Page 13 of A Murderous Crow
“Yeah, yeah,” he said unhappily. “Make sure the canary doesn’t sing. Where you at? The Manse?”
“My place,” I said.
“Bring her Jag to the carriage house?”
“Yeah. Burn the shoes. I’ll take care of what she’s wearing. Find her place, and bring some clothes.”
“You don’t ask much,” he said.
“Divide and conquer. You have the dream team there.”
“Yeah, that I do,” he said. “See you by morning.”
“She’ll be out until at least then,” I said.
“TGIF,” he said, and I rolled my eyes.
“Friday doesn’t always mean a fucking thing in the world of real estate,” I reminded him.
“Guess you better check her calendar.”
“Guess I’d better.”
I hung up and checked her laptop, which was still open and conveniently logged into. While her phone’s screen was indeed fucked, I texted her assistant, Fabian, from her phone link on the laptop and pretended to be her, saying the showing went well, and he bit. I also told him I dropped my phone and would be offline until midday the next day, when I could get a new one.
It’d only taken scanning through their texts that afternoon to find her “voice” and Fabian, likely already into his cocktails on a Friday night, just told her goodnight and to not let the bedbugs bite.
Ridiculous.
“Looks like it’s just you and me,” I murmured, looking down at her, thinkingjust the hunter and his prey.
I made sure she was in the recovery position, so that when I went back and forth to tend to things – namely, building a fire to dispose of our clothing- she would be safe in her unconscious state.
I fired up the fireplace and stripped her down, scowling at the dark shadowing under her skin, starting to ripen into a putrid hematoma where he’d sucker punched her.
I burned what she was wearing and spent an extraordinary amount of time untangling the decorative combs from her hair to set them aside.
I took off all her jewelry, including that gold vintage watch I never saw her without, noting the inscription under its face.Never Enough.
Curious.
She was beautiful, her form perfect. I appreciated that she was a woman down there, and didn’t shave herself to resemble a little girl’s pussy, or give herself a landing strip like some sort of porn star. I hated that shit.
It was awkward, picking her up, but there was a bath waiting upstairs. I wanted to make sure she was scrubbed free of makeup and get a look at her fresh-faced, as much as I wanted to destroy any potential evidence she bore from our newly minted crime scene.
She’d been right. It’d been self-defense, or defense of others, and no court in the country would convict. But I wasn’t about to waste time on all of that, nor was I itching to be under any kind of scrutiny by the pigs.
She stirred as I lowered her into the warm water, and I shushed her as she whimpered and fussed, trying to climb me like a kitten to avoid the bath. She settled with some careful andquiet cajoling, and she was out of it to the point that I didn’t suspect she would remember. But I was curious, so I tried to engage her in conversation to see if she could and would make sense.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
She muttered, “Warm, and tired.”
“Warm is good, tired isn’t bad either.”
“Have you killed many people before? Because I sure haven’t,” she mumbled.
“Yes,” I told her simply. “Having never been a party to murder before, I can understand how it might make you tired.”
