Page 75 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

‘So he was in the bar fixing himself a drink, slipped and impaled himself on the ice pick that was perilously placed in the dishwasher.’

‘Perfect,’ Antoinette says. ‘Now all we need to do is clean up the blood on the sofa?’

I’d forgotten about that.

It takes us another hour or so to scrub the living area clean. Then we have to wipe our prints off everything we touched.

‘We need to do something about the security footage as well,’ I say. Fuck’s sake. It feels never-ending.

‘Say less,’ Antoinette chirps and disappears off.

I look at our crime scene again.

It’s actually not bad.

I go and take another look at Richard Stone’s dead body.

Yep. It looks pretty convincing.

I feel my stomach churn and something wet and slick rises up my throat.

Oh God, no.

I can’t be sick here.

Far too much DNA.

I crouch down and put my head between my knees, taking some deep breaths.

Thankfully the urge to purge passes just as Antoinette comes back in.

‘I’ve wiped all the footage,’ she says. ‘No one will know we’ve been here.’

‘Are you sure? How did you do that?’

‘I’m Gen Z,’ she says by way of explanation. I’m not going to argue with that.

I take one last look around to make sure we haven’t missed anything before we let ourselves out.

‘The home is such a dangerous place,’ I say as we leave.

42

Kitty and Antoinette’s Airbnb, West Hollywood, Los Angeles

We barely speak on the way home but as soon as the door shuts behind us I can’t stop the words from flying out of my mouth.

‘We had a plan, Antoinette,’ I hiss at her and she shrinks away from me, surprised by my wrath. ‘We had a plan and, yet again, you going off script nearly ruined it for us. It still could. We need to hope and fucking pray that whoever finds Richard Stone believes that staged accident was real.’ I slump into the couch, all of my energy seeping out of my body. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ I stand up and stride through to the kitchen, where I wash my hands, scrubbing the last bits of blood and dirt from under my nails.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, following me. ‘But he was touching you. He had his hands all over you.’

‘And I was handling it,’ I say. ‘Jesus Christ, Antoinette, this is hardly my first fucking rodeo. I’ve dealt with creepier creeps than that.’

Much creepier.

‘And look how it’s affected you!’

What?