Chapter 31 #2
Juniper seems too calm. She has all the marks of abuse that Georgia has, only fewer of them. No matter how much she pretends to be superwoman, Aaron and I are going to have to make her talk through this. “That therapist in London should see you all.”
“Maybe.” Aaron drags his hands down his face. “Okay. Next?”
“Still Karsten,” I insist. “I was going to let him clean up here. He has connections, more than you, Aaron.” He nods.
“I could maybe get rid of their bodies, but this property and everything they might be expected to do in the next few weeks? I don’t know where to begin there.
Though I’d recommend staging a fire. There’s going to be evidence of the fight we can’t get rid of for sure. ”
“Blood and DNA,” Aaron says. “Bullet casings we can pick up but the pellets in the wall.”
“Those can be dug out,” I point out.
“The torture gear won’t burn.”
“No, but that’s evidence against them, not us. Karsten planned to get some IT guy in tomorrow to remove all the data, but he did not know where he was going, so that wasn’t organized. And we can make sure the video of me shooting you on the beach and any remnants of Riley’s film are gone.”
“They took some of me here too.” Aaron’s lip curls in distaste.
I bet they did. That would’ve been a goal of theirs.
“They did.” Juniper shivers. “If we let Karsten just do what he wants to do, that means he gets away with doing whatever he did to other women. I have serious fucking reservations about that.”
“I say we copy whatever they have of him and of them assaulting victims. Not the vids of any of us. I can get it released online sometime in the future. People should know what they did.” Aaron speaks slowly, as if thinking it through. “It’ll be here in their archives.”
I crouch over my folded hands on the table, thinking. Maybe. “We can do that, but you must hide it all somewhere unfindable. In a fucking tree stump, if necessary. And we look into how to do that very carefully. Okay?” I look at him from under my brow.
“Sure.”
Georgia appears fascinated—not the reaction I expected. “You’re going to tell the police?”
I pop up a finger. “Nope. No police.”
“No police,” Aaron says. “Because I vote we end Karsten.”
“Same.” Juniper drops back into her chair. “It’s doable. It’s right. Even if the cops do chase him, it would be years to bring him to a trial, more years to get a guilty verdict. And he would surely tell on us. I mean on you and Rafael.”
“Yes. He also knows you killed Nathan.” I sigh. “I vote we end him, too, but what the hell do we do with the house and everything I said before?” I open my hands. “Thoughts?”
“We burn the place, thoroughly, using a timed device—there must be something like that—after removing the bodies and anything that might ID us, and walk away.” He meets my gaze.
Everyone seems to be waiting for my answer.
“That means we take the chance they will discover them dead and gone long before we are ready. Everyone at the CNC Frat will be interviewed, if they figure out who owned this place. Aaron?”
“I’m a genius, but not at this. Not at following whatever odd clues the cops might follow. I still say end him and risk the consequences.”
Everyone, including Georgia, nods.
The consequences could be devastating.
Slowly, I shove back my chair and pick up the Glock on the table that was Shawn’s. “I’ll go do it. Then we clean up.”
“I…” Juniper frowns. “I was going to volunteer to help but—”
“No. This is my job.”
“You’re sure you don’t need help?” Aaron asks.
“No. I’m good at my job.” That echoes what I told Karsten.
So, I’m standing there about to go kill a man, when my headset buzzes from where I laid it on the table.
I hear Rafael’s voice. Hesitantly I pick it up, holding up a finger so everyone is quiet. “Problem?”
“There’s a woman out here claiming to be from an agency connected to your CNC Fraternity. She just appeared round the corner of the house.”
“Meaning she sneaked up minus a vehicle?”
“I don’t know. She says to call her Judy, but I don’t think that’s her name. She wants to talk to whoever is in charge. Says, they’ve been following Karsten and…not to shoot him yet.”
“I’ll be out.”
“Copy. Over.”
Fuck. “You didn’t hear all that, but we have a visitor who knows something about Karsten, knows we aim to kill him, and wants to speak to the man in charge.”
And they’re bugging this house, somehow. I eye the window above the sink. It’s curtained but still, might be possible to catch the echo? A bug could be anywhere.
A montage of curses passes back and forth from Juniper to Aaron. Georgia just looks stunned and worried.
“Me, then.” Aaron pushes back his chair and stands, straightens the wrinkled T-shirt he found somewhere, combs back his hair with his hand. “Please say it’s not cops.”
“No. Someone calling themselves Judy, who claims to be from some agency of the CNC Frat. We can both go. You’re not quite back to normal.”
“Shit. Are we in deep crap?”
“Maybe.” Probably. Other people know we are here in a house full of dead men that I came here to kill.
He barely pauses, just shrugs at me and gestures for me to go first. “Don’t worry,” he tells the ladies. “It’s fixable.”
“Man, you are so full of it.” Juniper smiles brightly.
I tsk at her. “I wish we could go back to spanking you for being a brat. Soon, baby, soon.”
She blows me a kiss.
Now what do we do? On the way to the door all I can think of is how I wish this were a rep selling some plasticware, because we’d only need to get them to forget us and the exploded door, and that there were strangers here on this day. A house turning into rubble and ash would be memorable.
And that I pray I don’t need to kill Judy.
“Do not shoot them, Tomás,” Aaron says as we approach the doorway where Rafael stands guard.
“Me?”
“I know your reputation.”
“Huh.”