Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Kira
Memorial Hospital isn’t too far from home, and my first instinct is to walk.
My beat-up Chevy breaks down enough times that I end up walking more than driving anyway, so I’m no stranger to having to hoof it.
But I make it half a block before I’m panting, leaning against a grimy light pole as black dots prickle in my vision.
The doctor said if I took it easy, I could recover and gain back all my strength, as if that’s something I can just pencil in. I don’t have time to take a fucking medical sabbatical. I have a sister. I have bills. I have a corpse in my house. And I need to get home.
I don’t have my wallet or my phone. I had only just come home from my shift at Bell’s, tossing my shit onto the counter when Nix dragged me into her bedroom.
I got maybe five minutes of disbelief at the body on the floor before I hit the ground myself.
I wasn’t thinking of my phone or money. I was thinking of how the fuck I was going to get an ambulance and not have them see the dead body.
With a sigh, I eye the bar across the street. It’s a lowlife kind of dive, and most likely filled with all the same types I serve at Bell’s. Ugh. Steeling myself, I push off the light pole and make my way to it.
I cross the street in slow, careful steps, my legs unsteady. Every inhale makes my chest twinge, and when my hand closes around the bar’s handle, I have to take a second to steady my grip before I pull.
The smell hits me first.
The thick cigarette smoke is jarring compared to the sterile air of the hospital. It’s probably no different than Bell’s, but everything feels a bit surreal right now, and it takes me a moment before I can focus in on the sorry bastards seated at the bar.
There’s a guy who’s definitely an axe murderer, another who looks too drunk to stand—the bartender sucks for not cutting him off—and, at the far end, a man in a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tie loose, with the kind of middle-class misery that screams fired or divorced. Maybe both.
“Is anyone here willing to give a girl a ride home?” I use up all my strength to raise my voice and hang onto the door frame.
Immediately, the drunkard turns, his eyes swimming in their sockets as he looks me up and down, at my body and cropped Bell’s tee from last night’s shift. “I’ll take you, honey,” he dribbles.
Of course.
“Anyone that won’t kill me?” I roll my eyes. “I just came from Memorial, and I’m not looking to go back there.”
He has the audacity to look offended. “Your loss, kitten lips.”
I ignore the shudder that creeps up my spine. Kitten lips. Christ.
“How far you talking?” the ax murderer asks.
“Five minutes up the road,” I tell him, because beggars can’t be choosers.
“Then why don’t you walk?” he counters.
“Did you not hear the part about me just getting out of the hospital?” I hold up my wrist with the band still attached.
“Oh. Shit.” He shifts back on his stool. “Well, I don’t wanna catch whatever you—”
“I’ll take you,” the guy at the far end grumbles tiredly.
Thank God.
I turn my attention to him, confirming he’s a walking midlife crisis.
Maybe late forties. His hair is thinning and retreating, and deep grooves underline his eyes.
He’s wearing a gold band, though that guarantees nothing.
He could have a second family in another state and a freezer full of trophies in his basement.
Still, my instincts aren’t screaming murderer, and again, beggars can’t be choosers.
His car is a middle-class Toyota with a briefcase on the passenger seat that I gently set in the back.
I’m a little apprehensive as I slip inside, considering I don’t have my mace or knife that I usually carry, but the guy seems honest enough, and I would like to think I have a good judge of character.
“I really appreciate it,” I say as I buckle my seat belt. “I have to get back to my little sister, and when the ambulance took me to Memorial, I didn’t have my wallet.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He starts the engine. “This beats sitting in there feeling sorry for myself.”
“Fired?” I guess.
He huffs a weak laugh. “Am I that readable?”
“I’m a bartender, so…” I shrug.
He glances at my shirt in a non-sleazy way and nods.
It’s a short drive, but he manages to tell me his name is Robert and makes a joke about becoming a bartender himself.
It’s the same kind of conversation I’ve had a thousand times with men nursing disappointments.
They lose jobs, ruin marriages, blow up their lives, and then dump their sad stories over the bar for me to sift through while I’m wiping rings off wood.
I know when to nod, when to murmur something sympathetic, and when to laugh at a joke that isn’t actually funny.
My mouth moves in all the right places now too, but my mind is nowhere near this car. It’s in Nix’s bedroom. It’s standing over a body that should not exist, calculating angles and timelines and alibis.
