Chapter 36
Rhett
Disposing of the body is quick work.
Santi and I have done this so many times, it’s become a routine.
Having Blair there just speeds it up. There’s not much conversation between us.
When there is, it’s mostly between Santi and Blair, who tease or flirt with one another.
Occasionally, Santi will try to rope me into it, and I’ll try to entertain it, but I’m spent. My social battery is empty.
Which is weird because I didn’t know I had a social battery.
I can feel it now, though. I’m mentally spent from conversing with the other Gnarly Pines mechanics all day, then doing this tonight. I haven’t been this engaged in a long time. It’s clear that this mental fatigue is due to the lack of emotional endurance.
I brought this upon myself. For years, I’ve closed myself off to the world.
Now that I’m attempting to step back into it, I’m finding that I’ve handicapped myself.
It’s going to take time to become like the brother Abby knew.
That guy’s gone, as dead as she is, but I don’t have to be a miserable person either.
So, these past few days, I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone.
The employees I oversee seem wary as I attempt to make small talk, but they’ve been open to it.
Taking Santi out for dinner the night after being wrapped in Blair’s arms had been hard, but not in the same way.
Seeing how good we could be without the wall I’ve created between us made clear how much I’ve sacrificed for my own misery.
I’ve treated Santi terribly for years. Yet, when I kissed him in the shadows of Janet’s Janky Jukebox parking lot—he kissed me back with everything that he had.
Santi doesn’t begrudge me, and I’m both relieved and ashamed.
“I’ll make it up to you,” I’d promised him as we headed to the car.
Tonight was my way of doing that.
My eyes land on Santi and Blair ahead of me as we round the cabin to the side where our truck is parked.
His arm is draped over her shoulders and he’s looking down at her while she looks up at him.
They’re beaming at one another. She’s still covered in blood, and he has a smear of it here and there making them look ridiculous.
Yet, that doesn’t seem to bother either of them as they chat away.
Santi adores Blair. He’s never hidden it—not even from her. I want him to have the world. I know if I tried to claim him for my own, he’d be unhappy. Because of my neglect and selfishness, half his heart went and found Blair—the person he could love and who could return his feelings.
So, now I have to share.
The thing is, I don’t mind.
Ever since that night we spent together after she saved me, I can feel her inside of me.
It’s a strange sensation that I’m still getting used to.
It’s like she’s the thread that’s stitched up parts of my tattered soul.
I know, once it’s healed—if it ever heals—those stitches won’t dissolve.
Blair’s a part of me now in a way I can’t fully explain.
What’s startling is that her presence is settling in me in a way I can easily get used to. Crave, almost.
I try not to think too hard about the kiss Blair and I shared in the woods. It didn’t mean anything to either of us. It was a means to an end, and that end was devouring Santi’s cum. Yet my lips still tingle where hers touched mine, and the warmth it inspired beneath my skin has yet to dissipate.
I want to do it again.
And again.
Then again.
Maybe that kiss meant more to me than I thought? My eyes linger on her back, and an uncomfortable longing for more swells inside me.
“Alright, let’s get rid of this asshole’s car, and then we can head back to my house for the night,” Santi declares as we all dump everything into the bed of the truck.
“Your house?” Blair repeats.
Santi nods eagerly. “Yeah, it’s closer than Gnarly Pines. We can clean up and collapse there.”
“Santi,” I start with a sigh. “We have work tomorrow, remember?”
“I promise I’ll get up early enough that we make it back on time,” he promises.
Blair shrugs. “I don’t mind. What are we going to do with the car?”
“We’ll take it to the quarry and dump—” I start to say, but am immediately cut off.
“NO!” They yell at once, causing me to flinch.
They shoot each other a worrying look before Santi adds quickly. “We’ll just drive it out of town and burn it.”
Shame causes my face to heat as I realize what they’re both thinking. I open my mouth to assure them that I’m not going to do anything stupid, but Blair beats me to the punch.
“I’m sure the quarry is your typical spot but let’s avoid that place for a bit, okay?” she suggests.
Our eyes meet and she pleads with me to understand.
I get it, I do. Now that I’ve said the words out loud, I don’t even think I want to return to the quarry.
What I tried to do is inexcusable. I owe her an apology for what I put her through.
I just… Haven’t found the right words yet. For now, I concede with a shallow nod.
“Great.” She gives me a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll drive the car and follow you two to wherever you think is best to dump it.”
I dig into my pocket for the keys to our victim’s vehicle that I stole before we threw his remains into the fire and toss them to her. She catches them and starts to walk away but I step in front of her, blocking her exit.
“One second.” I dig into my other pocket and give her my phone. “Just in case we need to change plans or something, you should have some sort of communication on you.”
She takes it from me with a nod. “Thanks.”
Trotting off, Blair leaves me and Santi to head for the car blocking our exit out of here.
“Thanks for inviting her tonight. You are doing great at this ‘being better’ thing,” Santi says as he nudges me with his shoulder. He plants a kiss on my cheek before heading for the passenger door.
My face warms under his appreciation. Clearing my throat, I head for the driver side and turn the truck on. As I back out, Santi pulls out his phone.
“No calls from the others,” he says. “So I’m guessing it’s a quiet night for them at the cabin—oh… Huh.”
My eyes are on the rearview mirror as I watch as Blair carefully backs up the little sedan the soccer coach had pulled up in.
I follow her, backing down the trail away from the cabin.
She backs out onto the dark road far enough so that when I pull out, I have room to get out and take the lead.
I check the mirror to make sure she’s following me before hitting the gas.
