I saw the questions in his eyes.
‘How?’ he asked, his words tumbling out quickly, with urgency. ‘You were tracked. You were fucking watched day and night. You don’t take a piss without me knowing, so how?’ Beads of sweat were starting to gather above his eyebrows, and his anxiety made my heart beat faster in excitement.
‘Tell me what happened to them,’ I demanded. ‘Tell me, and I’ll let you walk out of here.’
His eyes dipped to the side. I responded by cocking the hammer on the gun, a loud metallic click.
‘You really think I didn’t check on my family in nine years?’ I whispered. ‘How stupid are you? How stupid do you think I am? Tell me.’ My lips quivered as a single tear escaped from my left eye. Damn it. I didn’t want him to see what he’d done to me. The pain he’d caused. I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing how I’d suffered thanks to him.
‘Your father killed a school kid in a hit-and-run. He was drunk, and when they arrested him, he turned on Emilio,’ Murphy spoke slowly, his words careful, measured. ‘The feds realised what an opportunity they’d been given and granted your father immunity in exchange for his testimony against the cartel.’
‘The feds? Be more specific.’
Murphy scowled. ‘The FBI.’
I made a small sound of annoyance in the back of my throat. ‘I want a name, asshole. Give me a name. The FBI’s a big fucking agency.’
‘Why?’
I applied pressure to the trigger and Murphy blanched. ‘Lindsay Price. He’s investigating Emilio. You tell anybody I told you that and we’ll both be dead.’
‘And?’ I pressed.
Murphy shrugged, his arms beginning to shake as he held himself above the treacherous nozzle of my gun. ‘Nobody testifies against Il Sangue, Mariana. Your father was a fool to think he’d even make it to the FBI’s safe house.’
‘I can only see one fool now,’ I said, ‘and he’s right in front of me.’
Murphy narrowed his eyes, opening his mouth to reply, and I took that as an invitation to jam the barrel of my beautiful gun between Murphy’s lips and teeth.
He spoke angry, unintelligible words around the gun in his mouth, his fingers curling around my biceps and squeezing.
I thought of how I’d been stuck here for nine shitty fucking years. I thought of them, screaming as they burned and died. And any hesitation that lived inside me was replaced with a cold, numb nothingness.
‘Fuck you,’ I whispered.
Before I lost my nerve, I pulled the heavy trigger back.
The blast deafened me, the force of the kick throwing Murphy off of me momentarily. What goes up must come down, though, and he landed heavily on my chest a second later, my grip still firmly around the gun in his mouth as his dead weight knocked every ounce of air out of me. His mouth was not what it had been three seconds ago. My eyes had adjusted to the light enough to see his cold, unblinking blue eyes and the gore the bullet had created beyond his shattered teeth.
He was as dead as they come. I’d just killed a man as he hate-fucked me, and I was pretty sure I was going to be murdered brutally for it.
My senses went haywire. My eyes could see better than ever in the dark, every detail soaking into my brain and lying in wait for later, when they’d become my nightmares, no doubt. I drew in a panicked breath as I tried to push Murphy’s bleeding corpse off me, but he wouldn’t budge. Jesus. I was pinned, blood rushing from his mouth onto my stomach and chest and sliding down my right side, pooling underneath me where it quickly grew sticky and cold. I panicked. I started to scream, clapping a hand over my mouth as I shrieked into it, tasting the heavy, metallic blood that coated my lips and palm. Vomit rose in my throat and I swallowed it down.
I forced myself to stop screaming. The immediate threat was gone. Murphy was dead. I’d just successfully avenged the murders of my family in some small way. There was more to do, further to go, but I’d just taken the first brutal, bloody step towards my own redemption.
And it felt fucking scary, but more than that, it felt exhilarating.
But still my primitive brain was freaking the fuck out. I started to wail again.
Focus.
I let go of the gun, let go of my mouth.
Figure it out.
First things first. Get Murphy the fuck off me.
