Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
KAT
The night air is a godsend. Still so cold, but the freshness of the outdoors hits us both.
I breathe and breathe and breathe. And despite being in an industrial estate, it’s the best thing I have ever sucked into my lungs.
Liam and I stand outside the unit and look at the distant streets, the ordinary world continuing like we hadn’t been on the brink of death for days.
I reach for his hand.
Liam takes Sam’s keys and searches the one car that lights up when he presses the button.
He finds his own phone, still switched off, and Sam’s one too, lit up on the passenger seat.
There’s a fleece on the floor, and despite it smelling like it hasn’t even met a washing machine, I gladly accept it, almost crying as the warm cloth slips over my arms.
There’s water too, and as badly as I want to down it, Liam makes me take small sips.
‘What next?’ I ask.
‘We’ll drive somewhere neutral, without cameras, and get a taxi to your place. Then clean up your room. Ellie should hopefully be at Mum’s, but I can’t risk switching on my phone anywhere near where Sam’s has been in the past few days.’
I nod, sitting back into the seat as he switches the car on and whacks the heater on full.
‘We’ll get ourselves cleaned up, and eat and drink, and bandage our wounds as best we can. Then we’ll go to mine, love on Reggie and make sure his food’s topped up, and get my car keys.’
‘I didn’t realise you have a car.’
He gives a wry laugh. ‘Don’t get your expectations up, it’s a right old banger, but suitable for carting a dead body. We’ll wrap him in bin bags and bleach the scene well. Then we’ll torch the building.’
‘It should concern me how well you’ve thought all this through,’ I say, not feeling even the slightest bit disturbed.
‘He gave me a lot of time to imagine killing him in there.’
‘And what do we do with his body?’
He looks over at me and smiles. ‘The well. It’s served us well so far.’
Hours later, we’re on a winding country road with a bin-bagged body in the boot, and a McDonald’s in my lap. I can only nibble the fries and nuggets, but I don’t care.
Liam’s phone trembles in my palm as I text Ellie.
‘You’ll need to call me Will,’ Liam says.
‘What?’
‘It was the name I eventually gave the child services. William. I thought it would be a smart move to change my name to distance me from my dad.’
‘Bless you.’ I picture his sweet little face as he sat there at eight, after all that trauma, trying to fool the social services.
It’s Kat. Using Will’s phone, mine is dead, and I thought I’d check in to see how your week is going.
Liam has already checked his family app to make sure she’s at her mum’s. Ellie replies in under ten seconds.
KAT. Oh my god. Where have you been all week? I’ve messaged you loads. I was this close to sending in the police…
Another text arrives before I can answer.
Wait, why the fuck are you with my brother?
Will and I have been seeing each other. I didn’t know he was your brother at first, and then I did, and I didn’t know how to tell you.
A pause. Longer than her usual response time.
You’re banging my brother? Jesus Christ, that must be breaking at least five girl codes.
It’s a long story.
You’re telling me my best friend and my foster brother are an item?
Yeah.
KAT.
That’s fucking epic. You can get married and be my mother-fucking sister!
Brother-fucking, I guess.
Kat! I’m going to need the full gossip asap. Friday night.
Are you still at Sam’s? You should bring him.
I feel like an ass saying it, knowing he’s dead half a car’s length away from me.
He’s been a bit weird these past few days, super distant. I think he might not be into me.
The only thing he’s going to be into is a thirty-foot well.
Aw babe. His loss.
I look up from the phone at the dark road ahead when Liam pulls over.
‘Time to turn it off,’ he says. ‘Phone towers. We don’t want them tracking us out here.’
Pressing the switch, I wait for the screen to go black.
‘Give me your necklace,’ he says, holding out his hand. I do. He closes his fist tight until I hear a small crunch, then he extracts the broken tracker and goes outside, burying it below the roots of a tree.
‘We can’t keep the trackers if we’re going to start this vengeance path together. We’ll need to be careful.’
I take my necklace back and slip it over my head, feeling naked without it. Then I eat another fry.
We drive the rest of the way in silence, through dark lanes I know so well, until Liam pulls onto the grassy verge and cuts the engine.
