Mine (Crew of Elmwood Public #4)

1. Mallory

MALLORY

Bodies by Drowning Pool played an endless loop in my head seconds after I walked into the kitchen and came to a dead halt. Pun intended.

I wish I could say I was shocked—that I’d never seen a dead body before. Or blood spreading like spilled paint across tile. Or smelled the metallic tang in the air. But this? This was just another Saturday night.

My mom had a bit of a revenge complex. Totally justified, but some people would argue killing was killing, regardless of the motive.

I hadn’t been raised to think like that, not after everything I learned about my mother’s past, at probably too young an age, but she hadn’t had much choice when, much like now, I’d stumbled into a scene so painfully familiar as this one in the middle of the night when I was seven.

Mara Hales was many things. Unapologetic. Meticulous. And terrifyingly good at murder. The world might label her a serial killer. To me, she was just Mom.

She straightened from where she’d been crouched beside the body, the eight-inch knife gripped in her latex-gloved hand. She worked the blade free with a twist and pull, the wet sound of it like boots sucking out of mud.

She didn’t flinch or blink, just stood there, breathing steady, while blood dripped from the knife and splattered all over the floor.

“Again?” I said flatly, letting my backpack slide off my shoulders and thud to the ground.

Mom used her forearm to push a loose strand of black hair from her face, careful not to touch her skin with the gloves. “This is the last one, Malibu,” she promised, almost apologetically. “Once we move, I’m done. I just had to tie up a few loose ends first.”

I glanced down at the loose end in question, a two-hundred-ish-pound guy with auburn hair and green eyes, which were still open, by the way, and wearing what looked like an expensive suit.

His tie had been loosened around his neck as if he had a hard day and was looking forward to relaxing, probably with my mom.

The joke was on him.

The only men Mara Hales brought home left in the trunk of her ’67 Chevy Impala, wrapped in plastic and headed for whatever hole she’d dug in advance. She was nothing if not prepared. This guy never stood a chance against my mom. They rarely did.

Not that I blamed them. My mom wasn’t your typical mom.

When people saw Mara Hales, they didn’t instantly get warm and fuzzy, motherly vibes.

Her aura gave off sex. My mom was hot in a Playgirl way.

She could have easily been the magazine’s centerfold bunny with her curvy, toned body.

Killing men twice her size meant she was disciplined as fuck when it came to going to the gym and working out.

Me? Not so much. I despised the gym. Hell, I despised breaking a sweat, which was precisely why I stuck to yoga. I needed as much Zen in my life as I could attract. And Zen was all I seemed to attract.

My gaze tracked over the scene, the defensive wound on his palm where he’d grabbed the blade, the arterial spray on the cabinet doors, the way his other hand clutched his phone as if it might save him. It hadn’t.

I met Mom’s gaze, needing her to say it again. “Promise?”

She smiled. “Pinkie swear,” she vowed, peeling off the gloves and tossing them into the garbage. She’d changed since this morning into black yoga pants and a dark tank top, with her hair pulled back. Her work attire. The uniform of someone who understood that murder was messy.

She caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. “Care to lend a hand? Unless you have something more important to do.”

I rolled my eyes and went to the pantry, stepping carefully around the blood. The industrial plastic wrap sat on the third shelf, next to the contractor bags and the bottle of enzymatic cleaner that could break down organic matter. Normal pantry shit.

Grabbing the wrap, I unspooled the plastic while Mom rolled him, his deadweight making the motion awkward and graceless. The wrap crinkled loudly in the quiet kitchen, layer after layer until he looked like the world’s most morbid burrito.

“Could you, just once,” I grunted, grabbing his ankles while Mom took his shoulders, “kill someone who doesn’t weigh more than two hundred pounds?”

“Last one, remember?” She walked backward toward the garage door, moving smoothly despite the weight.

My arms burned, muscles screaming. “How could I forget?” What mattered was that she remembered.

I was so tired of waiting for the cops to show up and arrest her or CPS to come knocking and take me away.

Those were my worst nightmares. You would think my dreams would be haunted by the faces of dead men.

They weren’t, not after I learned what these assholes had done.