I braced the heels of my palms against his shoulders and pressed my left knee against his leg, leveraging his dead weight enough to haul him, painfully slowly and inch by excruciating inch, until his body sagged onto the bed at my right. But now his weight was pinning my arm, trapping me. I pulled, hard, my tendons stretching painfully as I wrenched my hand free.
I crawled to the edge of the bed and slid onto the floor, backing away on hands and heels. The smell of blood was so thick in the air, it was like I was swimming in the stuff.
Using the wall for support, I stood, my legs trembling violently. I made it three steps to my bathroom and puked in the basin. Adrenalin, maybe. I’d need a new mattress. Would somebody call the cops after hearing that gunshot? I hoped not. I didn’t need any attention.
I leaned against the bathroom doorframe and watched as the remainder of Murphy’s blood drained out of the dirty hole in the back of his head and onto my Egyptian cotton sheets.
An angry buzz rang in my ears. I couldn’t hear a thing. Maybe I’d blown out my own eardrums when I pulled that trigger.
I turned the faucet on to wash the vomit away and noticed blood running down my bare arms for the first time. Dreading what I’d see, I slowly raised my eyes to the large mirror that hung above the basin.
It was as if the devil stared back at me. A pair of dark blue eyes and a shock of long, tangled dark hair were the only things I recognised. The rest was a garish caricature, soaked in blood from head to toe. Was it really possible for one little bullet to do all that harm? Make all that mess? I looked like something out of a slasher movie.
And the blood wasn’t the worst part. As I studied my right arm closer, I noticed a fine coating of gritty stuff. Like grains of sand, but bigger.
His skull. My arm, the one that had been trapped underneath him until I’d wrenched it out, was covered in pieces of Murphy’s skull.
Luckily I was already in front of the basin, because otherwise the second puke would have gone all over my feet and the floor.
I retched until there was nothing left in my stomach but a hollow ache. I used a towel to wipe the blood from my face, hands and feet as best as I could. I stared longingly at the shower, wanting nothing more than to step underneath the hot water and let it wash every trace of Christopher Murphy from my skin. But I couldn’t. I knew I had precious time left to do something.
I crept past Murphy’s still form, my eyes returning to his face. His mouth. His broken teeth and the hole in his head.
I reached for my purse, taking my phone quietly as if making a noise would awaken Murphy. He wasn’t waking up. Ever.
I was bloody and dirty, and I didn’t want to stain the armchair in the corner of my bedroom. I tiptoed backwards, back into the safety of the tiled bathroom, sitting on the floor as I dialled Dornan on my regular phone with shaking fingers. He answered almost immediately.
‘Hey.’
I thought hearing his voice might move something inexplicable inside me, make me cry, make me realise the full impact of what had just happened. I just killed somebody.
Nothing.
I felt nothing. I missed Dornan. I wanted Dornan here, to help me.
‘What are you up to?’ I asked, my voice clear, my tone casual. I must be in shock, I thought. That’s got to be the only reason I can’t feel something right now.
I could hear commotion. He was at home. I heard his boys in the background, his wife. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked me.
‘Who is that?’ I heard his wife say. My heart sank. Doubt flooded through my mind. He was with his wife. He’d go to bed with her tonight, and he’d wake up tomorrow morning with her, and he was nev
er going to leave her for me, so what the hell was I doing, living like a prisoner, lying in wait six days a week only to have him on the seventh for a mere few hours? He’d told me that he didn’t sleep with her any more. He told me he didn’t love her, that he only stayed because of his boys. And I’d believed him. But was he lying? Did he still touch her? Kiss her?
‘It’s okay,’ I said quickly. ‘We can talk tomorrow.’
The ghost of a smile flickered across my mouth as I stared blankly at Murphy’s shiny black shoes. They gleamed as the bright bathroom light reflected off them, showing up tiny specks where blood had misted over them. It seemed to have taken forever for the flow of blood from his mouth to slow down.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ he said coolly, and he hung up on me.
I stared at the screen, chewing on my lip as I glanced up at Murphy.
