Page 30 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

EDIE

I run the sponge over the altar, leaving a trail of pink, soapy water in its wake. Sawyer told me to leave it, that he’d take care of it after he disposed of Logan Greer’s body out in the deep part of the woods. But I couldn’t stand seeing the mess every time I walked through the church—which was often, considering how I kept pacing around, my heart thrumming nervously in my chest.

Who the hell have I become?

I dip the sponge into the bucket. I found both stashed in the little hall closet across from the bathroom—along with a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves. Whenever I think of what happened earlier, I’m shocked by what I don’t feel.

I don’t feel disgust.

I don’t feel horror.

I don’t feel frightened—at least, not of Sawyer. Everything else, though? The risk of getting caught? The revelation that Scott is actively trying to kill me? The fact that I have no idea what my future could possibly look like now?

That leaves me cold and quaking.

Cleaning up the mess of the altar helps push it aside, though, and here I can at least pretend that the blood only belongs to me and Sawyer. Because that part of earlier?—

Well, let’s just say I keep finding myself pressing my thighs together at the memory, squeezing them against my clit.

I slop more water on the altar and run the sponge over it in broad strokes. The water seems to rehydrate the blood, and it feels like I’m just pushing it around, making more of a mess. Clearly, I’m not cut out for cleaning up a crime scene.

I squeeze out the sponge and grab the towel I’ve been using to blot up the bloody water. Finally . It looks like I’m starting to make some progress.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I jump at Sawyer’s voice and look up to see him standing in the church entrance—looking like Sawyer this time, my Sawyer, who wrapped up the cuts on my chest so tenderly. He strides in, letting the door slam shut behind him, and crosses his arms over his chest. “I told you I’d take care of that.”

“I needed the distraction.” I stand up as he stalks down the aisle. Looking at him, you wouldn’t think he’d been ditching a mutilated corpse out in the mountain, although he does look like he’s been hiking. His hair’s wind-tossed and tangled with a few flame-colored leaves, and his cheeks are pink from the cold.

He looks… handsome.

He’s also appraising my handiwork with a furrowed brow. “You gotta blot the blood up first,” he tells me. “And work in patches.” When he sees the blood-mottled towel, he groans. “Oh, come on! You used the good towel?”

“That’s your good towel?” It’s actually pretty ratty and threadbare.

“One of ‘em.” He picks it up and slaps it down on the altar, then looks at me. “You don’t need to do this,” he says quietly.

“I need to do something . Otherwise, I just start thinking, and?—”

“Stop it.” He points at me. “I told you not to worry. We’ll figure something out, okay? I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.” He nods down at the bucket of water. “Now give me those gloves and get your cute butt out of here. I’ll finish up.”

“Are you sure?” I frown. “I really don’t mind.”

“Yeah, you do.” He grins at me, eyes glinting. “You ain’t never cleaned up spilled blood before, and I don’t know why you’d start now. Go outside, take a walk. It’ll clear your head.”

I’m not so sure about that, but the truth is I am making a mess of the altar, and Sawyer clearly knows what he’s doing when it comes to… all of this.

Sawyer strolls around the altar and smacks me on the ass. I let out a disbelieving laugh and turn on him, but he grabs my wrists. He’s not wearing his bandage anymore.

“What about your hand?” I squeal as he peels one of my gloves away.

He holds it up to me. The cut has been replaced by a smooth, pink scar. “My kind heals fast.”

I’m so dumbfounded that I just stand there like an idiot while Sawyer peels off my other glove.

“Is that why you didn’t want me to wrap your hand?”

Sawyer stops and looks over at me, his eyes softening. “I didn’t need you to,” he says gently. “But I wouldn’t say I didn’t want you to.”

I feel a sudden surge of affection for him, my serial killer who insists on doing the cleaning.

“I’m serious about you going for a walk, though,” he says. “It’ll be getting dark soon, and it really will be good for you to get some fresh air.” Then he kisses me on the top of my head, turns me around by the shoulders, and swats my ass again.

I don’t protest this time, just leave him to do his work. I go out through the back entrance so I can grab my phone. I want to call Charlotte. I’m not sure exactly how Sawyer would feel about that, although I don’t intend on telling her anything. I just want to see her face, know that she’s okay .

