Page 112 of With Spite

“Chan,” he said. “What kind of tools do we have in this shed?”

I started to panic again.

My erratic breathing started up again, and before I knew it, I had passed out.

Twenty-Six

Let’s split up to cover more ground. I go left, you go fuck yourself.

—Hux’s secret thoughts

Hux

I stared at the blinking red dot on my cell phone and wondered what in the hell she was doing at work still.

She hadn’t answered the last four times I’d called, and I was starting to panic.

She was supposed to have been here over twenty-five minutes ago.

She was never late.

I always knew where she was coming from and when she’d be wherever she said.

She was very open and honest about her whereabouts, and according to the last text I’d gotten thirty minutes prior, she was supposed to have been here.

I put the knife down, left the carcass exactly where it was, and slid off my glove. The apron came off next, and I walked out of the butcher shop and into the warehouse that would lead me to my truck.

“Hey, can you move these…”

“Not now, Mother,” I said as I continued walking.

“But Katana can’t,” she said. “And I…”

I walked right out of the building and to my truck.

I drove the four blocks to the clinic and parked behind Bernice’s truck.

She wasn’t inside of it, so I started to go to the clinic but stopped and frowned.

I pulled out my phone and pulled up my tracking app, noticing that the phone was pinging in the parking lot and not the clinic itself.

I followed the dot back to her truck and tugged on the handle.

The truck door opened, and her cell phone fell out of the truck onto the pavement.

My stomach soured as I bent down to pick it up.

She had it to where her cell phone never closed, so when I glanced at it, it was still pulled up to our text thread.

Bernice:

I’ll be there in five minutes.

Terror started to course through my veins.

I glanced into the back seat before going to the clinic to peer inside.

I pounded on the door when it didn’t budge.