Page 113 of Wicked Nightmare

"Ugh, babe. You said I could do it." Lakes pouted before leaning forward, putting her fingers into the cut and tugging on his scalp as I sliced.

I held the blade up, "Yes, babe, but as I already said... I'm kind of worried you're just going to kill him and then we won't know if we can disable it without causing death. So, when I'm done, then you can play Nurse Ratchet, okay?"

"Fine. But if you don't let me play after, I'm going to be very, VERY upset."

Shaking my head, I sliced up, letting Lakey pull his skin off his scalp by his hair and lay it flat against his head. He was thrashing on the table, making it hard to cut with any precision. Didn't help that I was using a butterfly knife and not a scalpel, but semantics, really.

A knife is a knife is a knife.

"Jesus, keep him still," I said. Lakey had stopped helping to watch the blood drip down his neck, splashing on the table and onto the floor. Her fingers reached out, going into the wound and playing around in it. The squelching was loud, accentuated by his muffled screaming. Surprisingly, he hadn't passed out yet, but it made it so much better that he hadn't.

"Oh, hush," she said. "I'm doing what I can." But she came around behind me, crawled up onto the table, and sat on his back. She weighed basically nothing, but at least it was more productive than sticking her fingers in his head.

As I peeled back the flap of skin further, my breath caught. There it was. A tiny chip, drilled right into the base of his skull. A mess of wires running downward toward his neck, way more complicated than I'd expected. One wire stood out, thicker than the rest, with a tiny red blinker beside it.

"Shit," I muttered. "You watching that phone?"

"Why? You got something? I can't see from up here. Your fat head is blocking my view."

I nodded, reaching for the wire cutters. "Let's find out."

Deep breath. I positioned the cutters around the wire at its base. One snip. Clean. For a second, nothing happened. Then Lakey's laugh filled the room.

"It worked!" she squealed, practically dancing on Beaver's back, which couldn't have been comfortable for him, but I doubt she gave a shit. "His little blinking dot just went dark. You did it, Cam!"

I let out a long breath. "How about that." I wiped the blood off my hands. "Guess I've got a future in neurosurgery after all."

I pushed my fingers into Beaver's neck, checking for a pulse. Still there. Weak but steady. It worked. The wire was severed, the tracker was dead, and our practice patient was still breathing. Much easier than I'd anticipated. Certainly easier than the manual made it out to be, but maybe that was intentional. Maybe they wanted people to think it was impossible so they wouldn't try. Wouldn't be the first time Chimera used fear as a deterrent.

I looked at Rose, standing against the far wall, her arms wrapped around herself, watching everything with wide eyes that held no horror. Just concentration. She was studying what I'd done. Memorizing it. Filing it away the same way I filed things away.

I sighed, wiping my hands on Beaver's shirt. Now to decide what the fuck to do with our patient.

But first, I looked at Lakey. She was still sitting on Beaver's back, legs dangling off the table, phone in one hand, her other hand absently tracing patterns in the blood pooling on the wood. She caught me looking and raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Nothing." I shook my head. "Just thinking that if this is what our family looks like, we're never getting invited to a neighborhood barbecue."

She snorted. "Good. I hate small talk."

Chapter Thirty-Four: Lakey

The asshole's blood dripped onto the kitchen floor with a steady plink, plink, plink. I couldn't tear my eyes away from his mangled skull, a masterpiece of peeled skin that exposed him straight down to the bone. My fingers twitched, itching to add a few more brushstrokes.

"We need to decide what to do with this piece of shit," Cam said, handing me his knife to wash.

I chewed my lip, weighing our options, climbing off the table and heading to the sink to run his knife under hot water. The blood swirled down the drain in a pattern, almost watercolor. "We could always dump him in the river. Fishes gotta eat too, right?" I giggled at my own joke, but Cam didn't crack a smile. Party pooper.

"Firstly, it's fish. Secondly, this time it isn't a fucking game," he snapped. "If Chimera finds out we have one of their operatives..."

I rolled my eyes. "Woah, who pissed in your cereal? Relax, babe. They won't find out if there's nothing left to find." I traced a finger along our patient's cheek, savoring the way he flinched as he slowly came around from his pain-induced blackout. "I vote we carve him up nice and slow. Make him sing for us."

Cam's dark eyes met mine. He opened his mouth to reply, but a sharp knock at the door cut him off.

We both froze. My heart started pounding. Who the hell could that be? We didn't have friends.

"Shit," Cam hissed, already moving towards the door. His whole body was tense, ready to spring. Blood was splattered up his neck and across his cheeks. He looked like a butcher. Ugh, it was so sexy. Focus, Lakey. Now's not the time to get horny.