The Cleaner (Professionals 9)

Now they wanted me to change it?

Because of some rookie investigator with a microphone and recording equipment?

"Hey," Quin called after I jumped up out of my seat to stalk toward the door. "Look," he said, not waiting for me to turn around. "I'm not asking you to change your cleaning products. I get that shit like that is chosen for a reason. But, fuck, I don't know. Drop some essential oil in that shit or something. Just to change the scent. That's all I'm asking. Don't let this small change make you spiral. Maybe try to do it in small amounts in your house and office cleaning supplies. Slowly get used to it. There's no reason for any of us to think you will have a job in the very near future. Get adjusted to the change."

"Yeah," I agreed, seeing the possibility in his plan.

He was right.

Small steps had always worked for me.

I would work my way up to something different. Start adding lemon scent to the cleaner, little by little. I would adjust. Then by the next time I had an actual job, I'd be adjusted. And we could throw her off our trail.

"Don't worry," Quin added. "We are on this now. We aren't going down because of a true crime podcaster. We have built too much to have it all taken away because someone mistakenly thinks you're a serial killer."

I was, though, in a way, wasn't I?

How was a serial killer defined anyway?

A person who carries out a series of murders.

That did fit me in a way, didn't it?

I'd killed.

I'd killed a lot in my day.

"Hey, stop," Quin demanded, reading my swirling thoughts. "It's not the same," he added.

"I guess that depends on your perspective, though, right?" I asked. "To you, I was doing my job. I was following my orders. I was serving my country. But to the families of those people who died by my hand? To them, I'm a murderer."

And those were the thoughts that kept me awake at night.

That was the blood I could never make disappear, no matter how hard I tried to scrub it away.

"Finn," Quin called as I started to walk away. "I need to know you will come to me before you dive off the deep end."

What was the deep end, then?

It looked different for all of us, didn't it?

For Lincoln, it had been a series of relationships because he craved warm and soft after the years of cold and hard.

For Quin, it was working himself to the bone.

For Ranger, it was running off to the woods to never have to deal with people ever again.

For Bellamy, well, it was killing. Still killing. Always killing.

Compared to that, my cleaning didn't seem all that bad.

"I'm fine," I insisted as I made my way out of the office, trying to calculate how late he and Nia would hang there before heading home, and therefore how long I had until I could come back and get to work on the floorboards, on the floors, so I could get it all done before Jules came in to work in the morning.

She was used to coming in to find me elbow deep in a cleaning bucket. She'd long-since learned to roll with it as well.

But I liked to get it done and get away before anyone started to worry about me too much.

Especially now.

I knew Quin well enough to know he would casually mention to my coworkers about the case, about being worried about me, about keeping an eye on me for any signs that I was going off the deep end. Whatever they thought that looked like for me.

At home, I made my way toward my detached garage, unlocking, and pulling open the ancient door, then turning on the light.

And there it was.

My supply of gallon-sized industrial cleaners.

More than enough for a lifetime, hell, five lifetimes for the average person. It would maybe last me a year. Depending on how many jobs I had and how dark my mind was.

Moving forward, I grabbed a gallon, taking it with me back into the house, then rummaging around for some essential oil. Someone somewhere along the lines had given me a kit along with some locket necklace thing. You were supposed to drop the oil onto a small pad of fabric inside, then wear the necklace, and breathe in the oil. It was meant to ease anxiety. And maybe it would have. If I had worn it. But when the actual drugs failed me, I really doubted the natural shit would have any impact.

But I never threw out a gift.

It meant a lot to me that anyone would take out the time to get me anything. It wasn't the life I had known before I joined this crew of people. They were special to me. So even if I didn't find use for things they got me, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it either.