A giant black bag was slung over his shoulder, oddly, well, almost as big as he was.
His eyes, light green, went to his boss for a quick second, giving him a manly chin-jerk, before his eyes moved around the room, taking everything in from the body on the floor – doing so without so much as a flicker in his calm features, leaving me to wonder what the hell these men faced on a daily basis in their line of work – then to the gun on the bed, the splatter of blood on the wall behind the body, then finally, to me. The gaze was cold and assessing, making me feel like he could not only see my black eye, the bruises on my throat, and the scratches on my arms, but also what was underneath my clothes as well.
“Was she–” he started to ask his boss.
“No,” Quinton cut him off, making Finn nod slightly as he moved over to the bed, dropping his bag down, whatever was inside making it heavy enough to actually depress my mattress.
“Hope you’re not attached to the bedspread, carpet, or drapes,” he said, making it sound like he didn’t give a good goddamn if my beloved Nonny knitted the blanket, that it was going to get ‘taken care of’ regardless of my level of attachment.
“Carpet came stained beyond repair. And the drapes and bedspread came from the ten-and-under store, so…”
He looked over at me from his position hunched over his bag, taking things out, his lips turned up ever-so-slightly. “So they will go up in flames even better?” he mused, making a completely inappropriate smirk pull at my lips as well.
“Something like that.”
My voice sounded like I spent the night gargling glass. It felt as such too.
“He ever get inside before?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” I told him, gut clenching with the idea that maybe he had been before, just watching me sleep, masturbating in my very room. “That’s his camera,” I informed them, pointing to where it was laying lazily in the center of my floor. “It probably has his blood on it,” I informed them when Quinton went to move toward it. He stopped short, looking back at me. “I flung it at him,” I explained.
There was a slapping noise, making my head jerk over toward Finn, feeling my heartbeat speed up – the only sign in my system about what had happened just hours ago – but finding him snapping on rubber gloves, then moving over toward the camera. He turned it in his hands for a second, turning it on, hissing, then off again, popping out the memory card, and handing it to his boss who quickly pocketed it.
I was in my right mind enough to feel a stomach-drop at the idea of him – and maybe the rest of his team – getting to look at the images inside that camera. Likely, all images of me. And I couldn’t know for sure what kind of pictures those might be. Were they just the typical creepy stalker shots of me coming and going from the house and local hotspots? Were they shots of me through my windows before I wised up to him being there, always making sure I was completely covered up, pulling the drapes. Or, worst of all, were there up-close pictures he had snapped from inside my house?
The idea made me feel queasy.
I was just going to try to lock that one in the vault for later.
Or never.
Never was good too.
“What do you need from us, Finn?” Quinton asked as Finn moved back over toward his bag, pulling out a box of black bags, taking one out, throwing the camera inside, then reaching for the gun as well. I figured maybe those were not as easy to dispose of as my bedsheets and drapes. He had been separating things to help him take them out.
Out of my house.
My house that was an active crime scene.
It was right then that the enormity of the situation seemed to press down on me.
They were going to cover up a murder for me.
Murder.
I was a murderer.
“Oh, God,” I groaned as my stomach flipped and churned, sending bile up my throat.
“If you’re gonna puke, do it in the fucking toilet,” Finn snapped, making me jerk back.
Quinton gave me a shrug. “Told you how this was gonna go,” he answered the question in my eyes.
And he had.
He told me Finn was going to be brass, no-nonsense, and would bark at me.
I couldn’t expect kid gloves from a man whose job it was to get rid of dead bodies, right?
I nodded a bit tightly, then bolted, slamming the door of the bathroom behind me.
I had thought I would swallow it back, but as the copper smell of the blood met my nose when I took in a deep breath, there was no way.