46. Sage
FORTY-SIX
SAGE
“Note the arterial spray pattern on the east wall. Consistent with a lateral stabbing motion from a right-handed assailant approximately five-three in height.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I chew on the straw of the empty Capri Sun while Milo paces the room taking photos of the scene “for educational purposes” and narrating his observations into his phone like he’s hosting a true-crime podcast.
“The ceiling involvement suggests an upward thrust that—”
“Milo. Please stop.”
“I’m documenting. This is important for your growth as a killer.”
The knock comes sharp. Two raps. Pause. One rap. The signal Milo said to expect.
Milo opens the door. Holden steps inside and the room immediately feels smaller.
He takes in the body first. Clinical sweep, top to bottom.
The eye socket. The chest wounds. The blood pooling on the carpet.
Then the walls. The bedspread. The ceiling.
He doesn’t say anything. He just keeps finding more of it.
Then his eyes land on the bed. Handprints.
Bloody smears. The unmistakable impression of two bodies moving together.
He looks at me. Then at Milo. Then back at the bed.
“You fucked in his blood.”
It’s not a question.
“Holden,” I start.
“It was more on top of the blood than in it,” Milo tries.
“There is blood on the ceiling, Milo. This entire room is in blood.”
“That was from the stabbing, not the sex. Most of the blood involved in the sex was already on Sage before we got on the bed, so technically—”
“Stop talking.”
Milo shuts up.
Holden turns to me, that flat, professional mask already in place.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
“No.”
“Is any of this blood yours?”
“No. Well . . . he got a hit in. Side of the head. But I’m fine. I don’t think he drew blood.”
“Her back and her knee,” Milo calls from the other room, not looking up from the wall panel. “And there was blood in her ear.”
“Traitor.”
He crosses the room and tilts my chin up, checking my temple with his thumb. There’s a tender spot where Stine caught me, but no cut. Holden’s touch is clinical. Professional. Then his eyes drop to my hands—the blood under my nails, the tremor I can’t quite control.
“How many times did you stab him?”
“I lost count.”
“Ballpark.”
“A lot, Holden.”
He exhales through his nose. Drops my chin. Steps back and does another slow rotation of the room, hands on his hips, cataloging the disaster with the quiet fury of a man whose operational standards have been personally violated.
“Walk me through what happened.”
I do. I explain the bar, the drugs in the drink, the way I played possum. The knife in his eye. The way he screamed and reeled back. How he hit me, drove me to the floor, pinned my wrists and started dragging down my jeans.
Holden goes very still.
“I got one hand free. Got the knife back. After that, it gets a bit hazy.” I swallow. “I kind of just kept going until he stopped moving. Then he fell on me.”
“And then I got her off,” Milo adds.
Holden’s gaze slides toward the bed. “I’m aware.”
Holden exhales again. Long. Slow. Torturously slow. I mean, how much air does one man have in his lungs?
“I’m sorry,” I say when I can’t stand it anymore. “I know you’re mad—”
“I’m not mad. I’m . . . ” He pauses, drags a hand through his hair as his eyes land on mine with a look I can only describe as hunger. “Okay. I am mad. I’m mad I wasn’t here for it. Fuck.” He turns away, surveying the scene again. “This is so much better than what we did tonight.”
Milo’s eyebrows shoot up. “Well, yeah. Three staged suicides versus a bloodbath . . . ” He holds his hands out like he’s weighing the air. “No contest, really.”
“Wait, really?” I ask, a sliver of pride glowing in my chest. “I mean. How’d the suicide pact go?” Like I’m asking about his day at work.
“Clean. Efficient. Textbook.” Holden’s eyes return to me. “Boring.”
“And this is . . . ?”
“Glorious.” The word comes out rough. He catches himself, shakes his head, and the mask slides back into place.
“Messy, reckless, fun that goes against all protocol and is probably going to take six hours to clean up and could have gotten you killed or arrested. But . . . it’s fucking beautiful. You created art, wildcat.”
I shouldn’t feel proud. I’m sitting in blood-soaked clothes next to the man I lured and killed, and one of the five men I love just called my murder art.
I’m glowing.
I don’t even want to pretend to be normal anymore.
Holden shifts into operational mode. “Milo, start with wrapping the body for disposal. You—” He takes my arm and steers me toward the bathroom. “Shower. Now. I brought clean clothes.” He grabs his duffel bag on the way and dumps it on the counter. When he unzips it, he pulls out a trash bag.
“Everything you’re wearing goes in here,” he says, shaking out the bag. “Every piece. Boots included.”
