AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She was falling apart right in front of him, and it scared the shit out of him. He didn’t know what to do, so he just held her. She looked so small, so fragile, and so despondent. He was almost certain she’d shatter into a million pieces if he didn’t hold her together. He washed her hair with a bottle of shampoo he found in the shower, being careful not to make a face as he picked small pieces of Murphy’s skull out of her long tresses.
The water went cold and he shut it off. All the while, his thoughts bounced between two things: the dead body in the bedroom and that kiss.
That kiss, the one that set his veins on fire and made him feel like he was losing his fucking mind. Maybe he was going crazy. She was Dornan’s woman, and if he ever found out that anyone had so much as touched her, he’d kill them.
Dornan had almost killed Murphy once, for trying to do just that.
Pride swelled in his chest as John thought of Mariana shooting Murphy. He knew he should probably feel dread, but he didn’t. Christopher Murphy had been the worst kind of scum, and John couldn’t wait to dispose of his body and pretend like he’d never existed. Somebody else would spring up in Murphy’s place, some corrupt asshole with their own agenda. Maybe they’d be better than Murphy. Maybe they’d be worse. But Murphy was finally gone.
The body. The pressing task, the thing that needed to be actioned.
‘Mariana, hey,’ he tried again. He reached for a clean towel and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her teeth were chattering, and her underwear was still specked with the drops of blood that had sunk deep into the fabric, but she was mostly clean apart from that.
Mariana wasn’t looking. She was staring into space, not answering him. He shook his head, got up and went back into the bedroom. The smell of death was overpowering, even though Murphy had probably been dead less than two hours. It was the large amount of blood in such a confined space, and he was hardly going to open a window and alert the whole world to the stench.
John found jeans and a black T-shirt for Mariana in the large closet, and then went in search of a change of underwear for her. He hesitated upon opening her dresser drawer and seeing the lace and cotton neatly assembled into sections that seemed to scream ‘functional’ on one side and ‘fuck me’ on the other. Shaking his head, he grabbed black panties and a bra from the functional section and took them to her, along with the jeans and shirt.
‘I have some clothes for you,’ he said. She didn’t respond. She was practically catatonic, and that worried John deeply. Fuck! How was he supposed to deal with her mental breakdown and find a way to dispose of a fucking DEA agent without a trace at the same time?
Time to stop worrying about being inappropriate and just get on with it.
‘Come on,’ he said gently, helping her to stand up. ‘Come on,’ he coaxed her onto the fresh towel he’d put down on the bathroom floor. She stood there wrapped in her own towel, her dark blue eyes fixed to the floor, shivering violently.
She was in shock, John knew that much. He needed to get coffee into her, coffee and sugar and probably some kind of food. He’d never hit a drive-thru on his way to dispose of a body, but there was a first time for everything, right? And he found himself unable to be annoyed with this exotic creature who had broken down in front of him. He was too conscious of who – of what – she was, even though she’d never come out and said it to him.
She was one of the ones that had been destined for a basement somewhere, a sex slave for somebody’s sick whims. Only for some reason, she’d been spared. Not that you could exactly call this spared, but at least she was still alive. John liked to pretend that that shit didn’t go on, but he knew the world he was a part of.
‘Come on,’ he said. He took the towel from her and started to remove her underwear as discreetly as he could, without looking at the magnificence that lay beneath. He dressed her in clean clothes and then he led her past the grisly reality of the man she’d just killed and down to his car outside.
* * *
That fucker had been heavy, even with the majority of his blood on the mattress. John contemplated calling a crew to pick up Murphy’s body and dispose of it, but once he’d safely wrapped Murphy’s lifeless form in the thick comforter and hauled his ass into the back of his pick-up, he’d come to the reluctant conclusion that it would be too risky to involve anyone else. He’d have to come straight back after he ditched Murphy and get someone to help with the mattress disposal.
He picked up McDonald’s for Mariana on the way to the county morgue. He ordered her fries, black coffee, lemonade and an apple pie, trying to cover all bases: sugar, salt and fat. She’d perked up a little bit since downing the coffee, the caffeine and fresh air bringing a little colour back into her cheeks.
They got to the morgue soon after Ana had started in on her large serving of fries, John backing the pick-up into the crematorium entrance. She looked up, alarmed, brushing salt off her fingers onto her jeans.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, looking him in the eye. And just like that, she snapped out of it.
‘Stay here,’ John said, hopping out of the car. He’d changed from his leather jacket into a black hoodie while they were waiting in the line at the drive-thru, and he flipped the hood over his head before he stepped into the open. ‘I’ve got to speak to somebody. Do not get out of the car. You hear me? Last thing we need is for both of us to show up on the security footage.’
She nodded, and then he was speaking to his buddy, who fetched a steel gurney.
‘You want to hang around for the remains?’ the attendant asked, as John slipped him an envelope fat with cash. John briefly contemplated taking the ashes home and pissing on them, but decided against it.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Just make sure they’re gone.’
Less than ten minutes later, Murphy – along with the bloody sheets, towels, Mariana’s blue dress and comforter – was roasting nicely in the crematorium furnace. And within the hour, the man who’d caused Ana and everybody else so much grief was nothing more than a pile of ashes and dust.
While John was waiting for Murphy to be pulverised into ash in the furnace, he placed a call to one of his contacts who cleaned crime scenes for a living. He was also a guy who was very fond of cash, and extremely discreet. John gave him the passcode for Mariana’s apartment and the guy promised to have the whole place sparkling in two hours. John didn’t see how that was possible – she’d tracked blood everywhere – but he didn’t argue. If the guy did it that quickly, he’d get a fat tip in his envelope when John dropped off the payment.
When John got back to the car, she was still there. Thank Fuck. The last thing he needed was a crazy woman running around with traces of Murphy’s blood on her. He’d washed her as well as he could, but there’d still be traces of blood and DNA in her hair, under her fingernails.
‘Someone’s cleaning your apartment right now,’ John said to Mariana. ‘He’s a pro. He’ll wipe every surface, take away every trace of DNA. If the cops come tomorrow, they could turn the place upside down, and the only place they’d find evidence is under your fingernails.’
‘Thank you,’ Mariana said quietly, looking at him with a sense of wonder.
John shrugged. ‘It’s kind of what I do. Nothing to be proud of.’
