Five minutes later, I stood in the damp alley alongside the upscale Russian restaurant. This time the coppery tang of blood was mixed with the smell of borscht. A pair of legs in black trousers and fancy shoes stuck out from beneath a large trash bag. When I pulled it away, a white guy in a suit sat slumped against the dumpster, throat opened ear to ear. Arterial spray fanned across the brick across from him like abstract art.
He definitely caught someone on a bad day.
I set my heavy duffel on the asphalt and sighed. Fucking Russians were something else. They didn't even have someone out here to make sure no one found the body.
Before I could finish that thought, or unzip the bag, the heavy steel door of the restaurant creaked open and my head snapped up.
A woman stepped out.
She was pretty, pale, with dark hair spilling over a heavy red coat. In her right hand, she held a white cane. She tapped it rhythmically against the concrete as she carefully stepped out of the restaurant and began to walk—clack, clack, clack—humming a low, haunting tune.
I froze for a moment before I slowly rose to my full height. She didn't look at the body. She didn't look at me. Her eyes were fixed on a point in the distance that didn't exist.
And I realized she was blind.
She was also walking a straight line toward me and the corpse. The blood had pooled wide, dark and slick under the dim yellow security light. A decent man would have let her know he was there. A good man would have blocked her path.
I crossed my arms and waited.
Clack. Clack. Squish.
Her white sneaker landed dead center in the gore.
She took another step, dragging a viscous red streak across the pavement. Then she stopped. The humming died. Her head tilted, nostrils flaring slightly, and I imagined what she wasexperiencing in that moment. She smelled the blood. She felt the change in traction beneath her soles.
I waited for her to scream. Or at the very least, panic or freeze.
But she didn't so much as flinch. She just adjusted her grip on the cane and kept walking. Her pace didn't quicken, but she also didn't hum.
I watched her figure recede toward the main street, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in her wake that gradually got lighter and lighter the closer she got to the end of the alley. A strange sensation tightened behind my ribs, invading the hollowness that usually lived there and rippling through my chest until I could barely draw a breath.
It wasn't fear. It was…fascination.
That was new.
The door banged open again. This time Viktor stepped out. He took one look at the red trail, and cursed. His hand flew to the Makarov holstered under his jacket.
"Who was here?"
"A blind girl," I said, leaning casually against the dumpster with my hands shoved into my pockets. "Didn't see a thing. Literally."
Viktor raised the gun toward the mouth of the alley, quickly spotting the woman about to step around the corner.
I stepped into his line of sight, blocking the shot without looking like I was trying to. "She’s a civilian, Vik. And she's not a threat." He didn't so much as look at me as I continued, "Besides, killing a blind girl brings heat you don't need. Cops love a handicap case. It’s bad for business."
Viktor hesitated, his finger twitching on the trigger guard. "She works here at the restaurant." He spat on the ground, then pulled out his phone, barking rapid-fire Russian. After a moment, he hung up and glared at me.
"Boss says okay. But you let her go, so you watch her. You follow. Make sure she talks to no one."
I flashed a lazy, easy grin. "Consider it done. I'll stick to her like glue."
Viktor grunted and disappeared back inside.
Once he was gone, I looked down the alley where the darkness had swallowed her whole. I needed to scrub the pavement. I needed to disappear the body. But my eyes kept drifting to the empty space she left behind.
I wanted to find her.
Turning back to the corpse, I pulled a roll of industrial plastic from my bag. Work first. Then the fun part.
