Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
ABIGAIL
“What does that even mean?” I asked as I tried to ignore the way my heart pounded and my body wanted to move, to step forward and get lost in him again.
After what I’d just done, and where we were, it felt fucking surreal. And yet, so real. I felt alive.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Isaiah stepped into the kitchen and then emerged, holding a kitchen towel.
He came to stand in front of me and started to wipe the blood from my face, stroking so gently it felt strange considering what had happened.
A tender moment amongst the madness. So intense that I couldn’t look him in the eyes.
He moved to my hands next, lifting each one in turn to wipe the blood away, and I just stood there, struck dumb. Speechless. There were no words to use in this instance.
“You came here for a reason, tonight, Abigail,” he said, as he slowly cleaned each of my fingers, peering up at me through his lashes, eyes boring into mine like he was trying to read my soul.
“I think I might know what that is. You have a feeling, an urge. You need to act on it, or it’ll eat you alive. I get that.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t think you do.”
I didn’t have an urge. I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, not in the way he thought. There wasn’t an itch or a feeling. He didn’t know what he was talking about. I came here out of duty. I had no choice.
I moved my hand away and took a step back. I had to. My mind was so messed up that it was feeling all kinds of crazy things.
“Who was she?” he asked, nodding to the slumped body as he threw the bloody kitchen towel onto the floor beside the armchair.
“Someone who didn’t deserve to live,” I replied, surprised at my candour.
“There’s a lot of them out there,” he shot back, his harsh truth toying with my inherent guilt.
Suddenly, I felt exposed. Not only from the kiss, but the thought of what’d just happened. It was tumbling back into my psyche. Crashing into my brain like a wrecking ball about to obliterate my senses.
This hadn’t gone how I’d wanted. I was going to use the knife to force her to tell me the truth.
To give me the information I needed and the names I’d chased for years.
But I didn’t want anyone else to hear those truths.
I didn’t want her to say anything that would drag me back to that darkness or shed light on my story. It was mine. I didn’t want to share it.
But Isaiah had said my name.
She knew who I was after that.
So, when he’d reached for the duct tape covering her mouth, I’d panicked. I’d silenced her forever. But in doing so, to save myself, I’d lost the opportunity to hear her secrets. She’d taken them to the grave. Secrets that I needed her to share.
Fuck.
This was a disaster of epic proportions, and now I was left with a bloody murder scene, and a body that’d be a nightmare to get rid of.
“I think you should go. I have to make things right,” I said.
My anxiety was spiking; I was so out of my depth.
He threw his head back and let out a long, exasperated breath.
“Please stop saying that.” He let his head fall forward and pinned me with a determined stare.
“I already told you, I’m going nowhere. We’re in this together.
And judging from the finale you enacted, and the look on your face, I don’t think you’d planned for this. ”
“Is that rule number five? Plan for any eventuality?” I shot back.
“Maybe. Perhaps I should make a list of rules just for you,” he said. “Like I said earlier, I could teach you a lot.”
“Would you laminate it too?” I joked.
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Make it wipe clean so you can take it with you next time and use it as a guide. That sounds like the sensible thing to do.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“We’ll see.”
I glanced back at him, and the heated look on his face made me question myself. But I shook my head. Now was not the time to think those kinds of thoughts or even contemplate kissing him again.
That was a mistake.
A spur-of-the-moment, trauma response.
At least, that’s what I was telling myself.
“What do I do?” I whispered, trying to form a plan in my head.
“You wait here and don’t touch a thing. I have my van parked down the lane. I’ll go and move it, bring it closer to the house. I have everything we’ll need to deal with this.”
He was so self-assured. So confident. And I felt ill at ease. I didn’t like it. He had all the control here, and I had none. The last time that’d happened, it’d set off a trigger of events that I didn’t want to think about.
I didn’t want to put myself in that position again.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I knew it was a stupid question. He’d tell me what he thought I wanted to hear. But when he spoke, he proved me wrong.
“I don’t think you have much choice right now, Abigail. But I haven’t abandoned you, or done anything to make you think you’re in danger here, so that must count for something, right? I have her blood on me too.”
He was right about one thing; I didn’t have much choice. I could run away, leave the scene, but I didn’t want to leave loose ends and live my life in constant fear that this could come back to bite me in the ass.
