Page 14 of Vetted for Vengeance
“Did you hear everything, Pet?” I ask, pausing my hands mid-task. I always ask questions when I talk, but the audience never answers. Today, my audience participates.
“Yes.” It's a faint whisper, but not because he's sleepy. It's because he's processing everything he's heard.
“They begged me to stop.” I wait for him to say something. Most people would lie here. Pretend they didn’t hear. Pretend they were asleep.
Noah doesn’t pretend.
“They did,” he agrees.
“They begged you to make me stop.”
“I couldn't do that.” He chuckles nervously.
“Because I'm stronger than you?”
“Because I didn't want to.”
Those words seem to make the cleanup go faster. It actually takes as long as always, but it feels quicker, and that's enough.
The metal door of the incinerator slams shut with a dull, final sound. I pause for a moment, listening to the low mechanical hum as the machine begins its work.
Fire is wonderfully efficient. It leaves no loose ends.
Once the bodies are in my in-house incinerator, I shower, change, and head to the small room where Noah is dozing on the chair.
“Let's get you to the guest bedroom,” I call.
When he doesn't wake, I nudge the chair. If my voice soothes him to sleep, it won’t wake him. The jolt does the job.
“I have somewhere more comfortable for you to sleep,” I repeat as he looks at me bleary-eyed.
“I need to know our plan for tomorrow first,” he insists. “I'll sleep better knowing it's sorted.”
“Plan?” I smile. “I won't kill you.”
“About the dogs. There's no morning staff going in to find them. It's just me.”
“Fine, tomorrow morning, at whatever time you start work, you'll call Derek and Frank. You'll leave voicemails asking where they are, send texts asking when they'll be back. Then, mid-morning, you’ll book a train from your place to here. You can walk to the station from here, and when the train arrives, you’ll take a cab here.”
“Wow, you've got it all sorted.”
“When the cab arrives, you'll enter the practice and demand to see me, saying it's an emergency. I'll call you into the consulting room as soon as I can. No cameras. Just us. Five minutes later, I'll make plans to accompany you back to the farm in the practice ambulance. We'll bring the dogs back here to care for until the brothers turn up.”
I smile, making the whole thing sound like a piece of cake. It isn't. There has to be missing person reports filed, justification to walk off with the farm's property. Noah has to get through it all without blowing his cover. It's a side of my process I've never been on before, and it twists my stomach into knots.
“Why don't I phone the police first?”
“Because you are obsessed with the dogs' welfare and Follow the Vet podcast.”
“Well, at least that isn't a lie.” he gives a nervous chuckle.
“Come on, let's get you to bed.” I lead the way out of my underground bunker. Locking the door behind us doesn't bring the usual reassurance that comes with shutting my secrets away. Instead, though, there is the thrill of taking a huge risk. The feeling I used to experience with my first few kills. A feeling I lost when I became too confident. I like the guilty flutter in my stomach.
Noah looks around my house, taking in the perfectly curated image of a normal person I maintain in my day-to-day life.
He follows me upstairs, wide-eyed and thrilled, gawping at the guest room.
“This is so much nicer than my room in the farmhouse.”
