Page 5 of Beyond Reason

It was enough to bring me to a white window where I could carefully type in an address.

The only thing I could remember with crystal clarity was a name.

“Axel Fetterman…”

According to the little white screen, he was a few hours away. I only had his name on my tongue and some strange pull in my chest, but it was enough.

I knew where I needed to go.

I just had to get out of this hospital first, and I didn’t care who I had to go through to do it.

Chapter 2

Axel

Fuck, Jensen’s kid was going to have to pay me double for cleaning this scene. I was used to professionalism. Seeing someone with such an amateur hand was almost enough to make me leave the evidence just so I’d never have to deal with them again.

Almost.

I enjoyed my job security too much for that. If I got sloppy, a lot of killers for hire—a lot of government agents—would end up being discovered for exactly the kind of monsters they were. I knew everyone’s secrets, and exactly where the evidence was hidden.

While there was a small part of me that would have enjoyed using this mess of a scene to teach incompetent killers a lesson, I knew better. Not only did I not want to end up on the wrong side of a knife or gun, but if word got out that I let my own petty emotions impede how good of a job I did, no one would call me.

No one would synonymously think of the name Fetterman with crime scene cleanup.

My gaze drifted to the left—to the puddle of blood that had long since turned to brown on a white rug.

Who fucking killed someone on a white rug? Who didn’t at least roll the damn thing up after and take it with them?

Knife.

They’d definitely used a knife. I could tell by the arterial spray splattering across the walls.

My eyes rolled heavenward—not just the walls. It had gotten on the ceiling.

“Amateur.” I hissed the word out in disgust. If I thought it would make me feel better, I was mistaken.

It didn’t stop me from putting a sheet down to make sure I didn’t get my slacks dirty before I got to work.

The first thing I did was roll up the stained rug—whoever came to the house was going to have to wonder what had happened to it, because I wasn’t dealing with cleaning it. I wasn’t worried about their curiosity.

I was worried about the amount of bleach it would take to get all that white clean after some jackass had waited until the blood had dried to call me.

If I was being honest, it wasn’t just the state of the rug that was bothering me. I hated the color of dried blood against stark white. I hated the way it looked. I hated the scent of it flooding my nose, rusty and bitter.

I hated that I could distinctly remember another white floor… the way the blood was cool to the touch when I got there, congealed and sticky.

My father had kept me away, and I knew it was because he was aware I’d do anything to save him.

There was no saving someone who’d been shot so many times. There was no saving someone who had a spread of crimson beneath them that seemed to span the entire floor.

You couldn’t save someone whose eyes had already lost their life—bright green turned to flat, nearly gray.

Xavier had been dead for hours when they called me onto the scene, laid out and waiting to deliver a message.

Falling in love with a hitman was never a good idea. Their job was dangerous. Their lives were short.

But…

---