We’ll go north tonight to dump the car. It’s far but still closer to Caddawalk and Santi’s house than it would be to go east or west.
Santi stares at his phone. Our truck barrels down the dark, wooded, two-lane road in silence for a while. When his stillness starts feeling off, I look over to find him frowning.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him.
“My decryption software that I’ve been using to analyze the encrypted shit on Ledger’s computer found something. I’m getting notifications from my laptop,” he mutters, clearly distracted as he scrolls through the information on his phone.
Some of my fatigue vanishes as curiosity gets the best of me. “Oh yeah? Any good news?”
Santi doesn’t say anything for a bit. He simply scrolls, reading whatever must’ve been translated. The longer he goes without talking, the more anxious I get. Santi is a talker. No matter what mood he’s in, he’ll talk your ear off.
His silence right now is worrisome.
So is the tension radiating from his stiff frame.
I check the rearview mirror again. We’ve gone around the curve and there’s a moment I can’t see Blair. When her headlights come into view, I breathe easy. Santi’s quiet is making me anxious. Shaking my head, I try to dislodge the feeling.
“Santi?” I snap, frustrated as the silence stretches.
“This… it doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“I, um…” he starts, but stops as he continues reading.
With a sigh, he looks up at me. “Alright, let me see if I can explain this. Ledger used to use a specific website on the dark web to communicate about potential work. Think of it as a large, open chat room. In that space, Ledger had his own private room that he coded himself where he’d direct potential employers so the two of them could communicate about a job.
That room is secure and only Ledger has access to let people in and out of it.
Also, he’s the only one with the proper coding to maintain this room. ”
I nod slowly. “Ah… okay?”
“Before he gave me his laptop, he trashed most of the conversations in his room—probably for his clients' privacy. However, in order to understand his particular set of coding, I needed some of it to dump into my decryption program, so I dug some stuff out of his hard drive’s trash. I found old chats, threw them into my program, then waited for my software to create a resource reference bible.”
I check the rearview mirror. The headlights from Blair’s car are still there, right behind me.
“I…There’s…” Santi looks at me anxiously then back down at his phone.
“Spit it out, Santi.”
“My software uncoded Ledger’s chat first. It had to in order for it to be able to search for a similar code in the larger open chat space.
One of those messages from Ledger’s trash pinged as something for me to check,” he says slowly, his voice low.
“There’s a conversation between someone named Sparrow and Earwig—I’m assuming those are codenames—where Sparrow offers Earwig a hundred grand for a father-daughter hit. ”
My heart skips a beat as alarm sends a chill down my spine.
“Shit.” I shoot Santi a worried glance. “Earwig is the name of the guy the hitman told us about who reached out to Dixie looking for backup or some shit because he knew about Blair’s dad’s reputation.”
He looks at me, his eyes widening in alarm. My stomach drops as I look back at the road.
“So…” I shake my head, confused. “Sparrow was the original person to put a hit out on Blair and her dad?”
Santi swallows hard. “Yeah. That seems to be the case.”
“And you found that in Ledger’s personal chat room? So he would’ve known about this, right?”
“Yeah…”
Why wouldn’t Ledger have said anything about this earlier? That night in the basement, as he beat a man to death, why hadn’t he mentioned to me—or afterwards when he gave the laptop to Santi—that he knew who originally sent out the hit? Wouldn’t that have been good to know?
I take one of my bottom lip piercings into my mouth as I stare out at the road.
My thoughts are miles away as I try to piece together this puzzle.
We go around another bend in the road. My eyes flick to the mirror and I slow, waiting for Blair’s headlights to come into view.
When they do, I refocus on my conversation with Santi.
“Rhett, before I continue, I need to tell you something.”
I don’t like the sound of that.
“Rip the band-aid off, Santi.”
“A few years ago a woman in Caddawalk went missing. She was gone for months and everyone was sure she was dead. Turns out, she wasn’t, and reappeared healthy as a horse. She claimed she was visiting family.”
I shake my head, confused as to where this is going. “Santi, what does anything of this have to do with—”
“The woman, her name was Ashleigh Burr and there were pictures of her on Ledger’s laptop in a hidden folder. She was locked in that cage you told us about.”
I stiffen before shooting him a worried look. “What?”
“And get this; I found her contact information and called her. I know that’s probably weird or whatever but I needed to talk to her, to understand why Ledger had pictures of her sitting in a cage in our basement.
” Santi sucks in a shaky breath. “She told me that she’s upholding her deal with Sparrow about keeping her mouth shut and to leave her alone. ”
My mouth pops open. “She made a deal with Sparrow? The same Sparrow that was mentioned in Ledger’s laptop? No, maybe you misheard her or there’s someone else—”
“You think there’s someone else with the name Sparrow?” Santi shakes his head. “Yeah, no. It’s the same one. And what’s more? ‘Sparrow’ is Ledger’s handle in his private chatroom, Rhett.”
“Handle? As in Ledger’s username?”
“Yeah.”
The blood drains from my face as the air in my lungs evaporates. The dread leeching into my veins feels like a toxic slug.
Again, we’re going around another bend. I wait until I see Blair in my rearview mirror before I risk looking over at Santi.
His face looks ashen in the pale light coming off the controls on the dashboard. His mouth is pressed together in a tight line and there’s a tremor in his hand that hadn’t been there a second ago.
“Santi…” I start. “Are you saying that you think Ledger is Sparrow?”
“Ah, no,” he whispers, the sound strained. “I’m saying that I know he is.”
“So, he—”
“Put out a hit on his godchild and best friend?” Santi asks, his voice strained. “Yeah, that’s exactly what Ledger’s done.”
Holy fuck.