What the fuck was I going to do with him? He was heavy. I contemplated getting my hands on a chainsaw and dismembering him in my bathtub. Too messy, and maybe a little too gruesome, even for me. Acid? I didn’t know what the bath was made out of, or even what type of acid to use. I was completely unprepared for my initiation into the killer club.
I racked my brain. If I could somehow wrap him up in something, then I’d be able to put him in a car and dump the body far, far away. But he was a DEA agent. His DNA was probably everywhere in my apartment, not just from the fact I’d blown a hole in his skull tonight, but from his previous visit where he’d tried to make it like a fucking dinner date. He’d touched everything in my kitchen, in my living room, the dining table . . . No, I had to somehow get rid of his body so it would never be found.
I snapped out of my daydreaming and stood, passing Murphy’s dead body as I made my way to the kitchen, leaving smudges of blood where I’d not wiped every smidge of blood from the soles of my feet. I was going to have to Lysol the hell out of this apartment, I realised grimly.
But that would have to wait.
I still had the enormous problem of a body to get rid of.
I opened the pantry and shifted a few things, finding the flour canister where I always left it. I set it on the counter and reached my hand inside, the blood left on my fingers mingling with the white powder to create globs of garish pink. I swallowed thickly as my fingers located the plastic ziplock bag I was rummaging for. Shaking free the excess flour, I unzipped the plastic bag, tipping the burner phone into my hand. I switched it on and navigated to one of the three numbers it contained.
He answered after two rings. ‘I thought you’d never call,’ John joked, and I could imagine the cocky grin on his face. It was true, I hadn’t used the phone to call him once, and he’d given it to me almost a decade ago.
‘I need your help.’
He must have heard the seriousness in my voice, because his response was devoid of the jovial tone he’d greeted me with.
‘What happened?’
‘I shot Murphy. He’s dead. He’s in my apartment.’ Might as well get to the point.
A long pause. Then, ‘Fuck, Ana. Jesus.’
He never called me Ana. Always addressed me by my full name. I guess murder cut the need for formalities.
‘Does anyone know?’ John asked quietly. ‘Does Dornan know?’
‘Nobody knows,’ I said, taking a bag of ground coffee from my freezer and kicking it shut again with my bare foot. Another surface I’d need to scrub clean. Great. I flicked the coffee machine on and left it to heat up, taking two mugs from the dish drainer and setting them beside the bag of Colombian roast. The small photo of lush Colombian jungle on the package taunted me, reminding me of where I came from, of where my son was. ‘John.’
‘Yeah.’
Fuck.
‘Will you help me?’
I hated to ask but it was unavoidable. And of all of them, he was the most trustworthy. It still didn’t mean he wouldn’t betray me, in the end. It just meant he was most likely to keep his mouth shut for longer than anybody else in the Gypsy Brothers.
‘I will always help you,’ he said, some kind of emotion behind his words, and something about the way he said it made me break inside. ‘I’m on my way. Don’t move. Don’t call anybody. Definitely do not answer the door, you hear me?’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and the line went dead.
I tidied up the flour as the coffee machine hummed to life, dripping the precious stuff into a pot that served two. I kept the burner phone out, in case John decided to call me back. My thoughts wandered as I moved around the kitchen on autopilot, a deep grief punctuated by an eerie calm. Indirectly, and without planning it, I had in some way avenged my family’s murders by slaying the person – at least, one of the people – directly responsible. It made my head spin.
And there was one thought louder than the rest, incessant as it sank its barb into me, again and again. I tried to blink it away, even shaking my head from side to side to try and rid myself of the thought, because it was so insignificant it didn’t deserve my attention.
The thought wasn’t what you’d expect.
It wasn’t I just killed someone. Not I’m a murderer.
No.
The thought that buzzed around my head like a heavy blowfly was: I’m going to have to buy a new mattress without Dornan noticing.
I’d just killed a man, and I didn’t even care.
Nine years in hell will do that to a person.