What would my dad say?
My parents would be mortified.
Isaiah must’ve sensed my inner turmoil, because he took his gloves off, put them in his pocket, and leaned down. He picked up the knife from the floor, gripping it tightly and placing his fingerprints over mine.
“We’re in this together,” he said, dropping the knife on top of my backpack. “If you go down, we both go down.”
Who was this guy with the tattoos and dark stares?
A stranger that seemed so familiar.
“I’m guessing you’re not an IT guy,” I said, unsure what else to say, and then metaphorically slapped my forehead at the stupidity of my statement. Murder had turned my brain to mush tonight. I needed to get it together.
“On the contrary,” he replied proudly. “My IT skills are the best you’ll find. I might not be employed by your IT management company, but trust me, they are elite. There’s no system I can’t hack into.”
“There’s a lot to unpack there. And I have no idea what you were doing in our office if you don’t work for the IT company.
Knowing that alone has my guard up. And I’m starting to think you might know more about the injured guy in the car park than you’ve let on, but right now, I have more important things to focus on. ”
“And we are wasting precious time,” he added. “Wait here. Don’t move. I’ll be back in three minutes and this...” He gestured to the room where we stood. “Will all be gone.”
He left, and I stood in the room, avoiding looking at Angela Maynard’s body in the armchair.
What the fuck had I done?
This was such a shit show.
Seconds ticked by that felt like hours, and then I heard the back door open. Isaiah walked in, holding reams of plastic sheets and a sports bag, and wearing a plastic apron.
He started to roll the plastic out on the floor, and I bent down to help.
“We need to wrap her in this,” he said. “Tape it up, and then we can move her to my van.”
He smoothed the plastic and took a roll of tape from a bag.
“And what do we do after that?” I asked, feeling a little useless as I watched him.
He went over to where she sat and took a knife out of his pocket, cut the duct tape that held her to the chair, and then began to heft her out of it, pulling her to the floor to lie on the plastic.
Once she was on the floor, he wiped his brow and peered up at me. “Then we destroy all the evidence.” He nodded to Angela Maynard. “Including her.”
I had no idea how he planned to do that. My previous dealings like this hadn’t ended this way. They’d been discreet, not messy, and every single one had looked like an accident. I was careful. I had to be. But I’d royally fucked this one up, and I couldn’t even think straight.
I knelt down, helping Isaiah roll her in the plastic, like we were creating some kind of sick burrito.
Then, when she was tightly wrapped inside, he asked me to hold the bottom of the plastic so he could wind the tape around and secure the end.
We did the same at the top, and once it was done, we both stood up and stared down at our work.
“I’ll be able to move her. I could do with some help with the doors though,” he said, taking off his bloody apron and throwing it onto the armchair.
I was about to argue that she’d be too heavy for one person, but he bent down, scooped her up in his arms and began walking towards the back door. He carried her like she weighed nothing. Like he’d done this a thousand times before.
“Abigail,” he said, to get my attention, as I stood there speechlessly watching him. Ogling, more like. “Can you get the door?”
“Yeah, sure.” I darted across the room and then pushed the back door open, stepping back so he could walk through.
“I’ve parked my van at the bottom of the garden. I’ll need you to do the back gate, and my van door too.”
“Of course,” I mumbled, walking on ahead, and glancing around to make sure no one was watching.
“We’re not overlooked here. It’s fine,” he stated, sensing my nervousness and trepidation.
I lifted the latch of the back gate and pushed it open, holding it so it wouldn’t retract and close on us. Once he’d walked through, I turned and went to the white van parked close by.
“Isn’t white a bit of a giveaway?” I stared at the van as it seemed to glow in the moonlight, like a beacon in the dark.
“I’ll spray paint it black, ready for next time,” he shot back, and then nodded to the side of the van. “It’s a side loader. You pull the handle there to open it.”
I did as he said, and the side door of the van slid open. He put the body in and then reached forward to collect something from the back.
“We’ll need to clean the house,” I ventured, but when he pulled out a petrol can and a glass bottle with a cloth stuffed in the top, I knew that wasn’t the plan.
“Why clean it when we can torch it?”
“But wont the neighbours see? It’ll attract attention.”