I start stripping. The shirt feels stiff with drying blood. Jeans heavy and wet at the knees. I peel off my bra, socks, and underwear. Each piece goes into the bag, and I’m reminded of the last time I had to do this—the ruined pink party dress.
“What did you do with the dress?” I ask suddenly. “The one I was wearing the night on the beach.”
Holden pauses, tying off the bag. “We burned it.”
“Oh.” Six days ago I sat in a room and watched a dead man’s post load onto a wall screen. Me, in that dress, tagged possible new pet.
The dress is ash. The photo isn’t.
“I thought maybe you were keeping it. As collateral or something.”
He goes very still. His eyes come up to mine, and I realize I’ve offended him. Shit.
“Are you trying to piss me off right now?”
“No. I just—”
“We took it to burn because it was evidence. Not because we needed leverage over you. We have never needed leverage over you, Sage. If you think that’s how this works—”
“I don’t. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
He lets that sit for a long beat. “Get in the shower.”
I get in the shower.
The water runs red. I stand under the spray with my eyes closed and my forehead against the tile and I let it all hit me—not the kill or the blood, but the after.
Dale Stine is dead on a motel room floor and I did that.
I chose it. I planned it and executed it and I enjoyed it, and now I’m standing in a shower while two men clean up my mess, and when the sun comes up I’ll eat breakfast and go to work and smile at customers and pretend I’m a person who doesn’t know what it feels like to drive a knife into a man’s eye socket.
The shower curtain pulls back.
Holden steps in behind me, naked. He doesn’t say anything. Just puts his hands on my hips and presses me forward until my body is flat against the tile, and then he’s inside me—one hard thrust that pushes the air out of my lungs and makes my fingers claw at the wet surface.
“Holden—”
“Shut the fuck up, wildcat.”
He thrusts into me like a man making a point. Hard, precise, powerful. His hand is on the back of my neck, holding me in place, and the water beats down on both of us and the steam is so thick I can barely breathe. Every nerve in my body is singing with the brutal, clarifying shock of it.
Each time his hips slam into me, the sound echoes off the tile, a low slap and a grunt that drowns out the water and the rest of the world.
My hands scrape the slick porcelain, desperate for something to hold on to.
My head is swimming with the leftover adrenaline, the memory of blood, the unbelievable fact that he’s not mad—he’s hungry, insatiable, as if the chaos in the next room is an aphrodisiac.
He fucks me until my knees tremble. When I start to slip, he fists his hand in my wet hair and tugs me back, exposing my throat to the rainfall. The edge of brutality is familiar, almost a comfort. It says I know what you are, and I want it anyway.
The orgasm takes me by surprise. My body coils, a tight fist of muscle that explodes when he grinds into me.
It’s animal, and I gasp, almost sobbing, as my body shudders and burns with the aftershocks.
Holden doesn’t slow—if anything, my orgasm eggs him on, makes each thrust rougher, more possessive.
He’s claiming me, marking me as much as the scald and the bite of his hands.
When he finally follows, it’s with a low growl against my nape, teeth at my skin, a flash of pain that doubles as an exclamation point.
The world comes crashing back in—the pounding water, the red-tinged puddles circling the drain, the sound of Milo whistling “Stayin’ Alive” from the other room like this whole night is a party and not a crime.
Holden braces both hands against the wall, his chest pressed to my back, breathing like he just ran up four flights of stairs in full gear. For a second neither of us moves.
“Don’t ever kill without me again,” he says against my skin. “Next time, I need to watch.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“I mean it, Sage.”
“I know. Okay.”
He pulls out. Gentle now, the switch so fast it gives me whiplash. He turns me around, cups my face, tilts it up to check my eyes the way he did when he first walked in. Looking for shock. For fracture. For the thing that breaks in people who do what I just did.
Whatever he sees, it satisfies him. He nods. Kisses me gently. Then he’s washing my hair, working the blood out of the strands with careful fingers, rinsing the suds until the water runs completely clear.
He steps out first. Towels both of us off. Hands me the clean clothes.
“Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
I look at what he’s put in my hands. It’s a figure-hugging dress. Black, long-sleeved, and short. “This isn’t mine.”
“I bought it for you last week,” he says, pulling on his jeans. “It was still in my trunk.”
“Thank you? I mean, I’m not trying to sound ungrateful because it’s beautiful. But a skin-tight dress doesn’t really scream ‘crime-scene cleanup’ to me.”
“You need it for where we’re going.” He finishes with the jeans and picks up his shirt.
“Where are we going?”
“The club.”
I freeze, one arm in the dress. “Unholy Desires?”