Page 124 of Whips and Chains
It was going to take forever to get the stench of death out of the back of my van.
Whip eventually pointed to a spot and told Levi to stop.
“Thank God.” I jerked open the sliding back door. “Dead bodies are disgusting.”
Whip got out of the passenger seat and reached for the first one off the top of the pile we’d made. “I’ll never understand how you can like killing so much and yet be so grossed out by it at the same time.”
“I like the killing part, not the sloshing, leaking, decomposing part. I’m unhinged, not unhygienic.” I grabbed the second guy by the arms and hauled him down onto the ground. My guy was smaller than Whip’s, so I overtook him quickly, grinning at him as I passed. “Zoom, zoom!”
Rain drops rolled down my face, mixing unpleasantly with the sweat of dragging another fully grown human male around who was too dead to provide any assistance. I squinted in the darkness, trying to remember where the hell the site was. I’d been here a couple of times since I’d joined the group, though it was really more of Ace and Torch’s favorite spot.
It was tempting to just leave the bodies here with no cover at all and call it good. Especially since the rain had set in and this was starting to feel likeGroundhog Day, me doing the same thing over and over.
Kill a man. Bury the body. Repeat.
But just dumping them here was sloppy and kind of disrespectful. If you were going to borrow another guy’s burial spot, then the least you could do was be considerate and clean up after yourself.
“Do you see it?” Whip breathed hard, his hands on his hips. “Visibility is shit.”
I pulled out my phone, switching on the flashlight function and bouncing it around the ground ahead of me. I froze, stopping the beam of light, and then glanced back at Whip. “Do I see you needing to do more cardio, or do I see a pile of dead bodies who very much do not look like targets from the list?”
Whip caught up to me and snatched the light, walking ahead a few paces to light up the scene better.
There were at least ten of them. Their legs and arms a broken, tangled mess. Naked. Marks all over their bodies.
Long hair. Pretty faces. Eyes that stared, unblinking, frozen forever in the fear they’d felt before they’d taken their last breaths.
Women.
Levi stopped at my side. “Those aren’t approved kills from the list, are they?”
“No.” I stared down at the mutilation of breasts and genitals that made it clear to me these women had been murdered for sick, sexual gratification. “Fuck, I’m going to be sick.”
And I really hated vomit.
But I hated the sight of those women more.
I turned away, doubling over, gagging but grateful I hadn’t actually gotten to eat the food Whip and I had picked up earlier. At least our dinner being interrupted by men trying to kill me meant I now had nothing in my stomach to actually bring up.
One of those women could have been Violet.
The thought left me so cold I could barely breathe. It was like my blood had instantly turned to ice and no amount of rubbing my arms would make me warm again.
“Who dumps bodies here?” Levi asked.
Whip swallowed thickly. “Trig. Torch. And Ace.”
“You think these are their kills?”
Whip’s lips thinned into a line. “I fucking hope not. But I couldn’t say for sure they’re not. You saw how hard it was to get in here. The road peters out. You have to know where you’re going to find this place. But we know people are watching us. Maybe they’re watching them too.”
“Or,” I mused. “We’ve been looking at people on the list this whole time. When maybe we should have been looking at people inside the group.”
Both of them turned to stare at me.
Whip shook his head. “No. The other guys didn’t do this. This…This is fucked up. This isn’t just running a knife through someone’s gut to watch them bleed so you can take the edge off your own demons. This sort of shit is the thing we fight back against. This was done by someone on the list. Someone trying to frame us.”
I shrugged. “Or the reason this guy has always been one step ahead of us is because heisone of us.”