I’m also bone-deep tired, and every bump in the road lulls my eyes heavier. The hum of the engine wraps around me like a lullaby I can’t afford. It would be so easy to just let my head fall back and drift.
If I had any sense, I would ask Robert to stop at the pharmacy so I could grab the prescriptions the doctor pushed on me.
Instead, I make a mental note to pound the last Red Bull in the fridge before the shit show starts.
Caffeine probably isn’t recommended for someone who just had their artery tear open, but the doctor doesn’t live my life. He doesn’t have to clean up my mess.
But my heart picks up on its own as we pull up to my house. There’s no police, which is a good thing. But the house looks pitch dark. Normally, Nix’s tea lights glow through the front window as if it’s Christmas year-round instead of mid-fall.
“Thanks again,” I say idly as I climb out.
“No worries.” He puts the car in park. “But, uh, hey…”
I lean back down and find an earnest look on his face.
“Maybe don’t ask strangers for a ride again. I would hate to know what would have happened if that guy—”
“I can handle myself.”
“Course, uh, just, here…” He fumbles in his pocket and pulls out a card. “Just—here. My cell’s on there, in case you ever… I don’t know. I’m not trying to be creepy. I have a ten-year-old daughter and…” His gaze drops, and something in his expression softens into tired concern.
“I get it.” I lean in and grab the card. “Thank you.”
“And hey, who knows? Maybe I’ll start ubering.”
“Ha,” I give the appropriate response he needs, my bartender skills on autopilot.
“Alright, well…”
“Yep. Thanks again.” I shut the door and wait for him to pull away before turning to face the house.
The squat one-level with peeling paint and dead grass is home.
It’s ugly and tired and half-assed, but still, most nights, it’s my favorite sight in the world.
Nix and I locked our father out of the mortgage account years ago, changed every password we could find, and pretended he died.
I make the payments now. I bleed for them.
If I ever pay this place off, I’m forging the deed and carving my name into it.
Our father hasn’t even stepped inside in the last five years, so for all I know, he could be dead, but who cares?
Either way, we’ve made it ours, and I kill myself making the payments so we don’t lose it.
It doesn’t leave much left to fix it up properly, but still, I’m normally happy to see it.
Now my stomach turns as I crunch across the patchy lawn.
There’s a dead body inside. A murdered body.
A dead and murdered body that I have to get rid of.
But at least I don’t have to get rid of the patrol car.
Leave it to Marshal to know when to walk when drunk, but not when to stop when a girl says no.
I twist the handle and, thankfully, find it locked. Normally, Nix forgets to lock it. I rap on the door—the doorbell long toast—and wait. It only takes a second for the lock to click, and the door flies open.
“Kira!” My sister throws her arms around me. “Oh my God, I didn’t know if you were okay. I called the hospital, but they said I needed to come in if I wanted more information, and you told me to stay here. And I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know. I didn’t—” She starts sobbing.
“I’m fine,” I squeeze her back, tears forming in my own eyes. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m fine, and we’re going to fix this. Don’t worry.” I sound more confident than I feel, considering I don’t have a plan.
“I’m so sorry.” She pulls away and scrubs at her face.
She’s annoyingly beautiful without makeup, even when crying. Large brown eyes and a pert nose with full lips just a shade paler than cherry red. Her hair is dark black, straightened, and long past her chest. The length just grazes her waist where a studded belt is cinched around black jeans.
“It’s fine,” I tell her, even though it’s not.
She killed someone, self-defense or not, and that’s going to royally fuck her up in the head.
I know it’s fucking me up. But that’s a problem for after we clean the crime scene.
“Let’s just get rid of it before it starts to…
you know.” I wipe my eyes and step around her.
“You said Nosy Nellie wasn’t home when he got here, right?
So only me and you know, and if only me and you know, then we should be—” I stop dead in my tracks. “Who the fuck are you?”
There’s a boy in my living room. Tall, slender, with a mop of shaggy black hair that looks like it costs too much to be that messy.
He’s wearing slim-fit khakis and spotless sneakers, the expensive kind, and he looks like a catalog model that got dropped into our thrift-store house.
He doesn’t fit here, not with the secondhand couch and chipped coffee table.
“Uh, I’m, uh… I’m…” he stammers.