I pulled on the tyvek suit. Snapped the gloves. Knelt in the blood. The motel room was a disaster. Whoever did this had seen too many Scorsese films and not enough training videos.
Scrub. Rinse. Repeat.
Usually, my mind went blank here. No names. No stories. Just stains and DNA to get rid of.
But today, the silence was loud.
Tap. Tap. Step. Step.
The sound of her cane echoed in my head.
I scrubbed harder, the bristles tearing at the carpet fibers.
I pictured her standing in the blood, her head tilted, listening. Most people, when they realize they're standing in gore, they dance away. They jump. They scream. Their brains reject the reality of violence.
Raven had just... paused. She'd assessed the texture under her shoe. She'd accepted it. But sheknewit wasn't water she was standing in. She knew there was something else going on. She knew she wasn't alone in that alley.
Why are you so comfortable with darkness, little bird?
I poured a special cleaning mixture for carpets over the spot, the fumes rising in a toxic cloud. My eyes watered, even behind my goggles.
I wasn't thinking about the dead Cartel member I was cleaning up after. I was thinking about the living girl.
I was thinking about how she looked sitting at that piano. Alone. Vulnerable. Surrounded by wolves.
Beautiful.
I threw the bloody rags into the biohazard bag with more force than necessary. "Fuck."
I stood up, breathing hard behind my mask. My heart was racing. Sweat slicked my back.
This wasn't working. The work didn't numb me anymore. It just gave me more quiet time to think about her.
I stripped off the gloves, tossing them into the bag before I sealed it. The room was clean. Nothing would be detected no matter how hard the cops searched.
I needed to clear my head.
Ten minutes later, I was in my car, speeding back toward the city.
Toward her.
Day five.
It was raining again. A cold, miserable drizzle that turned the city streets into a slick mess of oil and neon.
I parked the sedan a block away from The Silver Table. But I didn't go inside tonight. I couldn't be near Geoffrey, or Viktor, or the noise. Or her. I needed a little separation between us.
But I couldn't stay away completely.
Standing on the sidewalk across the street, I turned up the collar of my light jacket, rain dripping from the brim of a baseball cap I wore low over my eyes. I looked like any other pedestrian waiting for a light that wouldn't change.
The light from inside the restaurant was glowing warm and gold against the rainy night. From here, it looked like a fishbowl.
And I watched her through the plate glass window.
She was playing. I couldn't hear the music, but I could see the movement. Her body swayed with the rhythm of the song. Her face was serene, her eyes closed.
