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“You...” The word came out like a squeak. So, I cleared my voice and tried again. “You said you have a code?”
“Kids and pets always have to be protected. Be one hundred percent sure the kill is deserved. Ask your brothers for help. No revenge kills alone; emotional unpredictability can turn messy. Polsner needs to die.”
His last statement didn’t scare me. A part of me actually agreed with him. Was it crazy? Maybe. But crazy was also having a police detective killing people instead of protecting them. Those bodies were laid on my table prematurely. Maybe their death could have been avoided if Raph and the others had intervened earlier.
Still shaken up, but confident in my decision, I wrapped my hands behind his neck. “And I will be with you, too,” I told him, feeling my gut burning with belonging and love for this complex man.
“Yeah?” The smile he gave me was the crooked one I always felt powerless against.
“Wooo-hoo!” Rami cheered, stopping the car in front of the gates to Meg’s house.
Once inside the garage, instead of walking to the entrance, we went down to a secret basement.
“Welcome to the base,” Rami said. Everything would have felt like a dream, without Raph’s warm hand in mine anchoring me down…
“We could go to my lab,” Sari suggests, his voice draws me out of my cluttered brain. My silence must have seemed like a cry for help to him.
“You could help me with the samples and…” Sari’s words are cut off.
“Michael.”
A petite blonde woman approaches me quickly and engulfs me in a tight hug.
“Linda?” I recognize her voice from the phone call.
“Let me look at you.” Her sharp, light blue eyes travel up and down my body, studying me closely. “Such a hot little dish. Now I know why Raph is smitten.”
I feel a blush reach my cheeks.
“So, I guess the cat is out of the damn bag.” She points to the room behind us, where Polsner has been stripped naked and tied to a chair. The room is covered in green plastic, there’s a hose on the back, and a sink with a bucket lying on top. A long table full of knives and other sharp weapons is in front of me. The glass wall is the only thing separating me from it.
“Yeah,” I puff out. Polsner is still unconscious, while Raph is taking samples of blood and tissues from him. Sari explained to me the donors’ bit, and how Rami falsifies the samples’ origins. I’m astonished at how well-oiled thisfamily side businessis. They help people twice. Once by eliminating evil, and again by using the samples to find cures and remedies.
“Good,” Linda says.
Like Meg, she must be in her sixties. And although at first sight she looks cute and fragile, a silent deadliness exudes out of her, and an air of cunning. “Justice is blind. But that’s why it misses a few targets here and there. Karma takes too long in my opinion. That’s why we have the FUNS room,” she tells me.
“FUNS room?”
“Fucked Up Nasty Shitheads room,” Rami explains. A snort leaves my lips without me wanting it to.
“Seriously?” Gabe appears behind us, dressed smartly in his blue suit even though it’s Four AM. Do lawyers ever sleep? “That’s the Donors room.”
“If Linda calls it the FUNS room, it’s official. Suck it, Gabe!” Rami smiles triumphantly.
Polsner is still out. Looking at him now, naked and restrained, so defenseless, I can’t believe he killed six people in cold blood.
“He won’t be able to see us once he wakes up,” Meg says, coming next to me. “It’s a two-way mirror.”
I give a stilted nod, turning my eyes back on the FUNS room.
“Thank you for helping me with Polsner, back at the factory,” I tell her. I see a small smile appear on her mouth from the corner of my eye. It’s going to take time to go back to what we were. But I’m sure we’ll get there, eventually.
“Our alibis are already in place. Serena sent you all a reminder of where you’ve been all night,” Rami tells us. Everybody nods. Wow, they sound like professional spies. While a shudder rolls down my anxious self.
“Where are the others?” Meg asks.
“Rague and Uri went to Mr. Thomas’s house to leave Detective Diaz’s body there and stage his death. They’ll place the file the therapist filled with Diaz’s doubts about his partner—plus some new entries saying he also thought his partner was the Rope Killer. They covered it in Detective Polsner’s fingerprints. The gun Polsner used to shoot Diaz will be next to the body. It will look like Polsner found the file under the therapist’s floor and Diaz, who was following him, caught him in the act. Polsner shot him and ran. The police will never find Polsner, but at least Diaz will be a hero, and his family will know that,” I reply.
