The Cleaner (Professionals 9)

Which was why I had six large plastic containers in the basement full of various presents, mostly organized by year they'd been given to me.

I found the essential oils from a year before, finding two of them dried up completely, but, luckily, the lemon was still full.

I squeezed some drops into the gallon of cleaner, then shook it, and cracked it back open to smell it.

I didn't like it.

But I would have to learn to.

All because someone thought they were going to break a case that didn't exist.

I grabbed a couple spare spray bottles, then made my way back upstairs to clean.

There wasn't anything to actually clean, of course. Nothing got a chance to actually get dirty in my place. But that didn't stop me from needing to do it.

My cleaning was the reason I needed to get my hardwood floors refinished every two years or so because I scrubbed off the protective coating. It was the reason I had to repaint my kitchen cabinets twice a year. The tile, thus far, had proved pretty indestructible, saving me a little bit of a headache over having to replace those as well.

I scrubbed for an hour. And by the end of it, I was getting used to the smell.

Figuring the coast was likely clear, I made my way back to the office, doing the baseboards and floors, then going ahead and ducking into everyone's office to do a quick clean as well.

Quin, Gunner, Kai, and Smith all kept relatively clean offices. Bellamy and Holden didn't have their offices fully built yet, so they shared spaces with everyone else. Lincoln's was always a sty. But he claimed it was an organized one, so cleaning his space meant carefully moving stacks upon stacks of paperwork and books out of the way to clean under them, then putting them all back where they belonged.

I left Nia and Miller's office for last, refilling Nia's fishbowl, cleaning off the shelves and the computers, then sweeping and mopping the floors.

It was on my last tour of the room, looking for any lingering dust bunnies I might have missed when my gaze fell on it.

The folder on Nia's desk.

The one that contained all the information about Poppy Annabelle Larson.

The woman who wanted to find me, and put me away for life.

Curiosity piqued, I grabbed the file, taking it out of the office and into my own, sitting down in my chair before flipping it open.

There was a strange, jumpy pattern to my pulse, to the heartbeat hammering in my chest, throat, and wrists.

It wasn't anxiety, though. That was something I could pinpoint in a second flat. It was one of my oldest friends in the world.

This was similar, yet different.

This was the kind of anxiety that came with something akin to excitement.

Excitement?

To find a woman who would happily cheer on my lethal injection.

Flipping open the file, I came eye-to-eye with her.

Nia had a whole page picture of the woman sitting in a subway car, half turned away from the camera in a pair of blue jeans, a black sleeveless top under a black and white plaid jacket, clunky black platform shoes, with several rings and necklaces, long, artificial black nails, and a pair of oversize glasses. She was tall and long-legged with sleek orange-red hair she had pulled up. It was impossible to tell what her eye color was, but I found myself uncharacteristically interested in finding out. I was just as curious to know if she had more tattoos than the small one I could see on one of her fingers, but couldn't make out what it was. Or if she had more piercings than the myriad of them working their way up her ear.

I don't know how long I stared at that picture, but I was pretty sure it was long enough that Bex, Nia's little sister, a local defender of women, would likely label me a "creep."

Shaking my head, I flipped past the image, finding a list of pertinent information about Poppy Larson.

She was twenty-six.

She had lived in Navesink Bank since she was fourteen when her mother left her father who, by all accounts, was a real loser, and uprooted their lives across the country.

She graduated high school, then bounced around in community college before holding a string of jobs that never lasted more than a couple months. Until she found herself at Chaz's. Where she worked as a bartender for a year before she was let go.

Nia even printed out some old social media posts complaining about "that rude bitch of a bartender" at Chaz's.

It didn't escape me that every single one of the complaints were from men. Which led me to believe one thing. Whoever Poppy Larson was, she didn't put up with shit from drunk guys in bars. Or, likely, guys in general.