Page 46 of Tell No One
“You’ll be fine. I need to check their car in case there’s a driver. See if you can do anything about the blood.”
Then he was gone.
Tag pushed to his feet. He was spattered in blood that wasn’t his own, but he guessed Delaney was more concerned with what was pooling on the floor. Tag grabbed a tea towel and dropped it onto the mess without looking at the body. He remembered seeing duct tape in the utility room and went to get it.
As he ripped off a strip with his teeth and reached under the guy’s dark T-shirt to press it against the hole in his chest, he wondered what the fuck he was doing. Wasn’t Delaney going to call the police? The tape didn’t stick. Tag wiped the wound with the tea towel and tried again. This time it did and the trickle of blood stopped. He put another piece across the first before he went over to the other man.
He’d been shot in the head.Oh God.There were bits of…Tag gagged and looked away.I have to do this.He took another tea towel from a drawer, cleaned away the blood and stuck duct tape on his forehead.
Why was he doing what Delaney told him to do? Why wasn’t he running? Delaney had just killed two guys.
But he didn’t kill me.
8
Delaney was as sure as he could be that he’d neutralised the situation. Only two men had been sent and they were both dead. It was unfortunate, because he’d wanted to know who’d sent them, but if he hadn’t done what he’d done, he and Tag could have been killed. He was pretty sure he’d found their car parked a little way down the road. A dark Honda.
He ran back to the house. Tag was on his hands and knees cleaning blood off the tiles and putting sodden sheets of kitchen roll into a bin liner. At least he wasn’t curled up in a corner wailing hysterically.
“Okay?” Delaney asked.
“He got a hard on,” Tag blurted. “I freaked out.”
Delaney started to laugh, then caught the look on Tag’s face. “It sometimes happens. It’s called angel lust.”
“Fuck. I don’t think he’s going to end up in heaven. He’ll probably be waiting for me in hell.”
“Why would you be going to hell?”
Tag shrugged.
“Do you believe in heaven and hell?”
“No.”
Delaney frowned. “Let me look at your back and your ear again.”
Tag stood up.
“Your ear’s grazed inside. Your back’s stopped bleeding. It’s not deep. Go up and change your T-shirt. Put on some trousers and shoes.”
“Is that all I get?” Tag whispered. “I’ve just seen you shoot two guys, one of whom stuck his gun in my ear, and I thought I was going to die and you’re…all business?” He gulped.
“Yes.”
Tag sagged and headed upstairs. Delaney took pictures of both bodies, then followed Tag.
Delaney came out of his room pulling on a T-shirt of his own, just as Tag emerged onto the landing, his face blank.
“I need you to do what I tell you,” Delaney said. “Okay?”
Tag nodded.
Back downstairs, Delaney took latex gloves from a box under the sink and gave Tag a pair. “Wear them all the time. Keep working on the blood.”
He checked the pockets of the man who’d held the gun on Tag and found a set of car keys.
“We have to make it look as though they were never here.” Delaney checked the pockets of the other guy. They held nothing. So in that, they were professionals.
