I knew exactly what he was doing.
I might’ve sounded calm, cool, and collected, but I wasn’t. Far from it, to be honest.
“One for the road.” He smiled at me.
That’s when I snapped.
I punched him in the throat as hard as I could.
He went down to the ground, clutching his throat, likely wheezing in through a crushed windpipe.
Did that change anything that I did next?
No.
Or… it wouldn’t have.
I was rearing back my foot to kick him in the face, because all of a sudden I was so full of rage that it needed to come out in any way possible, when she was just there.
To say that we were surprised to see each other would be an understatement.
It took half a second.
I looked at her after she was done stabbing Amon in the chest, right through his heart, and couldn’t help the kindred spirit vibe that I felt with the scared waif.
“You got prints on that knife?” I asked suddenly.
I’d learned a few things a time or two.
One, you never pull a knife out of a body unless you wanted blood to come pouring out.
Two, you never left fingerprints. Ever.
“I killed him,” she whispered, looking shocked as she backed away.
That’s when I saw that she had gloves on.
Big fluffy blue ones.
Good.
She was staring at them as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done.
“I killed him,” I disagreed. “You just helped him along.”
We both watched as Amon struggled to breathe.
His eyes were full of panic, and he was staring at us as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
“Maybe if you’d stayed where you belonged,” I grumbled. “You wouldn’t be dead right now.”
Funny enough, neither one of us suggested that we call the cops.
Instead, we both watched as he twisted and turned on the ground, unable to breathe, and likely bleeding out inside of his chest cavity.
Good. Fucking. Riddance.
“I don’t feel bad,” she admitted as she watched him turn first red, then blue, then white.
All of a sudden, all movement stopped, and I knew.
He was dead.
“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” she whispered quietly under her breath.
“I think you got ‘witch’ and ‘psycho’ mixed up.” I chuckled.
God, why the fuck was I laughing right now?
I should be freaking the fuck out.
Instead, I was staring at the piece of shit on the ground, glad that he wouldn’t be alive any longer to terrorize anyone.
“What do we do now?” she asked. “Do we leave him? Call the cops and tell them what happened? I don’t think that I can say this was self-defense. I have zero poker face.”
I thought about it for a few long moments, then shrugged.
“I have a few thoughts,” I said carefully.
She looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I’ll help you. You won’t do this alone.”
She helped me sink the body in the river.
Together, we cleaned up the crime scene. We discarded our clothes, and for the first time in my life, I’d seen someone else besides Mimi naked.
In all of the baggy clothes and hats she’d worn, I’d never once looked at her as anything other than a person.
But seeing her naked? Seeing all those shapely curves and gorgeous skin?
Yeah, she was a knockout.
As in, my dick got hard instantly, and I had to find a way to hide it.
“I have clothes.” She gestured toward the road. “But there’s a place right before we get there that always has a fire burning outside. They use the coal to do something that I don’t know. But we can throw all this in there. About half a block that way is my apartment.”
That’s when she turned and I saw the scars.
Hundreds of them.
In the streetlight, they glowed silvery purple, and they were numerous.
But it was the huge purpling bruise on her back that caught my attention for now.
“What happened?” I asked as I held on to my junk as I jerked my chin.
I’d planned to dump my clothes in the river. But incinerating them sounded much better.
Though, had I known we were walking, I would’ve waited until we got there to ditch the clothes.
She swallowed hard. “Do you want to know the condensed version so you can go home? Or do you want the full monty?”
My lips quirked up at her use of ‘monty.’
“Tell it to me as we walk,” I ordered.
She covered her breasts with her hand as best as she could and then used the rest of her clothes and stuff to hide the lower half of her body from me.
Though, that didn’t mean that her ass wasn’t on perfect display.
It was.
And what a nice ass it was.
I didn’t stop myself from looking my fill as we walked.
“There are a few guys that hung onto my brother’s every word,” she admitted. “He was such a smooth talker that everyone wanted to be friends with him. This one in particular took it upon himself to handle my brother’s final ‘fuck you’ to me. By jumping me in the alley outside of my apartment. He slammed me up hard against the building, knocking my breath from my lungs. He’d just gotten a ‘this is for Amon’ and reared back to hit me when a couple of cops rolled around the corner. He stopped what he was doing and left before they could do anything else, but I have a very distinct feeling that the guy will be back.”
I frowned. “Was it the one at the courthouse today?”
She turned and looked at me, startled.
All the long, wet hair that was trailing down her back whipped around her head and stuck to her naked skin as she said, “You saw him?”
“I talked to him,” I muttered. “But I’ll be having another talk. This one a bit more persuasive.”
“My brother thought it would be funny to give me one last goodbye before he was taken to the mental facility where he was sentenced,” she whispered. “Not to mention, he is… was… still holding a grudge. He can’t believe I saved you. I think he honestly thought I was too scared of him to go against him in any way.”
“I’m glad you scrounged up the courage,” I admitted.
A faint glow had me looking up to find a big barbeque shop that was cooking their meats. The smoker was steadily smoking away, and the fire as well as the unattended fire pit outside was the perfect setup.
“Let’s go,” I ordered.
Then I walked to the large smoker, threw our clothes inside, then added more wood on top of it.
Only when everything was completely covered did I gesture to the barrel. “I’m guessing that they’re pretty lax in their discard. Or what they put in here.”
Because I could see burned but not melted beer bottles in the barrels next to the fire that was made to hold the ash.
“They empty these every Thursday,” she said quietly. “I hear them loading up the barrels. Do you think your boots will be burned all the way down?”
Her piddly little canvas shoes would be gone in minutes.
My leather work boots, however…
“Yes,” I answered. “I think they’ll all melt in some way.”
“Do you think that it’ll ruin the meat?” she asked warily.