Chapter 6
EDDIE
The flashlights Ari and Tyler were carrying made elongated shadows leap around the dark forest, turning the world into a weird funhouse.
Snow crunched underfoot. Jules was the strong silent type.
He did mutter quietly to Ari here and there, breath puffing white.
But he wasn’t saying much as we muscled our tarp-covered package along a path.
Essentially, the stiff body beneath my gloved grip was the worst Christmas present ever.
It had the ability to give us twenty to life and pull muscles, but not much else.
The yellow rope wrapped around it in place of a ribbon stood out against the bright blue plastic.
“You doing okay there?” Tyler asked from behind me.
My cheeks burned despite the cold wind as a replay of that kiss flashed through my head. And what a kiss. God, it was good. What was that all about? And, more importantly, did he want to do it again?
Ari glanced back from his spot as the leader of our macabre parade, and I looked over my shoulder at Tyler, a reassuring smile already slapped on my face.
That’s when I set my foot down wrong on the snowy path.
My heart lurched, along with the rest of me, and I yelped as I landed on my ass and it ached, considering how much time I’d spent on it recently.
The corpse swatted me like a bug and knocked the air out of my lungs.
As I lay there trying to figure out where I went wrong today, the miserable cold seeped through my ruined suit.
Seconds later, my wet, cold ass registered.
Yep, I’d managed to find the only unfrozen mud puddle in the whole damned woods.
Tyler’s bright chuckle startled me. When I managed to roll what was left of Mike to my side, Jules was already on his feet again, glaring murder in my direction.
Shit, I was tall, but he was bigger than me in every way that counted.
My stomach transformed into a stone. He was a huge man in a police uniform, and a frisson of terror slid down my spine from having that stern scowl thrown my way.
It reminded me too much of being on the receiving end of my dad’s endless rage over the years.
Ari watched impassively, for the most part, lips quirking toward a smile as Tyler’s laughter wound down.
“I told you it was a bad idea for you to help carry the body. Here.” Tyler handed me the flashlight, and embarrassment made me hot all over.
“I should be taking care of you.”
“Why?” He gave me the bitch face he’d perfected a lifetime ago. He used to hurl it my way when we had infrequent squabbles over stupid things, such as whose turn it was to put away the dishes. Little peeks of the guy I used to know shone through here and there.
“Because I’m older.” I stuck out my tongue at him.
He snorted. “Two years isn’t really older.”
“We know we can trust you,” Jules said, poking Tyler’s shoulder, which I didn’t enjoy. “Do we really need him?” He swung around to focus on me.
I cringed. All at once, coming out into the woods with a couple of guys who had zero problems disposing of a body seemed even dumber than it already had. Yeah, I wanted to be on my feet for whatever bullshit was about to happen, so I got up.
“Sorry.” I waved my arms around, sort of encompassing the entire situation and sending more strange shadows reeling through the darkness. “I’m so sorry.”
Ari snorted. He was cute, but the longer we were around him, the more he made me uneasy.
I brushed my suit off, for all the good that would do considering the blood stains and my sopping wet ass, as Tyler and Jules hoisted the corpse.
Jules gave me one last long cold look before he turned to start walking again, and my stomach shrank to the size of a pea.
There wasn’t a real marked-out trail, but he knew where we were going.
I hoped.
Thank fuck it was snowing or Jules could strand us out here.
I scuffed my feet to make sure the tracks we made couldn’t vanish in the next hour.
Memories of horrible children’s stories about breadcrumbs floated through my brain.
Did those kids end up dead? Those old German fairy tales were so gruesome.
“How is it possible to be this embarrassed over a spill when I saw a guy’s head explode today? Just talented, I guess.” I rubbed the back of my neck as I followed everyone. The flashlight made me feel more secure. Why, I had no idea. It wasn’t as if it could protect me from a bullet.
“Because our opinions matter, since we’re alive, and a corpse doesn’t have any?” Tyler gave me an amused glance over his shoulder, and I couldn’t help but notice he didn’t land on his ass.
“Uh, yeah.”
Ari let out a small hum, as if he was agreeing, but really, who knew?
I sure didn’t. Those bizarre shadows slipped between the trees and anxiety began to pinch my brain.
This was all starting to freak me out a lot.
