Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Kira
We’re so fucked.
I rub my temples from the backseat of Caleb’s sleek Audi, orange streetlights whizzing by on the highway.
But the flare is hazy, barely able to penetrate the tinted windows, and it’s as if I’m tucked into my own little dark cocoon back here, sectioned off from the adults like a child.
Nix sits in the passenger seat, the glow of the touchscreen console illuminating her silhouette, while Caleb drives. And they have music playing.
Music.
Playing.
While we have a body crammed into the trunk.
I can’t. I truly fucking can’t.
Maybe I had a stroke when I had the tear.
Maybe that’s why I’m letting two high schoolers chauffeur a dead cop through Cloverwick, because clearly, I’m not in my right mind.
But to my credit, I thought really hard about an alternative, meticulously going down the list of friends who would be willing to help me hide a body.
But I had the sad realization that my only friend, my only ride-or-die willing to help me hide a body, is my baby sister.
I suppress a groan.
I suppose I could have entertained the idea of calling Marshal—if he wasn’t dead—but that would have gone beyond the occasional groceries he helped out with. And he was a cop for fuck’s sake, probably a bad idea, even if he didn’t turn Nix and me in all those years ago.
“I bet you never heard this one,” Caleb says to Nix as we round a bend, turning the music louder, and I can make out just a shadow of a grin on his profile.
Nix looks over at him and smiles, a soft, flirty thing, and I silently scream into my hands. This isn’t a fucking date. This isn’t cute. You don’t bond over a corpse in the trunk unless you’re the type of couple who end up on documentaries..
I want to tell them to knock it off, but I’m saving my energy.
If I thought that moving the body from the house to the truck was hard, I’m in for it when it comes time to cart it up into the hills.
We have to take it deep enough that no one will stumble upon a freshly turned mound.
Thankfully, Caleb helped Nix move it from the truck to his trunk, but I can’t expect them to be able to carry it the whole way.
And really, I shouldn’t expect Caleb to do anything but strand us at the first sign of hard work.
This car… his clothes… He comes from money.
And I’m not saying that it doesn’t take hard work to make money, but I am saying he’s only a child of someone who worked hard.
He doesn’t know what it takes. Not yet, if ever—considering his parents seemed to think a teenager needed a car as nice as this.
What did he say his dad did? A lawyer? Shit, must be a really good one if the warmed leather under my ass is any indication.
I let myself sink into it, close my eyes, and try to eat up as much of a break as I can.
God, I could have been a lawyer. Or a doctor.
Really, I had my sights set on psychology—the idea of figuring out what makes people tick.
What makes a man abandon his newborn baby after his wife dies during childbirth?
That.
That would have been nice to know. And who knows, maybe I could have helped families—prevented what happened to me and Nix from happening to others. But then again, people like that—fathers of babies with dead mothers—would have to seek out help.
Our father only sought help from the bottom of a bottle.
But it doesn’t matter now. I missed my opportunity to become a psychologist, a doctor, a lawyer…
The scholarship I won all but evaporated the day I graduated and found our father passed out in the bathroom.
He had been clean for fourteen weeks. I had made sure of it.
I needed him to finally be a father, at least for Nix, so I could leave, and I held his pathetic hand through the whole detox.
I even spoke to my then-manager at Bell’s about hiring him for a barback position.
I really thought he would finally get it together.
Because he had to. Because I was leaving.
But when he didn’t show up for graduation, I knew I would never be going anywhere.
Nix deserved better than being left with a man who would rather spend his money on alcohol than food. She deserved better than being bounced around in the system. She deserved—deserves—better than this.
I crack my eyes, the time on the dash telling me it’s just past midnight.
She should be home, asleep, preparing for her senior exams, not getting ready to bury a body.
God, maybe I should have let her go into the system.
Maybe then she wouldn’t have been left at home at night for Officer Marshal to harass.
Maybe her foster parents would have known he wasn’t actually trying to help. Maybe—
“Here!” I lean forward between the seats. “Turn here.”
Caleb quickly hits the brakes, squinting out the windshield as he spots the hidden road—just a narrow shadow that winds up to Horizon Bluff.
It’s supposed to be hard to find, as they don’t want anyone up there anymore.
I think the last I heard was that the cliff was crumbling, but we aren’t here to park on the edge and make out. We’re here to bury a body.
Caleb’s car struggles through the overgrowth, jostling about and scraping the underside, and I expect him to complain about his precious car.
But maybe I’m being too harsh. I mean, he didn’t even so much as flinch when he helped Nix move Marshal to his trunk, which, now that I think about it, is odd, even if he wasn’t a rich kid.
I know that just the few minutes I had to handle Marshal, with his cold and stiff limbs, that my face was scrunched up in displeasure.
I keep my eyes on him as we crest the bluff and break free of the foliage.
He seems harmless, kind of cute actually, and I can see why Nix might like him.
For me, he’d need a good amount of stubble and muscle, but I can see him getting there when he gets older.
With his dark hair and eyes, and the sharp jawline he hasn’t grown into…
he’s definitely going to be a looker. He sort of reminds me of someone, but I can’t place it, and I don’t have the time to figure it out right now.
“Don’t go up to the edge,” I tell him. “It’s not stable.”
“Should I stop here then?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. No one comes up here anymore.” I unbuckle my seat belt.
