Page 32 of Body Tox

“I’m looking for uh…female shit,” I said, picking up a patterned jacket and some pants.

The females around the shop giggled behind hangers and clothing racks.

The cashier cleared her throat. “Hmm, okay. Well, what size? Is she a size zero-zero?”

“I don’t fucking know.” I scratched my head. “A double zero? What in the hell is double zero? A line of string? That’s negative clothing.”

The woman openly laughed and picked up a hanger with a pair of pants on it.

“No, no, silly. This is a zero-zero.”

I looked at the dimensions and grimaced. Echo was not gonna fit her tits in that.

“Uh, no. She’s got nice ass curves.”

The lady mumbled something under her breath and grabbed something else. This thing looked like a bag. It would swallow Echo.

“No, that’s not?—”

My words were cut off as the glass surrounding us vibrated and cracked until significant spiderweb images formed, and then the whole large pane imploded. A massive explosion knocked me backward into the racks of clothes.

“Fuck!” I barked.

Trying to see past the chaos of people running around like chickens, all coughing and crying, shielding themselves with whatever they had in their hands. Muscling my way out of the debris of the store, I took off in a sprint toward the morgue.

There was smoke billowing from the clinic, a raging fire as intense as Echo’s rage radiating around the streets. As I ran back to the little white building, I realized something.

My name.

She knew my name, yet I never told her my name.

How did she know my name?

The sirens and fire trucks’ lights beat me to the area, and even with the thousands of gallons of water pumped into the raging inferno, the building was obsolete. Anything and anyone in that building was melted into piles of bones by now. The amount of chemicals in that place could easily dissolve even the bones.

I ran my hand through my hair, trying to avoid the chaos of civil service workers, and headed toward the back. It was then I noticed something on the sidewalk, covered in soot but visible.

Turning my back away from the building and the service employees aimlessly working to extinguish the flames, I got on my knees to dust the debris away from the message.

White letters, untouched by the fire—may be written in chemicals spelled out a simple message.

Xo. Sorry, Pretty Boy. Xo

Skipping down the towline with my stuffed animal in hand, naked as the day I was born, as opposed to the leather jacket draped over my shoulders, I laughed.

I wasn’t sure exactly what the fuck I was going to do next, but I knew one thing for certain.

My target would follow me.

He had to have seen my little love note by now, and by the receding sounds of the sirens and the lingering white smoke lifting to the sky behind me, I knew he wouldn’t be far off from finding me.

I hummed a tune and continued down the sidewalk, ignoring the people passing by.

They can stare. I paid enough for them.

Mr. Asher Ballard certainly enjoyed them…I shook my head, those memories heating my ass more than the fire I left behind. The last time I let a man touch me was…

Nope. Not going there either. None of those fucking memories would help me right now.

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