Chapter 21
Jiya
Calloway’s phone vibrates in his pocket. A low, insistent buzz against my thigh. He pulls it out, and the name glows on his screen.
Thorne.
Without a word, he slides the patio door open and steps out.
The moment the door shuts behind Calloway, the air in the room shifts. It’s thick with the chemical tang of bleach and the faint, metallic scent of blood. I turn, the damp, bloody paper towel in my hand, twisting into a shredded pulp.
Lazlo leans against the far wall, his weight shifted off his injured arm, watching me with an unnerving stillness.
This guy might have answers about Calloway, about this “Thorne” person, about whatever the hell kind of murder club they belong to.
“So, are you going to tell me who Thorne is, or do I need to stab you again?” I ask, trying to sound casual while fidgeting with the paper towel.
Lazlo gives me a stare that could curdle milk.
“Seriously,” I press, “who is this Thorne guy? Is he going to send hitmen after me now? Should I be updating my Will?”
Lazlo adjusts his bandage. “There’s no need for you to be concerned about it.”
“No need? I’m standing in a murder scene with you two. I think I’ve earned the right to know if I’m about to be eliminated for knowing too much.”
I pace around the kitchen island. “Is he like…your boss? Do you kill for money? Is this some kind of assassination service with corporate structure and benefits, and a 401(k) plan?”
Lazlo snorts. “You think we get dental?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you get hazard pay when things go sideways. A Christmas bonus for clean kills.” I gesture around. “A gold watch when you retire from stabbing people?”
“There’s no retirement plan in our line of work,” he says. “Though there should be.”
“So what is it then? A brotherhood? A cult? A book club that got really, really out of hand?”
Lazlo stares at the ceiling as if praying for an aneurysm to strike him down.
I plant myself in his line of sight. “What kind of relationship do you guys have with him?”
“Do you ever stop talking?”
“No, especially when I find out my hook-up is part of some kind of organized killing society.” I take a deep breath, the chemical smell burning my nostrils. “Is Calloway out there right now getting permission to kill me? Are you the backup plan if he can’t do it?”
“If we wanted you dead—”
“I’d already be dead. Yeah, I already got the movie villain speech.” I roll my eyes.
Lazlo watches me with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. “You like him, don’t you?”
“I—” The question catches me off guard. “That’s not… We just—”
“You just what? Had athletic sex next to a corpse? Yeah, I saw the aftermath.”
Heat floods my face. “That’s not... I mean... Can you just tell me if I should be worried about this Thorne guy?”
Lazlo studies me for a long moment. “Everyone should be worried about Thorne.”
The door slides open with a soft hiss, and the sound of rain rushes in for a moment before Calloway steps back inside, sealing the room in a tense, bleach-scented silence.
He slides the phone into his pocket, his movements economical and grim.
“So? What’s the verdict from Murder Boss? Am I getting whacked, or do I just get a strongly worded letter?”
Calloway’s eyes catch mine. “Thorne wants to meet with you.”
A short, sharp laugh escapes my lips. “No.”
“What?” Calloway blinks at me.
I cross my arms. “Let me guess. He wants to meet in a charming, soundproofed warehouse down by the docks? A scenic drive to the forest with a shovel? Hard pass.”
“He’s not going to kill you,” Calloway says.
“How do you know that?” I press my gloved palms against the counter.
“Because I know Thorne, and he has no reason to kill you.” Calloway’s eyes meet mine, unflinching.
“I know you’re The Gallery Killer.” I glance between them.
“Well, that’s my problem, not Thorne’s.”
“And I met your bleeding sidekick here.”
“So? You’re the one who stabbed him. All you know is that he’s a paramedic who interrupted a…situation.”
Lazlo nods. “Yes, that’s true.”
“So you know nothing about Lazlo, nothing about Thorne, and we know you killed Marcel.” Calloway’s tone shifts, becoming more clinical as he assesses the situation.
“Technically, you did.” I shrug. “I just poisoned him a little.”
Lazlo snorts. “A little.”
“So now it is my kill?” Calloway squints at me.
I pout, turning away. “Yes.”
Calloway steps closer, his expression softening. “He won’t kill you. You have my word.”
“How can you be sure?” My voice comes out smaller than I intended, betraying my actual concern beneath the bravado.
His eyes lock on mine, a raw, possessive claim that bypasses my brain and lands somewhere deep and primal in my gut. His jaw is a hard line of absolute certainty.
“Because I won’t let him.”
The words are a brand, searing away the fear and replacing it with a dizzying, dangerous heat. My breath catches.
Lazlo clears his throat. “So if you two are done with your verbal fucking, we need to burn these.” He holds up a handful of bloody paper towels and gloves. “Before sunrise, yeah?”
