And now they were safe from him.
Looking around the floor, there wasn’t a square inch of it that wasn’t disgusting. I sighed as I walked out and placed the plastic on my chair and pulled the hose off the wall. Usually, I saved this step for last, but I needed a fairly clean spot to lay the plastic out, otherwise I’d get shit—literally—all over me when I went to move him out. While I had pulled on a plastic coverall to insulate my clothes as much as possible, I’d rather avoid further mess.
The edges of the room all sloped down to the drain in the center of the room. Starting on the farthest side, I sprayed all the disgusting stuff toward the center. The drain was a pretty large pipe with large holes in it. It went into a septic tank that ground everything up and essentially fertilized the grass in the backyard. This was my idea a few years back for my home school science project, and it was a great investment.
Now, it was time to get him. I was tempted to have Rick come get him and carry him up, but I didn’t want to bring him in too quickly. He’d taken everything in stride so far and I never wanted to overwhelm him with what I did. At the end of the day, it was purely selfish of me.
So, I followed my normal routine. I wrapped him up in a nice tidy package and strapped him onto the senior lift Daddy had installed. We’d made a few modifications, naturally, but it was a great way to not wear yourself out. It helped that Salinas was a small man in both stature and weight. What pudge he’d sported before becoming my guest, he’d definitely lost in the meanwhile.
After he was strapped in, I finished cleaning the room and sprayed bleach over everything. In a couple of days, I’d add a hydrogen peroxide solution that would eliminate any bacteria or material that survived the bleach. Then, I jogged up the stairs and checked to make sure Fletcher and Rick weren’t in the kitchen. I couldn’t hide this part of the house from them forever, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
Their voices traveled faintly down the hallway, along with the low sounds of a game on TV. I smiled. They might act like they hated each other, but there was at least a mutual respect between them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be sitting together in the living room when they could each be doing their own thing in very different parts of the house.
I snorted at that thought. If I wasn’t here, Rick would never leave Fletcher alone.
Fletcher was supposed to be working on decrypting Dion’s servers, but if he was taking time out to watch TV, there was truly nothing more he could be doing right now. And I trusted him.
The thought gave me a brief pause. But it was true. Fletcher had been straight with me from the beginning. I did trust him.
Propping open the door to the garage, I grabbed a few scooters that mechanics used to scoot around on, and positioned them on the floor so as I pulled the body off the senior lift, it would fall on the scooters and I’d be able to maneuver him out to the car.
Once he was clear of the staircase, I pushed the button to take the lift back down and shut the door. With my hands a little full at the moment, I was glad it was self-locking.
Within the span of five minutes, I had the body stashed nice and neat in the also-lined trunk, I stripped out of the plastic overalls and stored them in an airtight container and then was heading away from the house. Usually I did my own disposal, but sometimes I used Reuben, and it just so happened that this time, he owed me a favor.
“What?” He sounded even crabbier than he did the other day, after we discovered just who was after him.
Rolling my eyes, I turned the volume down so he wasn’t screaming through my speakers. “Reuben. I have a drop off. Can you meet me at the usual?”
Rapid grumbling filled the car next, then it sounded like he’d grabbed a set of keys. “All right, all right. It was my date night, but I suppose I can do this for you, since you were so helpful to me the other day.” Strangely, Reuben, who’d always been distant and standoffish, was warming up to me. The only logical explanation was he had been afraid of Daddy, but there wasn’t a person in the network who hadn’t been. He had been a man of strong conviction and follow-through after all.
I grinned. Reuben was a large teddy bear, with two women who adored him. They had something of a ménage going on. Of course, I doubted they actually knew what he really did for a living, and he had no idea I knew about his love life.
Even with his newfound friendliness, I doubted he’d have wanted me to know the people closest to him. In the network, those kinds of details were kept secret. Now, how well those secrets were really kept was anyone’s guess. I would bet my next job on it that each of my colleagues had a file for every member of the network. I did.
Which was one of the reasons why I was so curious what Dion had on his servers. That wasn’t the sole reason I took them, but it was an added perk.
Dion excelled at hacking and collecting buried data. I couldn’t wait to see what he had collected on us. Daddy and I were more private than most, so it couldn’t be that much useful information.
It took two hours to get to the drop off site. Given his well-placed paranoia, he used an ever-changing rotation of drop off locations for these types of jobs. This particular one was at a hunting lodge that was membership only.
Being a member of the network was a requirement of the membership, so we didn’t have to worry so much about someone seeing something they shouldn’t once they passed through the eight-foot brick walls.
As far as the public was concerned, the owners of the lodge brought in exotic animals for their patrons to hunt. It was also a great way to dispose of bodies when he needed to stay close to home.
“Reuben,” I greeted as I got out of my car.
“Lily.” He nodded back.
I shook my head at the ridiculous nickname. He’d met me when I was fifteen and had said I was too lily white for this world. I’d never seen Daddy get so angry with anyone in the network and for a moment, I had been concerned we were about to lose our Disposer.
Daddy had calmly explained that I was his right-hand man and it would never change. Reuben had dipped his head in apology and we’d never spoken of it again.
“It’s back here.” I went to the trunk and popped it open. Without even a grunt, he pulled the body out and slung it over his shoulder and into the back of the Kubota RTV. It was crazy how useful those machines were. I’d ask Rick if he thought he might like one for our property.
After closing the trunk, I walked back to my driver’s side and Reuben came to join me.
“You’re staying safe, right?” He asked in a quiet voice, as if someone would sneak up on us out here or he worried the words would carry.