“There.” With a few vicious tugs, Lark pulls the thread taut and knots the tail before clipping the excess free. Then she pats him on the shoulder and stands back to admire her work. Campbell’s lips are already swelling around the tight thread, blood smeared across his chin. His eyes beg when his mouth can’t. “Now you can’t say a word. Just like you always wanted.”
Lark comes to my side, her palm held aloft. I lay the weapon onto her waiting hand.
She doesn’t tremble. Doesn’t waver. There’s no fear in her voice when she says, “Enjoy hell, Dr. Campbell. Tell the devil that the Kanes send their regards.”
There’s a quiet pop. A crimson spray of blood. The room falls into silence. She passes me the gun, but says nothing. The only sound is Lark’s steady sigh. And then, finally, I feel her hand on mine, a gentle squeeze, and the relief she feels finds its way into my veins.
“Conor will take you back,” I say as I turn to face her. Disappointment flashes in her eyes, though she tries to hide it. But it lights up my chest all the same. “I’m going to clean up here. I’ll take care of everything, yeah?”
“Okay.” Lark hesitates, but then grips tighter to my hand and rises on her tiptoes to lay a swift kiss to my cheek. “Thank you, Lachlan. I …” Her gaze drifts to Campbell’s body, but when it returns, she gives me a tired smile. “I needed that.”
Her hand lifts away, and then I watch as Lark leaves the cabin, passing Conor, where he watches next to the door.
“You good?” Conor asks, pulling me out of a sudden desire to follow her into the night.
“Yeah. I’m good,” I reply. I take a knife from the toolbox and start cutting the ropes and tape that bind Campbell’s lifeless body to the chair.
“You ever heard of a place called Club Pacifico?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Well, I’ve got something you should check out from the records you pulled. Might be connected to what’s happening to Lark’s family.”
A current slithers down my spine. “Oh yeah?” I ask as I bend to start cutting away the ropes at Campbell’s ankles. “What’s that?”
“Large payments are going through the club’s books every month, but I can’t figure out where they’re headed. Fifty thousand dollars each time, three hundred thousand paid out to date. The guy who owns the club is named Lucas Martins. He’s a second cousin of Bob Foster’s.”
“Payments for what?”
“Not sure. Couldn’t find any details, just amounts. Might be worth checking at the club, maybe there’s something on a hard drive there.”
“Thanks. I’ll look into it,” I say, cutting the final bond free before I stand and kick Campbell off his bloody throne, his body falling to a heap on the floor. We stand for a moment in silence before I jerk a nod toward the door. “Keep her safe, yeah?”
Conor chuckles as I take the grinder from the toolbox and plug it in. “Of course, bro.”
“What are you laughing about?”
“Nothin’. I’m just happy for you, man.”
“Shut the hell up. Feckin’ gobshite.”
I turn the grinder on to drown out Conor’s delighted cackle as he leaves the cabin. When he’s gone, I turn it off again for just a moment to listen to the engine of the van start and the crunch of gravel beneath the tires as it departs. And then I get to work.
It’s close to three in the morning when I make it home, and though I’m tempted to text Lark, I don’t. Still too hyped up by the night’s events to be ready for sleep, I walk Bentley instead, then take the toolkit with me to Lark’s craft room, my trophy hidden inside. There’s a wooden box there that will suit my needs perfectly, and several cans of unopened clear epoxy left over from one of her projects. I connect my phone to the speakers and start playing my latest book as I pour myself a drink. I then clean my prize at the sink and pat it dry before I bring out gold crafting wire and start bending the pieces into shape.
I’ve just finished forming the wire frame when I receive a call from Lark.
“Hey,” I say simply as I put the phone on speaker and continue my work.
“Hey.”
“Anyone see you come back?”
“Nope, I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone.”
“Good. You’re like, a pro or something,” I say, and she giggles and then yawns. “You sound tired. I was kind of hoping that our little excursion would have worn you out enough that you’d be asleep by now, duchess.”
Lark huffs a laugh. “It did. But then again, I’m always tired.”
She must be, I think. Always tired. Physically tired. Mentally tired. Stretched thinner and thinner until she’s a warped and distorted image of who she’s supposed to be. It fills the bottom of my stomach with something that burns. “How’d it go earlier at the retreat, anyway? Think you’ll enjoy the next few days? I never got a chance to ask.”
“It was great,” Lark replies, and I hear the shuffle of sheets in the background. I imagine her settling deeper into a plush bed. She’s probably wearing the lace-edged sleep shorts I packed for her and the matching spaghetti strap tank top. The thought of slowly dragging that delicate black fabric down her skin has my dick instantly hardening. “I went for a swim after you dropped me off this afternoon then did a Bikram yoga class after dinner.”
“What’s that?”
“The hot yoga where they pump the heat way up, you know? I was head-to-toe covered in sweat. Like, dripping.”
My cock twitches, demanding attention. I shift on my seat. “Right. Yeah …”
“It was great though. I still feel all bendy. I even managed to do the Yoganidrasana pose.”
“I have no idea what that is, but it sounds complicated.”
“It’s the yoga sleep pose. You lie on your back and fold your feet behind your head and your hands under your bum. I got my instructor to take a picture, I’ll send it.”
My phone dings and sure enough, it’s a photo of Lark twisted into some kind of impossible shape, her shorts stretched tight across her ass, her strong, sweat-slicked legs trailing up the length of her body to where her ankles cross beneath her head. If she wasn’t wearing those shorts …
Christ Jesus.
