Breaking Meredith (Disciples 4)

Wiping mine and Cherry’s blood off on the what was once a crisp, white shirt, I notice how the blood has stained my hands.

My life of bloody hands has been over for a long time. I wear gloves if I need to cause physical damage to someone. It allows me to remain remote and professional about the matter.

Blood makes things personal when it’s spilled on your skin.

Putting the destroyed dress shirt into the garbage bag, I remove my wasted pants, socks, and shoes. All go into the bag. No evidence of Cherry’s blood on me will be left. I’ll have to take care of Meredith’s clothes, and the bedding she’s laying on, but that can wait for now.

The stiletto goes in the bag as well. I’ll need to grab another one of those from my home office.

Still avoiding the mirror, I push the first contact on my list and wait for him to pick up.

“Simon… Do tell me why I heard from Peter and not you about Lucky Tails and Meredith.”

He’s angered. Though I’m not sure which has him madder, that his club has been destroyed or that Meredith was in danger.

“Her security took precedence in the matter. Though I do not believe either her or I were the target of the bomb.”

“Peter was of the same mind,” he says, and I can hear Lily in the background asking what’s going on.

I’m surprised I haven’t paid more attention to what time it is and glance at the clock. It’s almost midnight. I doubt he went back to bed after Peter called, so she’s probably come to see why he left the bed.

Why he deals with such annoyances, I have no clue.

“What did Peter say?” I ask.

Knowing I didn’t get more information before Meredith and I raced from the bombing irritates me to no end.

Meredith is becoming too much of a burden.

“That the location of the bomb was back by the DJ station. It had no timer, only a flashing light. He believes it was a military grade explosive, probably expert in set up.”

“That fits what little I saw of the scene before we left. It was most likely remote-detonated,” I say quietly as I begin to run the water of my sink.

Blood slowly comes free of my hands and swirls down the drain as I continue my thought process. “If I was to conjecture at this exact moment, we weren’t the target of tonight’s attack. It was a message meant to be sent to us. Now as to who… I don’t have enough information to even guess. It could be anyone. Russians, Yakuza, fringe Irish. I doubt the Saudis have even had the opportunity to do something like this yet. It could have been a rush job, but it doesn’t feel like it to me.”

“Peter gave me the estimate of fifty-five to seventy people dead. Workers and clientele. This will be national news on late night TV, and at the very least in the morning news and papers.”

“Agreed. I’ve got both Sommers and Martin on the same page. Gas main explosion, catastrophic failure due to anything that can help get the spotlight away from the truth. Blaming it on a gang war is the last thing we need right now.”

“Good. Will they both play their parts?”

“Sommers will, of course. Martin will need to be closely watched. I plan to have a reminder sent to him tomorrow, and another will visit his daughter at Yale,” I say.

The blood under my fingernails is the hardest part to get clean, and it’s through sheer willpower alone that I don’t rip them off just so I can get the stripper’s blood off of me.

A good dose of antibiotics will be in my future.

“Tell me about Cherry,” Lucifer says quietly, and I can feel his anger at the loss.

He, of course, had no emotional ties to the woman beyond favoring her brains and intellect for the business. At least that I can see.

“She was severely injured from the blast. She was so injured she would never have a life worth living again. It may have been possible to save her, but I decided to show her a kindness.”

“Understood.”

Taking a deep breath, I look up from my clean hands and stare at my body.

“Will you be avoiding me any further on the Meredith topic, Simon?”

“You know your sister’s ways as well as I do.”

“I do,” he says with a chuckle. “So she got underneath the most collected man I know’s skin?”

There, on my shoulder, is a bloody bite mark. She tore through the shirt and skin when she bit me. Plain and simple, she became the hellcat princess I’ve thought her to be all along.

She’s marked me just as if she were to brand or tattoo me as hers.

She really was mad to have been able to cause that kind of wound.