She shook her head again.
“Good, then go on and set the table. Dinner’ll be ready in thirty.”
She opened her mouth to argue, and I was quick to cut her off.
“Don’t wanna hear that you’re not hungry. You’re fucking eating.”
Thirty minutes later, Jules was sitting across from me with a bowl full of pasta in front of her, just like I said she would be. Never saw myself as a feeder before this but itseemed the more reluctant this woman was to eat, the more I was inclined to pile up her plate. Besides, she was too skinny. I wasn’t into chicks who counted calories. I wasn’t really into chicks I wasn’t tying up either—until now, I guess.
She set her fork down after taking a handful of bites, and I mimicked her movements. Though mine was more of a slam than a clank. “What are we gonna do with him?”
She was peering into the living room again, and I was fucking tired of being passed over for another guy. Especially a guy who wasn’t nearly as good-looking. Dead or alive.
“What do ya think we’re gonna do with him, Jules?” I threw back at her, snatching up my fork and stuffing my face with as much pasta as I could fit without choking. I wiped the excess sauce off my chin and licked my fingers clean.
Fuck her manners. My dinner. My rules.
Nothing I did seemed to bother her though. Not even the slurping sounds I made as I sucked another strand of spaghetti into my mouth and finished it off with a burp.
That finally caught her attention, her eyes wide as she looked at me. But it wasn’t with the judgement I was expecting to find. It was desperation. “Can you do it now? I want him gone.”
I reached an arm across the table and pushed her plate closer to her chest. “I’ll clear my schedule as soon as you clear your plate.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
HIM
“Pass me the bone saw.” I extended an arm, waiting until I felt the familiar weight of metal in the palm of my hand. To my surprise, Jules didn’t hesitate.
I got that nurses weren’t exactly squeamish. But this wasn’t any old lump of meat I was dismembering in the middle of her bathroom floor. It was her brother.
“You don’t have to be here, you know,” I grunted as I popped his arm out of its socket and began working on the other side. They made this shit look easy in the movies. Truth was, it was fucking exhausting.
When she didn’t respond, I glanced over a shoulder to find her shaking her head at me.
“Suit yourself, sweetheart.” I shrugged. “But I ain’t about to keep it pretty for ya.”
When I started removing his lower intestines, depositing them into a black trash bag, Jules rushed over to the toilet and wasted the nice dinner I’d just made her. That was something else movies didn’t tellya. All the different odors that came with dissecting human flesh, depending on what part you were cutting into.
Bone smelled like Doritos—the red kind you could get out of the vending machine at Briarwood. Brain matter smelled like pennies and the tofu they kept at the nurses’ station whenever Burke was on a crash diet. And the spinal cord… well, that took me a while to figure out. But the best way to describe it would be like the over-salted crab meat I got at the diner a few years back. Didn’t know if it tasted the same and had no intention of finding out either.
My guess it was the rotten stench of Robbie’s bowels that had gotten to Jules, though. I had an iron stomach and even I could feel the acid burning my throat.
She wiped a hand over her mouth before turning around to face me. The forced smile did nothing to cover how queasy she looked. “Sorry.”
“I’m not the one going to bed hungry now.”
“Food is the last thing on my mind,” she muttered under her breath as I chucked one of Robbie’s legs into the tub to drain.
It wasn’t my best clean-up job, but seeing as Jules’s little stunt had already left a pink ring around the ceramic rim, I wasn’t as concerned about keeping shit tidy as I’d normally be. I also had the luxury of taking my time with this one.
At least until someone came looking for him. Which reminded me…
“How long we got before that wife of his calls the cops?” I turned around and cocked my head to the side,watching the way Jules was twisting the hem of her shirt in her hands. She was nervous about something.
Then again, for most people, being nervous was normal when dead bodies and cops were thrown into the mix.
She shook her head again instead of answering. I cocked an eyebrow and she added, “She won’t.”