I take my glasses off and drag a hand down my face. “That’s … awesome.”
Lark giggles, and I wonder if she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. I’ll need to wank off for the third time today to yet another yoga-inspired fantasy of Lark if I have any hope of falling asleep myself.
“You should be asleep now yourself. It’s super late. What are you up to?” she asks, and I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath before I slide my glasses back on.
Trying not to die of the worst case of blue balls I’ve ever had in my feckin’ life.
“Nothing really,” I say as I pull my fist free of a spiral cage of wire. “Just having a drink, listening to a book.” Waiting for you to call, some hidden inner voice declares.
Fucksakes, no I was not. That would make me worse than Fionn.
Lark gifts me with an unsure breath of a laugh. “I feel like I should ask what you’re reading.”
“Please don’t.”
She laughs again, and this time I know it’s for real. “Okay, Budget Batman. You keep your secrets stuffed in your neoprene suit, then.”
“That suit is top-of-the-line, I’ll have you know. Premium synthetic rubber. Hidden storage compartments. Very high tech.” When Lark is done giggling and my smile slowly fades, I ask a question that’s been worrying me, poking holes in my thoughts since we parted. “Do you think you’re going to manage to get some rest before the sun comes up?”
“I hope so, yeah …” Lark trails off, and I catch the faint sound of her steadying breath. “But … I was wondering …”
I don’t press her. I just let her come around to it, and it takes a moment of waiting that feels eternal.
“Can you maybe read something to me …? I know that probably sounds stupid, but it can be anything you want. A gun manual, maybe, or so-you-wanna-be-a-leatherworker, or like, the history of dryer lint, or just … anything. I feel like maybe it would help to hear a familiar voice. Unless it’s a pain in the ass, I know it’s late, or I guess so late it’s early, and you’re busy and—”
“Lark.” I sit back in my chair and let my hands rest on the counter, my project momentarily forgotten. “It’s not a pain in the arse. Okay?”
“Okay,” Lark says on a long exhale.
“Just hold on, yeah?” I bring up the reading app on my phone and search for something I’m not sure the online store will have, but it does, and I grin like a feckin’ fool when I find it. “You might like this. I hear the history of dryer lint is a riveting tale.”
“I can’t wait to fall asleep in record time.”
At first it feels a little strange to read aloud to someone, but I quickly fall into the rhythm of a story that opens with an ancient city and a prisoner who finds a strange relic during a daring escape from his cell. I describe how the artifact seems to affect him. My tone is hushed and sinister when I tell her the prisoner hears voices when he holds it, and though he looks everywhere for the source, there’s no one nearby. He breaks out in a feverish sweat. He seems compelled by a hidden force, driven to run. When the prison guards discover he’s missing and chase him through the city, he’s hit by a car, the metal crumpling around him, and yet he stands uninjured, the relic still clutched in his hand. The man looks down at his forearm where a symbol burns through his flesh.
“Is this Constantine?” Lark asks, her voice colored with awe. If I close my eyes, I can imagine the rare blush that must be sweeping through her skin. “You’re reading me the script from Constantine?”
“Hmm. Is that what this is?”
Silence permeates the line.
“Seems like you might be right,” I continue, and I wait for a beat for Lark to reply, but she doesn’t. “I know it’s not exactly the same as what ended up on screen, but I’ve gotta say, I kind of prefer the opening they went with for the movie. Makes it more unexpected when the bloke gets smoked by that car.”
“You watched it …?”
I lift one shoulder, though of course Lark can’t see it. “Yeah.”
“When?”
With another invisible shrug, I place the spiral wire into the box and start shaping the two ends so it will stand upright on a smaller spiral frame. “The first time would have been about two weeks ago.”
“How many times have you watched it?”
“I dunno, duchess. Maybe one or two.”
“Liar,” Lark says with a laugh that dissolves into a soft melody of words when she adds, “Tell me the truth.”
“Twelve, I reckon.”
“Twelve,” she whispers.
I grin as I lift my prize from the damp and bloody tea towel and place it in the wire cage within the box. With a few minor tweaks, the golden spiral will be a perfect fit. “I thought you were supposed to be falling asleep. You gonna let me keep reading or what? I haven’t even gotten to the Keanu bit yet.”
“Umm … yeah.”
“You know, I’ve been told I’m like a tougher, buffer, generally better-looking version of Constantine-era Keanu—”
“Stop right there, Lachlan Kane. You will not Keanumatize me into forgiveness. That is fucking blasphemous.”
“Worth a shot.”
Lark laughs and I make a few digs at Keanu, which of course get her fired up. But then we get back to the story. I tell her about Father Hennessy and the holy water and the possession that he can’t exorcise. I introduce Constantine, John Constantine, in my best Keanu impression, which she says reminds her too much of my “whisper growl” from the night we met. “Less whispering, more growling, but make it sound morose like you’re so over this bullshit—so basically be you on a normal day but with demons,” she declares, and soon enough I get her stamp of approval. And eventually, Lark goes quiet, staying that way even after I taper off into silence. When I take the time to wait and listen, I hear it. The muffled, steady cadence of her breath as she sleeps.
With a faint smile, I set my phone on mute and place it off to the side as I continue my work.
Just in case she wakes up.