Stepping outside feels like stepping into another world. The late afternoon sun floods the clearing with gilded sunlight and the surrounding forest burns in reds and oranges. The air is cold, smelling of metal and distant smoke, and I breathe in deep four times.

I go around to the back of the church, away from my car—away from the scene of Sawyer’s earlier crime—and call up Charlotte on video chat. She answers on the second ring, her hair blowing across her face. It’s platinum blonde.

“You bleached your hair.”

“Yeah.” The camera tilts and for a half second, I see her background: a flash of a swimming pool, a pastel-colored wall. She’s out on her apartment balcony. “I was just about to call you, actually. This shit with Scott really has me freaked.”

Hearing Scott’s name makes my stomach twist up into knots. “Is that why you bleached your hair?”

She shrugs. “Maybe. Probably. It’s my favorite defense tactic, after all.” She laughs, but there’s no joy in it. “He really did creep me out the other day.” She squints into the phone camera. “Everything okay with you?”

I nod, my throat dry. Part of me wishes I could tell her everything. Instead, I just say, “Yeah, I’m still with my friend. No sign of Scott.”

“Your friend, huh?” She arches an eyebrow, and I hate myself for blushing because even over the phone’s video, she notices.

“I’m not even thinking about that right now.” I hate myself for lying to her.

“Yeah, I get that.” She shakes her head. “I just want you to be safe. I get why you don’t want to go to the police. I do. But I just think—maybe it’s worth trying?”

My stomach twists into knots. “Nothing will come of it,” I say, and that actually is true, even if I can’t go to the police now for other reasons. “They might try to help at first. But he’ll pay them off to get what he wants.” Especially since what he wants is to kill me. He’ll do whatever he can to protect himself. But I can’t tell Charlotte any of that, because then I’ll have to explain that I’m safe because Sawyer Caldwell is alive and well and promised to protect me.

Charlottes sighs, brushes her hand through her hair. On my phone screen, it nearly looks white. “Yeah, I know. Just—be careful, okay? He’s got to get bored of this eventually, right?”

“Yeah.” I force myself to smile. To sound hopeful as I lie to my best friend. “He just doesn’t want the embarrassment of a divorce. He needs to meet some hot model. Then he won’t give a shit anymore.”

Charlotte’s tinny laughter floods through the clearing. I wish it were true. Maybe it was, a few months ago. But now he’s got the idea of my death planted in his head. He’s got plenty of money, but if we divorce, he’ll lose some of it, even with the prenup. This way, he gets richer: The life insurance payout. The inheritance that’ll go straight to him because when I signed that prenup I was so dazzled that a man like him would want a woman like me.

Back then, I thought I’d overcome the worst thing that could happen to me. What a story it was, too: the fat survivor of the Fat Camp Killer who glimpsed death and lost weight for it, who turned her life around after a madman tried to slice it out of her. And then I reaped the rewards of that weight loss, too, with a handsome, rich husband and a glass house by the Pacific Ocean.

It was the story glossy profiles in high-profile magazines are made of. And it was all made of rot.

“—the hell is that?” Charlotte’s voice drags me out of my past.

“What?”

“That thing behind you.” She squints into the camera, brow wrinkled. “Is it street art or something?”

I realize with a cold, sick shudder that she’s talking about the sigil that Sawyer’s friend painted on the church wall. I’d wandered over to it without thinking .

“Oh. Um—” I fumble around for an explanation. “Yeah. Street art.”

“Let me see it,” she says. “I want to take a screenshot.”

I want to tell her no, but I can’t think of a single reason that doesn’t involve telling her my “friend” is Sawyer Caldwell and that sigil was painted by another murderer. So I hold up my phone to the wall, the wind cold against my skin.

“Got it!” she chirps out. I pull the phone back around. “Do you know who the artist is?”

“No clue,” I say. “It’s not signed.”

“Too bad.” Charlotte swipes her hand through her hair. “Look, thanks for checking in. You’re eating okay and everything?”

I breathe out, relieved I don’t have to lie about that, at least. “Yeah. My friend’s a great cook, actually.”

Charlotte grins. “Look at you. Once you can shake off Scott, you’ll be all set.”

I roll my eyes. Ignore the sick coil of dread in my stomach. I want so badly to tell her. But she wouldn’t understand all that’s happened with Sawyer, and I can’t blame her. So it’s better to just say nothing.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be all set.”