“Wait,” Nix spins in her seat. “This is the spot, isn’t it?” Her eyes are alight, and it takes me a second to realize what she’s asking.
When I do, I groan and grab the door handle.
“Oh, my God. It is!” she squeals. “What was his name? I can’t—”
I get out and shut the door on her before she can finish.
Now is not the time to rehash the night I lost my virginity.
Actually, never would be a good time. I only told her about it to discourage her from having sex herself.
Because it was awful. It was awkward and gross and didn’t feel good at all.
Michael was way more into it than me, all eager and careless.
And while I obviously didn’t want Nix getting an STD or pregnant, I also didn’t want her to face the same disappointment I did.
I’ve since found better lays. Though, if I’m being honest, they all kind of feel lackluster.
I mean, I orgasm because I’m going to get mine regardless, even if that means clamping my hands on the guy’s waist and guiding his movements because I’m not about to let some guy huff and puff over me for nothing.
But where’s the sweat-drenching, toe-curling, life-changing orgasm I was promised from movies?
It doesn’t exist.
Just like a bright future never existed for me.
I set my teeth and tap on the trunk, ready to get this over with. A second later, it pops, and Caleb and Nix get out.
“You can stay in the car,” I say to Caleb, eyeing the lumpy galaxy comforter and the shovel we found in the garage. “You’ve already helped enough, and truth be told, I still don’t trust you.”
“Didn’t you just get out of the hospital, though?” he asks and shimmies up to my left, Nix already on my right.
“And didn’t you just get out of diapers?” I sigh.
“I don’t think you should be carrying him.” He ignores my dig.
“Yeah,” Nix chimes in. “You should be the one to stay in the car. We can do it.”
I glare at her. “Sorry if I’m a third wheel for you two, but I’m not about to leave our bleak futures up to two high schoolers. He needs to be buried. Deep.”
“I know how to bury a body,” Caleb says. “You don’t have to worry.”
“How would you know how to bury a body?” I eye him, gripping the trunk to steady myself. “Jesus, Nix, who is this kid?”
“Just get out of the way,” she says, nudging me. “It’s getting cold.”
I’m at my wit’s end, my heart thumping even though I haven’t done anything yet, and begrudgingly, I step back. They quickly close the gap I leave. In tandem, they lean in and maneuver Marshal into their arms.
It’s like a bad dream—the quiet night, the desolate area, the dark car… But it’s really happening. An actual body is being pulled from the trunk, and there’s a heavy thud when it’s dropped onto the ground.
I flinch. “Jesus.”
“He’s dead. It’s okay,” Caleb tries to soothe me, but it only makes my chest tighten further.
Who has my baby sister gotten herself involved with?
I can’t think of anyone who would be so nonchalant about moving a body.
But he seems kind. I can read it in his eyes as he bends to bear more of the body’s weight than Nix.
It’s in the concerned glance he gives me as he begins to walk backward.
It’s in the lopsided grin he gives Nix as if he’s happy to be here.
I may be exhausted, but I can read people.
It’s a sense that comes from so many years of bartending, and Caleb is a sweet kid.
But indifferent about a dead body… It doesn’t make sense.
But maybe I should just be grateful. Because I really don’t think I could carry Marshal. Not if the way my head is spinning is any indicator.
“I guess… I guess I’ll just carry the shovel,” I say mostly to myself and scrape it up from the ground before shuffling after them.
“We can,” Caleb grunts, adjusting Marshal’s shoulders in his hold, “we can double back for that if you want to take a nap in the car.”
I’m about to tell him I’m not a toddler and that I don’t need a fucking nap when lights suddenly illuminate the trees. I’m momentarily blinded, but the sound of tires on gravel makes me spin.
Shielding my eyes, I curse.
A car.
A fucking car.
And we aren’t even in the underbrush yet.
Nix and Caleb hold Marshal like a too-heavy sack of potatoes between them, caught like deer in headlights.
I don’t even have time to shout for them to run, to hide.
The car is going too fast—way too fast. I squeeze my eyes shut, my body freezing up, sure whoever’s behind the wheel is going to run me over.
The engine is deafening as the tires peel over the gravel, the heat of the grill suddenly on my skin too soon, but then—mercifully—the car skids to a stop in front of me.
I take a breath before I risk opening my eyes, my heartbeat in my ears.
The headlights are still on, too bright and casting me in a spotlight.
Blinking, I squint at the souped-up car, some sort of black Charger with a purring engine, but I can’t see who’s behind the wheel.
“Go!” I hiss, risking taking my eyes off the car, because if there’s any chance whoever it is hasn’t seen the body, then we need to take it.
But all my hope vanishes as I find Caleb bending at the knees, setting Marshal down.
No.
What the fuck is he doing?!
“Go!” I try again, but his shoulders sag as he stuffs his hands in his pockets, an air of resignation in his stance.
I gape as Nix whispers something to him that I can’t hear over the engine, but my attention is pulled back to the car as the lights suddenly cut and the car shuts off.
My heartbeat takes up the silence, pounding painfully as I make out the silhouette of a guy behind the windshield.
His head is tilted, and though I can’t make out his eyes, I can feel them raking over me.
For a tense minute, I’m snared in his shadowed stare.
My skin prickles, my cheeks flushing like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t, and then I remember…
I am doing something I shouldn’t be doing.
All three of us.
And we’re so fucked.