Page 65 of Brian and Mina's Holiday Hits
The anger I thought he had toward me left him in the frantic primal nature of our coupling.
“How are we going to clean all this up?”
“We aren’t. Come with me.” He stands and helps me up, then he picks up my clothes and hands them to me.
I dress quietly as he retrieves the mask and chainsaw. I watch as he inspects the leaves we were in and tears off a few covered in blood. He buries those in the dirt and rearranges everything so it doesn’t look like anyone was ever here.
I follow him back to the conservatory. He takes a cloth and wipes down some things. I watch as he puts the hockey mask on Windsor’s face and gets the man’s fingerprints on the chainsaw before dropping it near the pieces of Gregor.
“Where’s the knife you stabbed Windsor with? This will never work,” I say.
He chuckles. “It’s in its holster. I’m just sowing confusion, Killer.”
“Why not just clean up and get rid of the bodies? Why leave a scene to be discovered at all?”
Brian looks up sharply at me. “Because while the police may not know who Gregor is, the underworld circles I run in, do. They need to know there are consequences to trying to pull a contract out from under me. I told Dante it would get done. Besides, Windsor has underage porn all over his computer. The police will at least find that, and then it won’t seem so strange that he’d do something so monstrous as this even if nothing about it looks quite right. Are we done with the Q&A portion of the evening?”
I nod while Brian takes care of the last remaining details to set the scene and wipes down a few more things we may have touched.
He leads me around to the side of the building outside and turns on a water hose.
“Strip,” he says.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. We need to get out of these clothes and clean up if we’re going to leave without drawing suspicion.”
There is a crisp chill in the air, but I know he’s right. I strip and he hoses me down, careful not to get my hair wet. I’m surprised when he tosses me a towel.
“Where did you get this?”
“One of the hall bathrooms when I was getting the rolling cart.”
“What about the cart?”
“I’ll handle it.”
By the time I’m dry, Brian has removed his own clothes. “Now do me.”
I spray him clean. The hockey mask protected his face from blood, so it’s just his body we have to worry about. I try not to ogle and wonder if he ogled me when our positions were reversed. He’s in mission mode, so probably not, but I do appreciate the view of water sliding down all those perfectly formed muscles even if they are the muscles of an unrepentant killer.
I toss him my towel to dry off. He changes back into the staff uniform and takes the rolling cart back to the house. I put my masquerade mask and evening gown back on and carry our bags. One of the bags has Brian’s tux and mask, the other contains the clothes from tonight we’ll have to incinerate.
By the time he’s returned the cart and changed clothes, the party is winding down. We blend into the throng of people leaving, and get into Brian’s nondescript black sedan parked in a row of other nondescript black sedans.
No one seems to have yet missed their host. By the time they realize he’s gone, we’ll be back at the house burning the last of the evidence.
THIRTY-FIVE
mina
The drive islong and quiet. Brian is tense, and I’m tense because he’s tense. Finally it’s too much for me.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
His grip tightens on the steering wheel, his knuckles going white. “No, I am not fucking okay.”
He sounds broken, and I don’t know what to do with this version of Brian. Nor do I understand it. It can’t be killing those guys. Even with the chainsaw, in a lot of ways it was standard operating procedure for Brian—even if it got a little weird.
