Page 39 of Wicked Things
It hits me, then, how bizarre this is. I used to work for one of the biggest crooks in Seattle. I fought tooth and nail to make sure I never aided and abetted in his illegal activities. Railed against every offer he made me for after hours work, shuttling stolen cars from one side of the city to the other, even though I desperately needed the money for Millie’s care. And here I am, helping these people potentially end lives—a far, far worse crime than driving stolen vehicles. It’s different, though. It feels vastly different. If I’d been caught doing Mac’s dirty work, I would have been on my own. He would have denied all knowledge of my very existence. He retained no records of his employees whatsoever. He paid us all in cash at the end of every week. If the cops had turned up on his doorstep and started questioning him about me, he would have claimed never to have laid eyes on me before.
With Zeth, with Michael, with Sloane…they’re a family. They don’t abandon the members of that family to the cops, or to any other hostile force. They protect each other. Care for each other. They’ve got each other’s backs. Which is why I didn’t even blink earlier when Zeth told me to go and get changed. Refusing to help simply didn’t cross my mind.
I almost walk into Michael’s back when he suddenly stops in front of me, holding up a hand, closed into a fist. “Ahead,” he hisses. “They’re in one of the rooms up ahead. On the right, I think.”
We move forward, not making a sound. It turns out he’s right. We halt in front of a heavy steel door on the right, and the low ebb and lull of voices can be heard through the thick metal. Female voices. Not one, but two. And then Zeth’s unmistakably low, rumbling tone. It makes sense that he’s angry, but fuck. I can literally feel the rage pouring out of him through the concrete wall.
I hear him perfectly the next time he speaks, can hear the pain and the torment behind his words. My heart stops dead in my chest.
“What the fuck have you done?”
Michael freezes; I can see the skin on the back of his neck, the tiny hairs that are pricked and raised. “Fuck,” he says breathlessly. “She’s hurt her. I didn’t think she’d be so fucking stupid.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you!”Zeth roars.
Michael rushes forward, slamming open the door, charging into the room, his arms outstretched, ready to fire. I’m right behind him, no time to think, to plan, to weigh our options. Zeth needs us, and so we go to him. The scene we find ourselves in is not what I expected, though. I survey the room from left to right, the gears catching and stumbling inside my head. What the…what thefuck?
Sloane is nowhere to be seen. Alaska is turned to us, a look of surprise on her face. Zeth stands at the far end of the room, his back to us, his hand clenched tightly around the throat of…ofDenise Lowell?He’s pinned her to the wall, feet off the ground. Her face is turning blue as she scrambles, her fingers clawing at Zeth’s hand, trying to gouge his skin, to make him release her from his grip.
He does no such thing.
Michael stumbles into the room, his face falling slack. Another step forward. Another, and then another, until he’s standing in front of a metal gurney. And on the gurney…
I’m unprepared for what I see next.
The hands. The arms. The feet. The calves. The thighs. The stomach. The torso. The…thehead.
Pieces. Pieces of a person, all decomposing, twisted and rented apart. The woman, whoever she was, looks like she’s been dead for some time. The only dead body I’ve ever seen before is my sister’s and it looked nothing like this. Millie’s face was still fairly flushed with the remnants of life. Her nails were still pink. Her lips were tinged with blue, but she often looked that way, even on her good days. Laid out on that cold metal slab in the morgue beneath St. Peter’s of Mercy Hospital, my sister had almost looked like she was sleeping. It had taken me touching her, feeling how cold her skin was, to finally accept that she was gone. But this woman…
There is no mistaking her condition.
Death hangs over her like shroud. The entire room is filled with the sweet, cloying stench of decay, practically humming with some ungodly electricity that bites at my skin.
I pivot on the balls of my feet, and before I know what the hell is happening I’m bending at the waist and vomiting all over the dusty bare concrete floor. My ears ring with a high pitched humming sound, my eyes momentarily blurring. A pair of patent, brightly shining, glossy red pumps come into view, and then a hand is on my back, lightly rubbing up and down.
“There, there, pet,” a cool, detached voice purrs. “There, there. That’s right. Get it all out.”
I spit, trying to rid my mouth of the foul taste, but it’s impossible. It’s in the air, snaking up my nostrils winding its way down my throat, deep into my lungs. I reel away from Alaska’s touch, trying to force the world back into focus. It takes every ounce of will power I possess to stop myself from throwing up again.
Michael remains staring down at the body, his gun now hanging by his side, his frame curved in on itself, back bowed, as if being crushed by some unseen force.
“You arrived just in time for the show,” Alaska says. She hovers next to Michael, running her hand down the front of his suit jacket, her black nail polish shining almost as brightly as her heels under the strip lighting.
Michael slaps her hand away, suddenly alert. He rips his gaze away from the woman on the gurney, fixing a look of such cold, unending fury on the redhead that I’m surprised she doesn’t freeze and shatter into a thousand pieces under the force of it.
“Why?” he snarls. “Why would you do this?”
On the other side of the room, the veins in Zeth’s neck are straining under his skin. His eyes are wild, wilder than I’ve ever seen them, and Lowell looks genuinely afraid.
Alaska laughs softly, flicking her arrow straight hair over her shoulder. “I have to admit, this wasn’t my idea. I did think it was a little in poor taste, but I deferred to Denise. She seemed to think this would get under Zeth’s skin. Looks like she was right. I don’t think she expected him to strangle the life out of her, though.”
Lowell struggles harder, kicking, nails now drawing blood from Zeth’s hands and forearms. “Help…me…” she wheezes. “Tell…him.”
Alaska pulls a face, reacting like a teenager. “Urgh. All right. All right. I’m not standing within a fifty-foot radius of that nightmare, though. Michael, you’re going to have to pull your boss off Denise. And I’d do it quickly if I were you.”
Moving painfully slowly, Michael turns his whole body so he’s facing Alaska. “And why in god’s name,” he asks coldly, “would I go and do something like that?”
Alaska beams brightly in response. “Because there is an explosive device located somewhere in the grounds of this stadium, and if Denise doesn’t check in with her partner, in…” Her eyes flicker downward, checking a watch that she isn’t wearing. “Fifteen minutes, we’re all dead. That’s you, me, Zeth, your sick little friend over there…and, of course,Sloane, too.”
