Page 51 of Hell In A Handbasket
“Those are tight as hell, Chief.” Kane crouches beside Jen’s thigh and stares entirely too closely. “I never could get them like that.”
“Yeah.” Jess drags her shirt up and shows off a bumpy scar on her ribs. “He put me back together that one time, but it’s messy. I don’t mind, really. These are my battle scars. But still…”
“I never quite understood how some surgeons can suture a wound and make it so there’s no scar at all.”
“Practice.” Minka wears sterile gloves and maneuvers the needle with expert precision. And she does so in the shade of Fletch’s tree.
Is there dust in Jen’s wound? Who knows.Probably!
Will the mayor kill us when his daughter turns up with an infection?No doubt.
“A plastic surgeon will practice a million times more than I ever have, and there are techniques of folding the skin inward to create that smooth seam. But I never learned that.”
“Scars don’t matter so much when the person is already dead,” Kane nods. “But they don’t squirm and move around, either.”
“I’m being still!” Jen snarls. “Popeye? Babe?” She swings her head around and looks for him. “Save me. She’s hurting me on purpose.”
Minka rolls her eyes. “The wound has been numbed, you drama llama. If anything, all you feel is a little pressure. You’re not in pain.”
“I am!”
“But seeing as how your father is an insufferable whiner, I hardly expected more of you.”
“He can be kind of intense, huh?” Like magic, she stops complaining and starts grinning. “He had two daughters, and he only has sisters, so besides himself, I’m not sure he knows a normal male response to the things he isn’t pleased about. If Tabby and I got mad about something, we got loud.”
Behind her, Corey purses his lips. “Yep.”
“If we were sad, we were loud. Hungry: loud. Frustrated: loud. We were not a home of silent martyrs, Doctor Mayet. We were vocal and made sure our plights were heard.”
“Sounds like the seventh circle of hell.” She pulls the third suture through and ties a perfect, neat knot. “My home was blissfully quiet. Exactly how I prefer it.”
“And you’re a perfectly normal, emotionally regulated adult because of it,” Aubree quips, wandering past with a can of Coke and a smug smirk, though it falters in the face of Minka’s hard glare. “What? I was complimenting you!”
“Mmhm.” Minka drops her gaze to Jen’s thigh and continues her work. “Don’t tell your father I stitched you. Don’t even tell him you saw me this weekend.”
“He’s not a bad person, you know?” She rests on her elbows, shaking her hair back and smiling up at Corey’s watchful gaze. “Justin is passionate. He’s empathetic and kind, and God knows, he loathes subtlety. He spent entirely too long working within the justice system, and he saw way too much cruelty inflicted upon people due to greed or intolerance. Boredom, even. Radicalization. He raised two girls—not entirely alone, but alone after my mom died—and as we’ve already established, those girls were rarely quiet in their suffering.”
“Anyone would think he’s busy with all that parenting and law and work to bother a medical examiner he hardly knows.”
“But he does know you.” She drags her plump bottom lip between her teeth. “He likes you. He likes what you stand for and respects the hell out of you and everything you’ve achieved. Besides,” she snorts. “Word spread pretty quickly that his appointment in Copeland came on the back of the former mayor’s death…” She stops and smirks. “Death by your hands.”
My heart gives a heavy kick, slamming against my diaphragm and stealing my breath. “Does he know about…” I frown. “Does he know what she does… outside of work?”
Minka glowers. But my eyes are on Jen. On the woman who knows Minka has killed more than one.
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“You sound certain.”
“He’s fond of her, Detective. Exceptionally fond, and if he could, he would sweep her into every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthday party he could. Ouch!” Jen hisses. “Dude! Gentle.”
Minka merely smiles, fake and unflattering. “Sorry.”
Not.
Collecting herself, Jen straightens her expression and brings her eyes back to mine. “Justin is a pillar of justice. The legal way, that is. His entire career,andpolitical platform, is built on the law. I adore my father, and I know if Tabby or I stepped a little into the gray area, he would find a way to excuse it. His loyalty is to family first and foremost. But a little into the gray area is not the same as…” She waves her hand up and down. “Vigilantism is not staying too long in a parking spot and getting a ticket. It’s not driving five miles over the limit.”
