Page 122 of Whips and Chains
But if I opened that van door, he was going to get a lot more than just a bit of dessert.
There was a dripping sound, and I really hoped it was the misty rain beading and sliding off the sides of the van.
And not blood dripping from inside it.
Maybe I could pass it off as raspberry sauce?”
When I didn’t respond, the cops lost interest and wandered off, continuing their patrol through the backstreets of Saint View.
Whip, with Levi close behind him, stepped back out onto the street.
Whip hissed at me. “Are you for real?”
“Geez, Whip, I don’t know. Should we ask Geppetto if I’m a real boy now or should we just assume?”
Whip’s stare turned into a glare. “Please tell me I did not just see you close the serving window on a van that we have full of bodies! While you were talking to two cops! Jesus fuck, X, you didn’t think to do that before they showed up?”
I shrugged. “You never know when you might make a sale.”
“You do realize you’re the entire reason I’m gray, don’t you?”
“You should thank me for that! Your whole appeal is the silver fox thing!”
Levi clapped a hand over my mouth and pinned Whip with a glare. “Do you think the two of you could stop arguing for one minute and tell me why the fuck you just said you have a van full of bodies? You said one body, X! And you were supposed to bury it last night! What the hell have the two of you been doing all day?”
I dragged his hand down off my mouth. “I did, thank you very much. Don’t accuse me of being a sloppy murderer.” I cringed at the blood that was very definitely dripping from inside the van, out through the seals on the door and into the gutter. “Apart from that. That’s not my fault. It’s probably from one of the ones Whip shot.”
Levi’s eyes widened at Whip. “What the fuck?”
Whip jerked his head toward the van door. “Can we please not have this conversation on the street outside a very busy bar where Violet is watching us, and just around the corner from a couple of patrolling cops? Maybe all the talk of dead people would be better off done in private?”
I quoted one of my favorite movies in an eerie tone. “I see dead people…” Then added, in my usual cheerful one, “Mostly because I put them there. But, hey, semantics. I’ve basically been Uber for corpses all day.”
Whip tapped the van’s window. “If you lie down beneath the tires, and I let the parking brake off, do you think the van wouldjust roll right on over you and crush your windpipe? Or would that be a wasted effort and you’d act more like a speed bump?”
I made a face at him. “Very creative.”
“You two are giving me a migraine,” Levi complained.
Whip opened the front passenger door. “Just get in, would you? We can’t stay here. Christ, if this is the way I get caught, I’m never going to live it down. How fucking embarrassing.”
Levi got in first, and I jogged around the front of the van to get in behind the steering wheel. Whip got in and closed the door on the passenger side.
“Nope,” Levi said from space between the two front seats that formed a walkway so you could move to the back of the van where the freezers were. “Nope. Nope. Nope.”
I started the engine. “What? It’s not like you’ve never seen a pile of bodies before.”
“I’m not sitting back here with them! You’re in the back, X.”
“It’s my van. I drive!”
Levi shook his head. “Move.”
I looked at Whip. He jerked his thumb toward the back. “You’re still in disgrace for the way you left the freaking window open.”
I rolled my eyes. “Geez, you try to give a few dead bodies a bit of air to breathe—”
“Dead bodies don’t breathe, X!” Whip shouted.
