Matching her smile, I say, “I’m Val. Shall we go then?” She nods and I follow her to the little stall where customers pay and nearly cringe at the cost of a fifteen-minute private dance. Still, it’s worth it if it means marking my target and getting off Cerberus’ shit list.
“Pick any one you’d like!” Synn offers as we walk in, gesturing at the two rows of semi-circle couches. They’re only big enough for one person to sit in but tall enough to where someone can’t see the people inside even if they’re standing.
“Umm, let’s see…” I trail off innocently before looking in each booth. I have to apologize more than once for interrupting some intense bumping and grinding. My snooping is making Synn uncomfortable; I can tell by how she keeps recommending a booth, but I have a job to do.
I’m starting to think I somehow missed Ruby leaving, but then I smell the familiar coppery scent of blood. Despite the flowers and arousal overwhelming my nose, I follow the faint trace of it to the final booth on the left.
I stare at the scene before me, my mind trying to catch up to what my eyes are seeing. Ruby’s body is slumped in the chair with her chest torn open. Skin hangs in tatters around the opening of the hole, blood spilling from it like a crimson waterfall. Her sternum has been snapped in half, the attached ribs on either side ripped away to expose the chest cavity.
However gruesome the hole is, that isn’t the most shocking part for me. It’s the fact that her head is completely missing.
“Did you decide on a—” Synn cuts herself off by releasing a high-pitched, blood curdling scream right into my ear.
It makes my ears ring and head swim, causing my equilibrium to shift. I manage to stay upright until Synn’s full body weight suddenly crashes into me as she faints. I’m knocked forward, making me thrust my arms out to brace myself. I end up landing on my knees between Ruby’s, my chest pressed against the dead woman’s torso.
My face is inches from the mutilated torso. At the close proximity, I can see that Ruby’s heart is also missing. Someone took both her heart and her head. What sick bastard does that? Then my detective brain kicks in. Did they take the body parts before she died, or after?
I blink out of my thought as I finally grasp what they mean. Ruby is dead. Which means she died before I could mark her. For Cerberus. Dread and anger fill my veins when I realize I missed my mark again. “Fuck!”