Chapter 34
By the time Jacob staggered back up to the surface, night had fallen. He’d bitten off his glove and clamped it to the side
of his throat, feeling his heartbeat through his fingers. He wouldn’t dare lift his hand. He’d already lost an alarming amount
of blood.
She got me. She really did it.
Unbelievable.
Catching the camera was a calculated risk, yes, but an acceptable one. He’d exposed himself for only a second. How the hell
did she make that shot? Throwing the GoPro with one hand, taking a two-handed grip and forming a sight picture, squeezing
the trigger—did she practice every month at the gun range, too? It was almost hilarious. What miserable luck.
He staggered to his Jeep and nearly tripped over the garden hose. He found Babygirl down by the creek’s edge, kneeling over
Ethan’s body. The boyfriend lay motionless on bloodstained rocks, his belly open and his wrists bound, a bag crudely zip-tied
over his head.
“Ethan’s dead,” she called up to him without looking. “No pulse.”
Jacob didn’t give a shit.
She gasped audibly when she saw the bloodstain on his jacket. He turned away from her, gripping his throat like he could somehow
hide it, assuring her he was fine in a croaking voice he didn’t recognize.
“Jacob—”
“Give me a sec.” He needed to sit down.
“Jacob, what happened?”
He half sat, half fell on his ass, but managed to keep pressure on his throat. He dreaded what would happen if he removed
his hand. He unzipped his first aid kit—upside down by mistake—and sutures and antiseptic wipes dumped onto the dirt. Goddamn it. He unrolled the last bit of gauze, just a few inches left, and pressed it to his neck.
When she reached him she hugged him. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d hugged, and it made his insides melt, a feeling
he couldn’t articulate. The GoPro was an uncomfortable lump in his pocket. He tossed it to the ground.
She saw it and froze. “You got it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“We have the footage now—”
“It won’t help us.” It hurt to speak, and explaining would take too many words. As he tilted his head back and wrapped duct
tape around his throat, he realized the treetops were swirling counterclockwise around the dusky sky. He was sober, but he
had the goddamn spins. And the gauze was already saturated like a clammy warm towel. The bleeding wouldn’t stop.
She wasn’t listening anyway. “We can still salvage this, if we’re fast.”
“Wait.”
“I’ll start the engine.” She hurried toward his Jeep. “We’ll run it down to a quarter tank. That’ll guarantee she dies down
there, while leaving you enough gas to—”
“Stop.”
She whirled to face him, her eyes diamond hard.
“It’s over.” He adjusted his grip and felt a new surge of warmth leak down the front of his shirt. “I need to get to a hospital.”
To this, she said nothing.
But he swore he could see something break inside her. Her eyes widened, just a microscopic change, and he recognized shock. Then panic, then anger, and then a bone-deep hatred. Or maybe it was all in his head. She’d always been a human inkblot test.
“We’re done here. Forget killing your friend. Forget all of this.” Jacob struggled to stand up and felt a tingling sensation
in his toes. Disturbingly, his injuries barely seemed to hurt anymore. His brain was full of cotton.
Her birdlike eyes flicked between him and his Jeep, processing their dilemma. To save Jacob’s life, they needed the vehicle.
To suffocate the woman in the cave, they needed the vehicle. Doing both was no longer an option.
She stepped closer. “Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes.”
“If we go to the hospital with a bullet hole in your neck, the cops will question us. And then it’s all ruined. Everything.
The whole plan. And we both go to prison.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I am not going to prison, Jacob.”
“Then stay here.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
Well, your best friend just slam-dunked your plan into the trash, Jacob tried to say, but his tongue felt oddly sluggish. His voice came out like a wheeze.
From out here in the mountains the nearest hospital was almost an hour away. Not good. He wasn’t sure if he could stay conscious
for the drive. He’d already lost quarts of blood through his fingers and it was still coming, a slow but steady leak, no matter
how much duct tape and gauze he wrapped around it. Again he tried to stand, but his legs were jelly. It felt like he weighed
a thousand pounds. The short walk to his Jeep looked like a mile.
He suspected he was dying but tried not to think about it.
Instead he pictured Motorcycle Guy’s prolapsed eyeball.
Life rarely cooperates with your fantasies, but that moment outside the margarita bar was like something from one of his dad’s action movies.
The timing, the surprise, the perfect haymaker.
The terror and relief in Babygirl’s eyes as she saw him for the first time, the stranger who’d saved her.
“There’s a better way,” she said now. Her voice was almost too faint to hear.
“What?”
“I have a solution.”
“To what?”
She smiled bleakly. “Everything.”
“Yeah?” He matched it with a dizzy grin of his own. “It must be a doozy.”
She touched his cheek with her hand, her glove’s studded fingers sliding through the hairs of his beard, and for a moment
he thought she might kiss him. Then her smile melted away and her eyes dimmed with sadness.
“It is,” she said.
She ripped the bandage off his throat. An arterial surge exploded out of him, hitting the ground with a splash. He clawed
at his neck, too late to stop it, and liquid warmth spurted between his fingers. “Babygirl—”
“For the last fucking time,” Tess said, “stop calling me that.”
“She lied to me.” Detective Layla Washington grips her phone. “Her entire story. Every word, every minute, she looked me in
the eye and lied. The second killer that day wasn’t Ethan, and it wasn’t Allie.”
On the line, the lieutenant says nothing. A staticky pause.
“It’s Tess.”