Body Tox (The Bodies duet #1)

Chapter 15

T he woman kept looking at me funny, and something felt off. She was clacking those sharp nails along her phone screen, watching stupid social media shorts.

My phone beeped, and after unwrapping my face and only smelling the massive stench from the overwhelming amount of chemicals, I calmed down enough to answer the call. I was near disbelief.

Not only had the Debt Collector believed my fabricated kill, but after years of working for that fuck and always getting it wrong, I was listening to the warped voices tell me I was finally free.

Congratulations Asher . Your contract is complete. You are free of your services.

No more girls. No more contracts. I was fucking free.

“You save my moose, but I don’t get one little story about those tattoos?” the incessant female whined in the background.

I sighed and straightened from my hidden message, clicking off the screen and pocketing the cell in the jacket’s fabric.

I pondered whether or not to be honest or make up some bullshit. She could probably detect lies like a polygraph, so I decided there was no harm in just stating the truth.

I pointed to my forearm. The bands of a braid wrapped around it.

“This…” I said, tracing the tattoo with my fingertip. “This is for my foster care sister, Angie. She made it fifteen years in the system. After she was in her last foster care home, she was sent back. Twenty-four hours later, she hung herself, using her own braids to do it.”

Echo was quiet, focusing on my words. She could definitely tell lies from the truth with her contemplative expressions as she worked through my past.

“So not farmer Bob’s kid after all, then.” That was all she said before walking back to her little shelf and gluing her eyes back on her phone.

“I need to get you some clothes,” I announced awkwardly, trying not to stare at her god damned beautiful body.

“Why? Your constant boner seems to like my birthday suit, Pretty Boy.”

I cursed and adjusted myself again, but she laughed and waved me off.

“No worries. I can tell your dick is your favorite quality about yourself, so I’ll take it as a compliment that he wants to say, ‘Hi.’”

I was not fucking blushing. Grabbing my jacket off the table, I pointed at her. “Stay the fuck still. I’ll be right back.”

Rolling her eyes and nodding, she went back to fiddling with her stuffed moose.

“I mean it,” I warned sternly, pointing for her to sit the fuck down.

She put up her hands in surrender.

“I swear on your life, Asher.”

Shaking my head, knowing that didn’t mean shit, I finally agreed and walked out. The little boutique was only a few miles away, and when I got there, all these vapid bimbos were already flittering over to me like bugs to a light.

“Oh, hello there, handsome…” the cashier purred at me. She looked like a rat with beady big eyes. “How can I help you?”

I eyed some random shit that I thought Echo might like.

“I’m looking for uh…female shit,” I said, picking up a patterned jacket and some pants.

The females around the shop giggled behind hangers and clothing racks.

The cashier cleared her throat. “Hmm, okay. Well, what size? Is she a size zero-zero?”

“I don’t fucking know.” I scratched my head. “A double zero? What in the hell is double zero? A line of string? That’s negative clothing.”

The woman openly laughed and picked up a hanger with a pair of pants on it.

“No, no, silly. This is a zero-zero.”

I looked at the dimensions and grimaced. Echo was not gonna fit her tits in that.

“Uh, no. She’s got nice ass curves.”

The lady mumbled something under her breath and grabbed something else. This thing looked like a bag. It would swallow Echo.

“No, that’s not?—”

My words were cut off as the glass surrounding us vibrated and cracked until significant spiderweb images formed, and then the whole large pane imploded. A massive explosion knocked me backward into the racks of clothes.

“Fuck!” I barked.

Trying to see past the chaos of people running around like chickens, all coughing and crying, shielding themselves with whatever they had in their hands. Muscling my way out of the debris of the store, I took off in a sprint toward the morgue.

There was smoke billowing from the clinic, a raging fire as intense as Echo’s rage radiating around the streets. As I ran back to the little white building, I realized something.

My name.

She knew my name, yet I never told her my name.

How did she know my name?

The sirens and fire trucks’ lights beat me to the area, and even with the thousands of gallons of water pumped into the raging inferno, the building was obsolete. Anything and anyone in that building was melted into piles of bones by now. The amount of chemicals in that place could easily dissolve even the bones.

I ran my hand through my hair, trying to avoid the chaos of civil service workers, and headed toward the back. It was then I noticed something on the sidewalk, covered in soot but visible.

Turning my back away from the building and the service employees aimlessly working to extinguish the flames, I got on my knees to dust the debris away from the message.

White letters, untouched by the fire—may be written in chemicals spelled out a simple message.

Xo. Sorry, Pretty Boy. Xo