Page 36 of Passion and Payback

His expression went blank, and I wondered if I was about to see a moment of panic over the cops coming to his door. “I…damn, I didn’t even think about that.”

“What?”

“The person who finds his body.”

“What about them?”

“Kai, I…God, I made a mess of him. Imagine some random person finding his body like that. Some old lady in the morning doing her shopping. Some kid on his way to school. Or just…anyone.”

“It’ll most likely be a junkie or homeless person who finds it first.”

“That’s not much better. Those are people too.”

“Yeah, I’m aware. And I’m also aware they’re the kind of people who see all sorts of fucked up shit in this city. Out of anyone who isn’t a cop, EMT, firefighter, nurse, or doctor, those are the least likely to be scarred by that.”

His worry was absurd only because it was so out of place with all the things he wasn’t worried about. Of all those things, the police, the effect on his mental state, the fact that he could have died, no, it was some random person finding the body that bothered him the most. Just as absurd was the fact that I took some measure of comfort from that because it was a very Hunter thing for him to be worried about.

“Look, there’s nothing you can do about it now. Unless you want to drag yourself down there and move the body. Or turn yourself in and make it so someone else doesn’t find the body.”

His eyes widened, his lip curling. “What, and go to prison for that fucker? No. If I could have, I would have thrown him into some hole in the city and let him rot there forever.”

It was much more heated than I expected, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Why don’t you make yourself something to eat? I’m going to clean up the mess we left in the bathroom.”

“The mess I left,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t even know if I can stomach anything to eat.”

“You’d be surprised what you can put away. You probably won’t taste it, but the point is to have something in your stomach.”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t exactly an agreement, but he wasn’t arguing with me as he slid off the stool. Reluctantly, I let go of his hand and let him go to the fridge as I turned to do what I’d promised. It also gave me the chance to look at my hand again without him breathing over my shoulder.

Without worrying about him, I could see my hand needed more than just cleaning and a towel wrapped around it. No sooner had I realized that than I heard Hunter call from the kitchen. “And wrap your hand with some ointment and that gauze.”

Jesus, he’d just gone through hell and back and was still worrying about what I was doing with myself. It was enough to make me roll my eyes as I turned to consider what to do next. There were the clothes, as well as the knife and the blood on the floor. I couldn’t remember how long bloodborne pathogens could survive in the open air, but it was probably best not to risk anything with my hand sliced up.

I was still petty enough to grumble as I applied antibiotic ointment to the cuts and scratches and then used gauze to wrap them because bandages would have been useless. To assuage my paranoia about the blood, I also threw on the largest latex gloves I could find. The guy had been a dealer and probably a user as well. I wouldn’t trust his blood with a two-mile pole.

With that done, I went about cleaning up the mess. The hoodie and his socks went into a garbage bag for me to figure out what to do with later. The rest could still be washed, and the floor was easy to clean. When I returned from dumping his unbloodied clothes in the hamper, I noticed the knife was missing.

Confused, I looked and realized it was nowhere to be seen. I had left it on the edge of the sink before we’d left the bathroom after his shower. The only answer was that Hunter had taken it.

I found him sitting quietly at the counter with a bowl of cereal. His eyes slid to my hand, and he smirked. “I wondered if you were going to listen or not.”

I held up my hand. “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to risk catching anything from him.”

“Good call,” he said, kicking his legs restlessly as he chewed. “I am.”

“You are what?”

“Clean.”

“I…” For a moment, I wondered if that was some sort of proposition. Which really would have topped the night with the cherry for all the weirdness it was already filled with.

“Yeah,” he said with a humorless smile. “I’ve been tested every few months since they gang-raped me.”

“Jesus,” I said quietly. I had to appreciate his cavalier attitude toward what happened. I had seen what happened when you were so caught up in the horrors you forgot how to let it go.

“It’s kind of funny,” he said in a voice that said he found very little funny about any of it. “But I would never have been able to say something like that before, you know? I guess murdering the guy who tried to murder me has a way of putting things into perspective.”

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