I was worried that John might call back and cancel on me. I didn’t know where he was, or what he was doing. Shit, he was a busy guy, with a fuck-up for a wife, a teenage daughter who was too pretty to let out of his sight, and a club that needed to be run like a well-oiled machine to keep Emilio happy.
He didn’t cancel. He was at my front door six minutes later, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, a look of grim determination on his face and a five-o’clock shadow to match.
In the six minutes between him hanging up and then arriving at my door, I’d ventured back into the bedroom and located the gun in between all the blood and brain matter on my duvet. I held the gun loosely at my side and waited for the metallic click that signalled the unlocking mechanism at my front door. The door swung open and I raised the gun slowly, almost lazily.
John eyed me warily. ‘Is that a gun, or are you excited to see me?’
He entered the apartment and kicked the door shut behind him. Satisfied that he was alone, and that he was here to help, I dropped the gun to my side.
‘Is it still raining out there?’ I asked. My throat sounded raw. Probably from having Murphy’s cock rammed down it. Well, you should see the other guy, I thought to myself.
John shrugged. ‘A little.’ He didn’t look wet. Not like Murphy, drenched through with rain and now soaking in all the blood that had once been inside his body.
I padded to the kitchen with John in tow, my stained feet leaving small smudges of blood, and set my gun on the kitchen counter. Taking the two mugs of coffee I’d prepared, I handed one to John, keeping the other for myself.
He took a sip of the coffee and started to choke. He was staring at my chest, I realised. The hallway wasn’t lit, but the kitchen was, casting a bright glow over my current state of mess. John slammed the coffee on the counter, his eyes wide. I followed his gaze down to my dress – of course, I was still wearing the baby blue dress that matched John’s eyes – and saw again just how much blood I had on me.
‘What’d you do?’ John coughed. ‘Kill him and then roll around on top of him?’
I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling dizzy. ‘Something like that,’ I said.
John was quiet for a moment. ‘Where is he?’ he asked finally.
He studied the scene for a few moments without speaking, sipping his coffee every now and then. His head tilted to the side, he was like some kind of rogue detective, taking in every detail. The broken whiskey bottle. The blood-soaked sheets. I stood beside him, not so close that our arms touched, but almost. I copied his head tilt, wanting to see what he saw, trying to observ
e the scene objectively, as if it wasn’t me who’d committed the crime.
Murphy wasn’t a pretty sight. It was as if his body had softened somehow, melting heavily into the mattress. And his death hadn’t been dignified, not one bit. His pants were still around his ankles, his bare legs a pasty white without any blood circulating in them.
The condom still clung to his flaccid penis, the empty end sticking to his thigh. John noticed it instantly, his eyes darting to mine.
‘He raped you?’
I shrugged.
‘It’s a simple question.’
I responded, perhaps a little too sharply. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’
John took a step back and turned to me. ‘You know, I’m missing some excellent leftover macaroni cheese and a beer for this.’ His mouth quirked, as if he were about to laugh.
I snorted behind my coffee cup.
‘Seriously, though,’ he said. ‘What happened here? I need to know. I’m a part of this now.’
I swallowed bitter coffee. ‘He was here when you dropped me off.’
He looked up sharply. ‘In your apartment?’
I nodded. ‘He killed my entire family, and I’m pretty sure he was going to kill me, too.’ I hadn’t meant to say that, but fuck it, I might as well tell him.
‘What?’
I was shaking. Why was I shaking? I was cool. I was calm. I was fine. And then suddenly, I was most definitely not fine. I started to suck in great lungfuls of air as the room spun around me. My family is dead. The people who gave me life, the ones who raised me. And until the very moment those words had left my mouth – He killed my entire family – I had been numb to the reality, refusing to accept it was true.
There was no witness protection for me, or them. There never had been. There was only cruel lies. Murphy had disposed of them, and he had been about to do the same to me, once I secured his stash of hidden money for him. It was all so abundantly clear, and I felt like an idiot for even considering that he’d been telling the truth before.
It was the photographs. He’d baited me with promises of seeing my son and I’d thrown logic out the window. It was terrifying how easily he’d manipulated me.