I worried about my mom more than I should. Sometimes it felt like I was the parent. Maybe it was our closeness in age, from her having me so young, and the two of us basically growing up and navigating life together.

Taking a break, we set the body down long enough for Mom to wedge open the door leading into the garage, and together, we hoisted him up and over the lip of the trunk.

He landed with a heavy thump, plastic crackling.

Mom adjusted his position, bending his knees to make him fit, before slamming the trunk shut with both hands.

“Thank God you remembered to close the door this time,” I said, wiping my palms on my jeans even though I hadn’t touched him directly.

Her deep blue eyes twinkled. “I don’t make mistakes.”

But she had. Once. I’d been ten, naive enough to still think monsters lived under beds instead of in the real world.

She’d forgotten to close the garage door that night, and Mrs. Chen from next door had walked past with her poodle.

The bloodstains on the concrete had stayed for weeks, no matter how much bleach Mom used. We’d moved three days later.

I’d learned then that most people only see monsters in shadows.

I saw mine next door, at school, and in anyone who might pose a threat to Mom and the life we had together. I hated the constant moving and the deep secrets, but I loved my mom more.

My father had never been in the picture.

I didn’t know his name, and neither did Mom.

He probably had no idea I existed, which was actually okay by me.

I wasn’t one of those girls who longed for a father figure.

I enjoyed the mother-daughter dynamic I had with Mom.

She was my best friend. My protector. My teacher.

Mom grabbed the bleach wipes from the metal shelf and scrubbed her palms in rough, circular motions.

The chemical smell made my eyes water. She grabbed the car keys from the bowl by the garage entrance and paused as her gaze drifted back toward the kitchen, where blood still painted abstract patterns across the tile.

“Don’t worry about the mess. I’ll clean it up when I get back.

You just make sure you’re all packed. We leave in the morning, just like planned. ”

“And the car?” I asked, trying to think of all the small details easily missed.

“I’ll stop at the car wash on Morrison, the one with the undercarriage spray.” She glanced at me again, and for just a second, she looked tired. “Don’t worry, Malibu, everything will be fine. It always is.”

I rolled my eyes at the nickname. I was anything but sunny and bright, and I hated the beach; damn sand got into cracks it had no business being in.

But Malibu had been what she’d been drinking when she got pregnant with me, and she constantly told me I was the only good thing that came out of that night.

I wanted to believe everything would be okay, because as much as I feared getting ripped away from her by CPS, I feared a world without her more. “Let me know when you’re home,” I insisted. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I knew she was safe.

She nodded, her lips twisting at the corners. “Go.” She nudged me toward the door that led back into the house. “The fun’s over. I’ll handle the rest.”

And she would. She always did.

I walked back through the kitchen without looking at the floor, climbed the stairs to my room, and started pulling clothes from my closet. The same clothes I’d packed in Dallas. And Phoenix before that. And Portland before that.

I had no attachments to this space, to this house. We hadn’t been here long enough, and I stopped thinking of the rooms I stayed in as mine years ago. They were like short-term rentals.

I grabbed the worn stuffed white bunny from my bed. Angel, Mom had named her when she gifted the plushy to me on my third birthday. He was the one thing I never left behind. “One last move,” I told Angel before putting her back on the bed.

They said the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. But what if I wasn’t just near the tree? What if I was already growing roots in the same blood-soaked soil? Was I destined to be like my mom, a killer by blood? Or could I break the cycle, free my family from suspicion and death?

The Chevy’s shocks groaned under the weight.

Every inch of cargo space was crammed full, duffel bags wedged against boxes, loose clothes shoved into gaps, and that stupid artificial plant Mom refused to leave behind somehow balanced on top of everything else.

The trailer behind us rattled and clanked over every pothole, our entire lives reduced to whatever could fit and what we could tie down.

We’d done this six times in four years. We were basically professional nomads at this point.

Mom always tried to make moving exciting, a fun experience.

She would bring out the folded map she kept, spread it out on the table, tell me to close my eyes, and pick a place.

Wherever my finger landed, that was where we’d go.

This time it landed on Elmwood, an East Coast town neither of us had ever heard of, but a quick Google search showed it had promise. Cute. Quaint. Peaceful. And very far.