She swallowed hard. “Do you want to know the condensed version so you can go home? Or do you want the full monty?”

My lips quirked up at her use of ‘monty.’

“Tell it to me as we walk,” I ordered.

She covered her breasts with her hand as best as she could and then used the rest of her clothes and stuff to hide the lower half of her body from me.

Though, that didn’t mean that her ass wasn’t on perfect display.

It was.

And what a nice ass it was.

I didn’t stop myself from looking my fill as we walked.

“There are a few guys that hung onto my brother’s every word,” she admitted. “He was such a smooth talker that everyone wanted to be friends with him. This one in particular took it upon himself to handle my brother’s final ‘fuck you’ to me. By jumping me in the alley outside of my apartment. He slammed me up hard against the building, knocking my breath from my lungs. He’d just gotten a ‘this is for Amon’ and reared back to hit me when a couple of cops rolled around the corner. He stopped what he was doing and left before they could do anything else, but I have a very distinct feeling that the guy will be back.”

I frowned. “Was it the one at the courthouse today?”

She turned and looked at me, startled.

All the long, wet hair that was trailing down her back whipped around her head and stuck to her naked skin as she said, “You saw him?”

“I talked to him,” I muttered. “But I’ll be having another talk. This one a bit more persuasive.”

“My brother thought it would be funny to give me one last goodbye before he was taken to the mental facility where he was sentenced,” she whispered. “Not to mention, he is… was… still holding a grudge. He can’t believe I saved you. I think he honestly thought I was too scared of him to go against him in any way.”

“I’m glad you scrounged up the courage,” I admitted.

A faint glow had me looking up to find a big barbeque shop that was cooking their meats. The smoker was steadily smoking away, and the fire as well as the unattended fire pit outside was the perfect setup.

“Let’s go,” I ordered.

Then I walked to the large smoker, threw our clothes inside, then added more wood on top of it.

Only when everything was completely covered did I gesture to the barrel. “I’m guessing that they’re pretty lax in their discard. Or what they put in here.”

Because I could see burned but not melted beer bottles in the barrels next to the fire that was made to hold the ash.

“They empty these every Thursday,” she said quietly. “I hear them loading up the barrels. Do you think your boots will be burned all the way down?”

Her piddly little canvas shoes would be gone in minutes.

My leather work boots, however…

“Yes,” I answered. “I think they’ll all melt in some way.”

“Do you think that it’ll ruin the meat?” she asked warily.

As in, did that meat get fed to someone that would be burning our murder clothing in… I didn’t know.

Nor did I really care.

“Don’t know,” I admitted. “But let’s get to your place so we’re not standing out here naked.”

She gave me some of her brother’s clothing.

Which I thought was funny as fuck.