Page 31 of Callum

ROSALIND

“You don’t know how to clean up a body?”

Callum’s question is laced with poorly disguised laughter as he rounds on me, spinning so quickly that he seems to forget there’s a body in his arms. The woman’s head lolls to the side, and one of her feet knocks into the corner of the entryway table.

“I’ve never had to do it before.”

“How is that possible?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I snap, suddenly angered by this conversation. Foolishly, I’d assumed he would understand my lack of knowledge in this department. For someone who has experienced the worst humanity can offer, it’s surprising how little time I’ve spent around dead people. “I didn’t start needing to clean up the bodies of my victims until I was with the GiGi’s, and they have Cleaners.”

Callum freezes at my words, and I realize I’ve done it again. I’ve been letting little bits of my past slip through the cracks without realizing it. Cursing my annoying new habit of being unable to control my mouth, I push past Callum with a huff.

He watches me hobble by but doesn’t say anything for a long moment. I’m halfway down the hall when he speaks from directly behind me. “The MacAlisters have Cleaners.”

“Jesus Christ! Don’t fucking sneak up on me like that!”

“You know, you’re not a very good criminal, Red.”

“And you’re an asshole, Doc,” I growl back, shoving open the door to the office. The dead woman is still in the same place we left her, and I find myself breathing a sigh of relief. If she had moved, I would have lost my shit and left Callum to figure out the haunted corpse on his own. “Why do you know so much about body cleanup if the MacAlisters have Cleaners?”

The unconscious woman’s body drops from Callum’s arms, bouncing on the air mattress a few times before she settles into stillness. He checks her pupils and pulse, mumbling something to himself while looking at his watch. “The Father made sure we all functioned as individual entities. Every MacAlister son was taught the process ‘from A to Z’.”

“With ‘A’ being weirdly specific murder skills?” I think of the Mouth, pulling information from his victims through any means necessary. The Doctor, bringing his “patients” back from the dead over and over until they beg to be left in the void. And the Bear, tearing men apart with his bare hands.

“Oh, no,” Callum turns to face me with an eerie calm I haven’t seen in him before. “‘A’ is the hunt.”

When I don’t respond, Callum sighs, turning back to the woman on the bed. “There’s a red plastic tub under the bathroom sink.”

It’s a dismissal, and I cling to it with both hands, grateful for the chance to put some distance between us. The tub is easy to spot and heavier than anticipated. Of course, he sent me to get a massive tub of…are those bottles filled with acid?

It takes me less than two minutes to get back to the room, but Callum already has the woman’s arms and legs bound. He’s prodding at the gunshot wound on her thigh with glove-covered hands, and I realize there’s a medical bag next to him. Where did that come from?

“You’re not worried she’ll scream?” He hasn’t covered her mouth with tape, and I don’t see any kind of numbing agents lying around him.

“She’s already screamed enough to notify everyone in the neighborhood that she’s here. Besides,” his brow furrows as he looks her over again. “I’d rather know the moment she’s awake.”

Dropping the tub of cleaning supplies at my feet, I take a moment to assess the body on my side of the room. Blood pools under her, the dark liquid spreading across the hardwoods at a much slower pace than I had anticipated. There isn’t much blood in general, which surprises me. I had assumed all the bodily fluids would slowly drain from her body onto the floor.

Maybe she’s still too fresh?

“Are you going to keep staring, or…”

My eyes roll at his teasing tone, and I flip him off without turning around. I can do this. I can do this. I just…clean it up.

Crouching is a pain in the ass with my stitches, and I end up squatting with my right leg stretched out next to me. Digging through the supplies bin, I find several products containing acid that I avoid like the fucking plague. Melting the skin off my bones doesn’t sound like a fun process.

“Do I…” shit. I wasn’t going to ask him any questions.

“Do you, what?” Callum sounds distracted, his humor of the last few minutes having abated.

Clearing my throat, I try again. “Do I clean up the actual body first?”

“If we planned to dump her in the woods, I would say yes.”

“But we’re not planning that?”

“No,” he agrees, bending closer to the wound he’s stitching up on the small woman’s leg. “We’re taking her to Ginetta, and I want maximum shock value.”

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