Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (93)
“You have eight minutes,” Conor says through the line.
Lachlan has already pulled a cart forward. Before he opens the body bag, he turns to me, concern written across his expression as he scans my face. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
He unzips the bag to reveal the corpse of Stan Tremblay.
I’ve seen bodies before, of course, but always so soon after death that they look like they could be sleeping. I’ve never seen someone I’ve known well who’s been dead for a few hours. Stan’s skin is chilled and bloodless, his face slack, as if he’s a wax figure that’s an imperfect replica of the person I once knew. There’s a long gash across his throat, the edges of the wound congealed and dry like a slice of uncooked meat left too long on the counter. I know I should be moving faster and getting to work, but I can’t help but stall for a moment as I try to reconcile what I see now with the formidable man I once knew.
But even with the seconds ticking along and the alarm blaring, Lachlan doesn’t rush me. He carefully sets a small case on Stan’s chest and passes me a pair of bone-cutting forceps.
“Index and thumb, when you’re ready,” he says as he pulls out a resealable plastic bag and lays it between us. “Then we’ll do the other … thing …”
I take Stan’s left hand and get to work with the forceps. I fit their sharp edges at the second knuckle of his index finger where it should be easier to separate along the joint. Even with the brand-new forceps, it takes a lot of pressure and a bit of repositioning to make headway, but before too long it snaps free and I deposit the severed digit into the bag with the finger Lachlan has just removed from Stan’s right hand.
“You’re doing good,” Lachlan says, and I meet his eyes across the body. It’s not just a declaration of my ability but an observation that despite knowing this dead man lying between us, I’m not hampered by familiarity.
“Yeah,” I say, flashing him a smile as I saw at Stan’s thumb with my forceps. “This is kinda therapeutic, actually.”
Lachlan’s brow furrows as he snaps the right thumb free, his eyes not leaving mine.
“Stan was helpful to me and my family, for sure. After what happened to my dad, Stan was the one tasked with teaching me some ‘life skills,’ at least until Damian took over. The difference between a hammer strike and an elbow strike, for example.” I grit my teeth, squeezing the two handles of the forceps together until the joint finally succumbs to the pressure with a crack. “So even though I’m grateful he taught me a few useful tricks, he wasn’t what you’d call the most empathetic instructor. And it’s not like his presence was due to things going right with life, you know?”
“Yeah. Makes sense,” Lachlan says as he holds the plastic bag open so I can drop the severed thumb inside. Once sealed, he places it in the interior pocket of his jacket. “Regardless, I’m proud of you, yeah?”
“You’re my husband, sweetie. You’re kind of supposed to say that.”
An adorable blush creeps into Lachlan’s cheeks before he clears his throat and gruffly asks Conor for a time check.
“Three minutes.”
“Shite.” Lachlan takes out the next set of tools and lays them on Stan’s chest. There’s a syringe filled with some kind of solution and a plastic jar of formalin. A scalpel. A pair of scissors. A set of dainty tongs. And something that looks disturbingly like a little ice cream scoop. “You ready?”
Bile churns in my stomach. “Probably not.”
“Me neither.”
We move closer to Stan’s face and Lachlan passes me the tongs. “Conor, are you one hundred percent sure his security system has the iris scanner?”
“One hundred and ten percent sure. Enjoy.”
“Fucksakes.” Lachlan looks about as green as I feel when he pinches Stan’s lashes between two fingers and pulls his top eyelid upward. “Hold this with the tongs.”
I do as he asks and slide the instrument into place to hold the eyelid back from the prize beneath. Lachlan saturates the surface of Stan’s eye with the liquid in the syringe before he takes up the scalpel with a deep, unsteady breath.
“I take back what I said earlier about leaving Sloane out of this,” I say. “We should have gotten her to do it. This is fucking disgusting.”
“You’re not the one who has to dig it out of his face,” Lachlan says as he leans over Stan’s head with the scalpel. He starts slicing along the upper ridge of bone to cut the thin muscle that adheres to the eyeball. Just one glance at his progress and I have to turn away to gag. “Feckin’ hell, don’t you start.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You’re going to make me sick.”
“Please go faster.”
“Yes, go faster,” Conor says, “because someone’s just jumped on the delay and called dispatch for the fire department.”
“Shit,” I hiss into my sleeve.
Lachlan taps me on the wrist. “Switch lids.”
As soon as I grab the bottom eyelid a surge of blood pools across the gelatinous white surface and I wretch. With a shaking hand, I manage to pinch the skin with my tongs before my stomach flips and I gag.
“Keep it together, Lark,” Lachlan barks, his voice as much a plea as it is a command.