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Cub’s hand goes still halfway to the shelf. Slowly, she turns around, her eyes flaring wide.
“You! What are you doing he— Oh my God!”
“I need . . . help,” I mumble as she stares at my arm. It’s not the lie that makes the words sound strange coming out of my mouth. I’ve simply never, in my twenty-nine years, asked anyone for help.
She blinks a few times, finally coming out of her momentary stupor, then rushes into the nearest exam room and starts pulling out the drawers.
“You’re aware this is a vet clinic, not an ER?” she asks as she grabs a squeezy bottle of sterile water. “Come here.”
I take a seat on a rolling backless stool that’s been left next to a metal table attached to the wall. Meanwhile, my girl continues to rush around, searching for something. Her face doesn’t give anything away, and she appears calm and collected, but I notice that she has opened the same drawer more than three times.
“I think this needs a few stitches,” I say as I lay my arm on the stainless-steel surface.
She swivels to face me, her eyes as huge as saucers, while she clutches packs of gauze to her chest.
“What? No, it won’t.” Her gaze drops to my forearm. “Shit. I’ll call Leticia and see if she can get back.”
“You won’t be calling anyone, tiger cub.”
“Ah, yeah, I will. Last time I practiced giving stitches, poor Todd didn’t fare too well.”
Instantly, tension grips me, and a barely suppressed rage boils in my stomach. Who the fuck is Todd? A male friend? A boyfriend?
“And where is Todd now?”
“Back home, hidden in a suitcase under my bed.” She comes to stand in front of me and looks down at my arm. “This is a really bad idea.”
She killed the guy and stuffed him in a suitcase? It’s a pain in the ass to fit a body in a suitcase—I know that from experience. You need to break the limbs first, at every joint. Depending on the size of the bag, the neck might need to be broken, too. I narrow my eyes and watch her as she methodically cleans the blood from the cut. And what about the smell? Dead bodies start to stink after twenty-four hours.
“How long has . . . Todd been under your bed?” I ask as she puts a numbing spray around the cut.
“Um, ten, maybe twelve years. You’re distracting me.”
Twelve years? She must have started young. Younger than I was when I made my first kill at just eight years old.
“I don’t think it was wise to keep him there all this time. You should have got rid of him right away, cub.”
“I’m sentimental. Besides, I couldn’t separate Todd from his buddies. I like to pull them all out from time to time.” She takes a deep breath and reaches for the needle and thread. “Okay, here we go.”
“Them? How many do you have under your bed?”
“Besides Todd? Maybe five or six more.” The needle pierces my skin. “Can you please be quiet now so I can concentrate? I can’t do this and talk about my plushies at the same time.”
“What are plushies?”
“Stuffed toys. Please stop talking.”
Toys? I go over the whole exchange in my head again. Yes, it makes more sense now.
I eye her as she works on my cut. Her face is as pale as a wall, and her lower lip is bloodred from repeated biting. She’s wearing jeans and a plain navy T-shirt, but even in this casual outfit, she looks sophisticated somehow. Her hands are small and delicate, and her long nails are painted red. They don’t resemble hands that are accustomed to sewing up wounds or working with animals. I raise my eyes back to her face, it appears even paler than a few minutes ago. Her almond-shaped amber eyes, ringed by long dark eyelashes, are wide, focused on her task. The wavy dark-blonde strands that remind me of liquid honey frame her angelic face, and my fingers itch to reach out and touch them. Not that it will ever happen.
There’s a saying about “hands dipped in blood up to the elbows” that describes men like me. However, in my case, I earned that depiction long before I was considered an adult in the eyes of the law. Now? Now, I’m so submerged in blood and death that the stink of it is permanently lodged in my nostrils. I won’t dare set my dirty hands on something so pure and innocent as her, even if it’s just to feel her hair. For me, she’s like a treasured painting in a museum, open to view, but marked with a brass sign warning “Do Not Touch.”
I look back at her lips and notice she is muttering something under her breath.
“Don’t faint. Don’t faint. Fuck, I forgot to put on the gloves.” Her voice is barely audible, but I can still detect a slightly hysterical tone. “Don’t faint. Just don’t fucking faint.”
“Haven’t you done this before?”