‘Are you ready?’ he asks.
I nod. ‘Are you?’
We’ve reached my parents’ estate, at one of the barely used footpaths far off the main road. Trees droop over the path, the starry sky only just visible beyond.
‘God, he’s heavy for a thin guy,’ I say as we heft Sam between us.
We struggle as we carry Sam over the rocky and tufted grassy path, the ferns and branches encroaching the whole way.
By the time we get to the small clearing that contains the well, we’re both depleted of the little energy we had managed to reclaim since our ordeal.
The moon shines on the stones of the well, mossy now with age.
The open mouth of it gapes open to the night as we drop Sam on the grass.
Liam looks down into the pit, narrowing his eyes in the darkness beneath.
‘Hey, Dad,’ he says, and there’s little love lost in his words.
‘You don’t have to,’ I say.
‘Yes, I do,’ he says. ‘I need to see him.’
So we stand there until the moon rises higher in the sky and fully lights up the well shaft.
And there at the bottom is his father. The skeleton’s no longer intact, but the skull gleams in the white light.
We stand there hand in hand for a long time, listening to the owls and the wind rustling the trees.
It’s peaceful, and it feels so right that fate has brought us back to this spot. To these woods where our story began. Liam reaches down and picks up a little grey stone.
He holds it for a moment, looking like he’s making a wish.
Then he tosses it in, and we listen to it fall.
‘I never had spare pennies to throw growing up, maybe that’s why my last wish took so long to come true.’
‘What was it?’
Liam faces me and cups my chin in his hand, kissing me so tenderly it makes me melt against him.
‘To spend my life at your heels.’
I can’t help but sigh with happiness as I wrap my arms around his neck and deepen the kiss.
‘He can’t hurt anyone anymore,’ I whisper when Liam looks back over the edge of the well at his dad.
‘Thank god.’
‘Sam,’ I say, when we’ve both caught our breath and had our fill of nighttime nature.
‘Got to be done,’ he says.
‘The fact that Sam will lie next to him forever bothers me,’ I admit. ‘He spent his whole life being hurt by men like him. And in death, they’ll be together forever.’
‘I know,’ Liam sighs.
‘It’s not right.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s not. But it’s the best option we’ve got.’
‘Yeah. I know what he did to us was horrible, but I still feel sorry for him. For the boy he was, and the man he could have been.’
‘He became what the years made him. Same as me.’
‘Not the same at all.’
‘We should bury them all in here. The ones who were in that room. They’ve gone on living, leaving destruction everywhere.’
Liam sets to work, stripping Sam of his clothes and the bin bag before using his knife to relieve him of his fingerprints. I turn away when Liam picks up a rock, and cringe at the crunch it makes when he slams the rock into his face, breaking teeth and making him unrecognisable.
‘Sam wanted justice. He went about it the wrong way, but what he wanted underneath it all was justice. And we’ll give him that.’
I watch while Liam lifts Sam’s naked body and carries him to the well, dumping him in. For the second time in my life, I hear the awful crunch of a body hitting the bottom.
‘It’s going to be messy,’ I say, wrapping my arms around myself.
‘And dangerous. Not just from the killing, but the risk of getting caught.’ Liam looks at me, wiping his hands on Sam’s t-shirt. ‘I can’t lose you again.’
‘If it comes to it, we’ll both leave the world together. Start our next adventure hand in hand.’
And I mean it. If it costs us everything to rid the world of the men who hurt Liam, it would be worth it. I smile at the way the moonlight highlights his face, and reach out for him, tucking myself against his chest.
‘I love you. I’ll finish my degree while you research the names, and then we’ll spend a year getting rid of the fuckers. A year of fucking, and killing, and loving.’ I reach up and graze his lips with mine.
‘I love you too, darling.’
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s go home and smoosh Reggie’s face.’
‘First, we need to drop a layer of rocks onto Sam and Dad. Cover them up a little.’
It’s the very last thing I want to do, but I give in, knowing we need to be thorough if we’re going to make it through the whole list of names.
For Sam.
For all of them.
Together.
Thank you so much for reading .