I was wet, cold, and covered in dried blood—and who knew what else.
It had taken us about two hours to get everything we needed to dump the body and clean up the crime scene to Jules’s satisfaction.
As we’d cleared out of the pawnshop, Ari had left the front and back doors cracked to “let the scavengers destroy the place.” The smile he’d given me had been creepier than a clown axe murderer hiding behind a shower curtain.
He had it down to a science. Or worse, perhaps he was just that messed up.
Yeah, we definitely shouldn’t be in the forest with these two. I rushed to catch up so that I was just behind Tyler.
“How far are we going?” I asked, rubbing my arm with my free hand.
Jules stopped. “We’re here.”
Frowning, I glanced around, but this resembled every other square foot of forest we’d tromped through so far. I blew warm air out through my clenched teeth.
Tyler and Jules let the corpse flop to the ground with a thud that sent my insides into an unpleasant freefall, and I flinched as it landed.
Jules went to his knees and started cleaning away leaves. He was a hulking, feral bear on all fours. “Come on. Help. Dig.”
“Uh, with what?” I asked.
Tyler dropped to his knees beside Jules.
“For what?”
“Come on. Move.” Ari glanced at me, and I crouched, trying to figure out what they were looking for, but before I could start pawing at the snow and layer of leaves under that, Tyler let out an excited shout.
“Got it!” He lifted the edge of something. It turned out he’d gotten ahold of a big round wooden lid. He flipped it upward off a hole in the ground. Grinning, he let the piece of wood fall to the far side of our group and wet leaves scattered on top of the snow.
“That’s dangerous,” I said, glancing around. “Anyone could fall in this.”
Jules gave me a long look. “That’s why it’s covered.”
“What is it?” Tyler asked.
“An old well. I found it while hiking. It’s deep. You can’t see the bottom.” Jules puffed up his chest, a satisfied smile settling on his face.
I stepped closer to the edge and shined the flashlight down the hole.
My stomach flopped harder than a fish on land.
The sides were made of stones that looked as if they’d been stacked by hand, and they glittered as the beam struck them.
“This is old. Wonder how old? Probably really fucking old. You’re right.
” I leaned farther over the ledge. “You can’t see the bottom. ”
Tyler grabbed the back of my suit jacket and yanked me away, shaking his head. “You already fell once. Let’s not go for total disaster.”
My cheeks burned and my stomach twisted with excruciating humiliation. He would never, ever want to kiss me again. “I wasn’t going to fall in.”
“Sure. Let’s not test that theory,” he grumped, sounding more like his old self.
Ari and Jules unwrapped Mike, and I looked away. Now that I didn’t have adrenaline on my side, I was feeling tired and nauseous.
“Why?” I asked, covering my mouth as curiosity got the best of me. The corpse came into view much faster than I would’ve wanted. “Why are we bothering to do that?”
“So he decomposes faster.” Ari grabbed an arm, doing just fine balancing and wielding the flashlight at the same time, the jerk, and Tyler grabbed the other one.
“Tyler.” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to convey, except part of me didn’t want him to be the one to do this. I couldn’t stop imagining this hole as a chute that would take Mike straight to a well-deserved hell.
He ignored me.
They unceremoniously tossed the corpse in as if they sent bodies to the great beyond every day of their lives.
Hell, what did I know? Perhaps they did?
It was ten seconds before we got an echo of a splash.
I forced myself to function and set down the flashlight so I could help move the lid back in place.
Jules rolled up his tarp with military precision, making a tight, round cylinder, then tied the rope around it.
I shuddered. He definitely had practice with that. He didn’t want to waste a good tarp.
How many bodies had been inside it?
Jules tracked my movements the entire time we were gathering our things to get the hell out of here, and I got the feeling he wanted to toss me in the hole, too.
I let out a long sigh of relief when we had all our belongings accounted for. The last thing we wanted to do was accidentally leave anything here.
“So, you don’t think anyone will notice our night deposit?” I asked, feeling close to puking as Jules started back out of the woods toward our vehicles at a breakneck pace.
As in, he didn’t care if I broke my neck.
“They haven’t yet,” Ari said with a smirk.
Just as my heart was starting to settle down closer to its normal rhythm, Tyler grabbed my hand, and it was off racing again. I smiled at him and laced our fingers together.