Page 30 of Killer Clone

Again, the reply came instantly.

Home.

More typing.

Now!

The chill that passed through Otto was colder than anything he’d ever felt. Sweat rose on his forehead despite the cold air in that basement. He knew that tone, and he knew he couldn’t resist.

He could hear his boss, Chris, roaming around upstairs. A service was about to start shortly.

Chris would be up there in his black suit and his black tie and his long, sad face, greeting the mourners and showing them to their seats. He did it so well. Otto envied him. How someone managed to pretend to show so much concern about the death of someone they’d never known was beyond him.

If he ever did graduate from embalmer to mortician here at the funeral parlor, he doubted he’d be any better than a theater usher. He’d smile too wide, talk too loud. It’d be hard to stay in character. Chris was always so much more sensitive. Probablywhy he opened the funeral home in the first place. And Chris would understand if he just wasn’t feeling well.

Otto turned back to the body bleeding out on the mortician’s table. He’d finish up, then get going.

12

Alone in the warehouse, my staging ground, I stared at my cell phone while white-hot anger swept through my insides.

Who does he think he is, bailing on me like this?

I read his text again and thought my skull would explode. But I took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to lose my head.

One thing was for sure. I had to get to Otto, and do it now, because he had to die.

As soon as possible.

There wasn’t any telling what he’d do. He might even go to the Feds.

But first, I had to pack up anything that might lead law enforcement to my person should Otto rat on me. Luckily, I traveled light. It only took about five minutes to grab my shit and toss it in my backpack. I didn’t need to clean the warehouse. First, it would take too long. But second, even if Otto did tell the Feds my location, it wasn’t as if they could track my DNA. I didn’t have a record. I wasn’t in their system.

If I ever needed to use my saliva or cum or blood or whatever in my soon-to-be legal career, I’d simply falsify it. I’d learned there were always willing helpers around.

But again, better safe than sorry.

Fuck you, Otto Walker.

“I’m out?” I scoffed at the ridiculous message. “You can’t get out…and continue to breathe.”

At the bottom of the stairs was a landing with two exits to the building. I could take a right through the metal double doors and immediately find myself outside in the empty loading dock ringed by abandoned warehouses. Or I could take a sharp left around the metal handrail and continue down another flight of rusty metal stairs to the underground parking lot.

It was important to have multiple points of egress. I’d read that somewhere.

If all else failed, there were also the sewers.

My truck was parked out of sight of drones or any overhead surveillance monitoring the lot. Well, it wasn’t exactlymy truck, but I wasn’t being chased, so I took a left down the stairs. And there she was, safe and sound, just as I’d left her. And right next to her was Patrick’s Honda Ridgeline, gathering dust.

I drew a big smiley face in the dirt on the driver’s window. In the wrong light, someone might think Patrick was still in there, just waiting to step out from behind the wheel.

Chuckling, I got into my Tacoma. I started her up before plotting a route to Otto’s apartment across town in Miro Meadows. The GPS on my phone said it was about a fifteen-minute drive from the warehouse in East Bank to his place. Tossing the thing on the seat next to me, I put the truck in reverse, backed up in an elegant curve, and accelerated off, across the parking lot and up the ramp to the loading dock, which fed out to the street.

It wasn’t good to be out in public in a stolen truck, so I needed to keep my head. I’d drive the speed limit. No need to get pulled over by some overeager traffic monkey.

As I went up the on-ramp, I scowled at the traffic on I-24. I merged in. Once in a lane, I looked over at my phone on the passenger seat and had to suppress my rage once more.

Chill.

---