I glance at the black plastic bags slumped near the door.
“What about the body? Do we leave it here to be found?” I ask. The question hangs heavy in the air.
“No.” Calloway shakes his head. “Too much evidence.” Calloway’s eyes meet mine. “This wasn’t a clean kill. We need to get rid of him.”
A cold knot forms in my stomach. I’ve never had to dispose of a body before. My elegant methods of poison and staged accidents feel like child’s play now. This is different. This is butchery.
“What do we do?” I ask, my hands clammy as I glance at Marcel’s broken body. “Can we burn him too?”
Lazlo shakes his head. “No. A standard fire won’t exceed a thousand degrees. Crematoriums operate at over sixteen hundred for a reason. It’s better if he just disappears.”
I run my hand over my face, exhausted. The adrenaline from the killing, the digging, and the surprise visit from Lazlo is wearing off, leaving me unfocused.
“We can take him to the Berkshires place—” Lazlo starts.
“No,” Calloway says. He stands across the kitchen island, arms crossed. “I’m not driving for three hours with a body in the trunk. What Xander went through last time was enough to give me nightmares.”
I’m not sure who Xander is or what nightmare-inducing experience he had, but the tone in Calloway’s voice makes me think I don’t want to know.
Calloway’s eyes light up in a way that sends chills down my spine. “We could dissolve him.”
My stomach lurches. “We could what?”
“Dissolve him. With acid,” he clarifies, looking at me like I’m a slow student. “We’d need to dismember him first, of course. Smaller pieces dissolve faster.”
He says this as if he’s discussing a recipe for soup. I’ve killed, but I’ve never had to process them afterward. I’m… I’m not sure I’m ready for this level.
Lazlo considers this for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he shrugs, a simple, terrifying gesture of assent. “Worth a try.”
My only frame of reference is a TV show, a memory of a bathtub and a horrifying mess on the ceiling. This is not proper training.
Lazlo rummages through Marcel’s kitchen cabinets.
“Drain cleaner,” he announces, his voice muffled as he rummages under the sink. He emerges a moment later, triumphant, holding a large plastic bottle of industrial-strength drain cleaner. The label has a skull and crossbones on it. “Sodium hydroxide. This’ll work.”
“Will that be enough?” My gaze travels from the bottle in his hand to the full length of Marcel’s body on the floor, then back again. “It seems like we’d need gallons of the stuff.”
“It’s concentrated. But we’ll probably need to buy more.” Lazlo examines the warning label with concerned interest. “We’ll probably need to chop him into more manageable pieces first.”
I glance at Marcel’s body sprawled across the floor, the letter opener still jutting from his eye socket. My stomach churns at the thought of chopping him up into acid-friendly pieces.
“Have you tried it before?” I ask.
He looks up from the bottle. “No.”
Great. Time for amateur corpse disposal, where our guide is a man whose entire plan is based on something he saw on a TV show. This is fine. Everything is fine.
“We should test it first,” I suggest. “Make sure it works.”
“Good idea,” Lazlo says. “Let’s try a small piece first.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Calloway agrees. He turns to the magnetic knife rack on the wall. My mind supplies the image of him taking a small paring knife, maybe slicing off a piece of hair from Marcel’s head.
Instead, his hand closes around the handle of a heavy, square-headed meat cleaver. The blade scrapes off the magnetic strip with a sharp, metallic shriek.
My stomach plummets. “What are you going to do with that?”
Calloway strides over to Marcel’s body, kneels, and positions the meat cleaver over Marcel’s wrist.
“Wait, you’re not seriously—”
The cleaver comes down. It’s a wet, dense thud that seems to vibrate through the floorboards, a sound of metal hitting bone and getting stuck. It doesn’t go all the way through.
“Shit,” Calloway mutters, yanking the blade free.
A hot, sour taste floods my mouth.
He brings the cleaver down again. Another thud. Still not through.
“Harder than it looks,” Calloway says. “Lots of tendons. Wish I had my tools.”
The third strike severs the hand. Calloway picks it up by the thumb, away from his body, like a piece of garbage he’s about to throw away.
My vision narrows until the only thing I can see is that hand. It dangles, limp and pale, dripping a slow, thick rhythm onto the pristine floor. The fingers are still curled, as if reaching for something that is no longer there.
“We’ll need a container,” Lazlo says, his voice cutting through the roaring in my ears. He’s looking at the hand, assessing it as a logistical problem. “A thick plastic jar, maybe. There’s a recycling bin outside. The heavy-duty plastic kind. I think that could work.”
Calloway nods. “I’ll get it.” He passes the severed hand to Lazlo, who takes it without hesitation.