Chapter Thirty-Six Cole
If Hailey hadn’t accidentally killed Lars Winters, I would have.
I was ready to fucking strangle him before he attacked her, and the second his hands touched her, I was ready to rip him limb from limb.
But everything felt like it was moving in slow motion.
It all happened within seconds, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.
The fucker is lucky she ended him quickly, because I would have kept him alive for as long as possible.
I would have made him beg for death.
Hailey walks under her own power, which is the only reason I’m not carrying her, broken ribs be damned. She would have hated it. As it is, she keeps her arm around my waist and her head against my shoulder and lets me do half the work of moving her up the slope.
Austen has pulled the van closer to the path, so the walk isn’t too far once we’re out of the creek bed. Tonight, the van is an oasis in what has become a desolate landscape.
I get the side door open. The interior light comes on, and right above the workstation, the pink neon glow of Stalkers Anonymous flickers on with it.
I lift Hailey carefully onto the bench seat, and that’s when I see what’s on the floor of the van. A small cooler. Two folded blankets. A plastic grocery bag containing chocolate cupcakes, a packet of beef jerky, two bottles of water, and a single banana.
“Austen.” I look toward the front of the van. “What is this?”
“Snacks.” Austen is yet again typing away furiously, and doesn’t look up. The driver’s seat is fully reclined, and his keyboard is in his lap. “Aftercare snacks. We always have aftercare snacks.”
“You always have aftercare snacks,” I repeat, because I have to hear it out loud.
“Aftercare is very important, you know.” He just shrugs.
“He’s not wrong,” Hailey says sarcastically beside me, making my attention snap back to her.
“I’ll have you know—”
Austen cuts me off. “Cole, please get in or out of the van. You’re letting cold air in.”
Hailey, on the bench seat, is already peeling back the liner of a cupcake.
“Hailey. You have blood all over you, and you just—”
“Cole. I’m a doctor with three broken ribs and low blood sugar. I just watched a man’s skull fold in half and tried performing CPR on him. I am eating the cupcake.”
“Stay with Austen. I’ll be right back.” I close the side door of the van, leaving her with the aftercare snacks.
They’re very important, you know.
Jessica is waiting for me on the path back down to the bridge.
She’s already changed clothes. I do not know when or where that change happened.
She came to the footbridge in jeans and a flannel, and she’s now in head-to-toe black.
There’s a backpack on the ground next to her, and she has a pair of latex gloves in her hand.
She holds the gloves out to me when I reach her. “Let’s do this.”
It’s nine minutes from the moment I put on the gloves until the moment Lars Winters is in a tarp.
In those nine minutes, Zach has documented, photographed, and bagged every loose piece of evidence within a ten-foot radius of where Lars went down.
Jessica has produced, from the backpack, a checklist. An actual paper checklist on a clipboard.
She’s going through it with the team and checking items off.
“Phone.”
“Got it.” Zach holds up Lars’s phone, sealed in a plastic bag. “Powered off. Battery pulled.”
“Wallet.”
“Got it.”
“Anything in the pockets we don’t recognize.”
“Cigarette lighter, half a pack of cigarettes, fourteen dollars cash, folded napkin with a phone number on it.”
“Bag the napkin separately. Austen will run the number tomorrow.” She scribbles that down on the checklist.
In the last ten minutes, I’ve come to realize two things: Jessica’s job is to keep everyone organized and on task, and Tyler is the cleanup driver.
The latter dawned on me when he disappeared and came back five minutes later with a second beat-up brewery van.
This van is full of cleaning supplies, shovels, flashlights, gasoline, and its very own neon Stalkers Anonymous sign.
This one is blue.
The body goes into the back of the van. Zach shuffles things around inside to make room for it. I help Tyler lift, and so does Grant. Dead Shitbag doesn’t resist and slides in easily.
Tyler closes the back doors and turns to me.
“Take Austen and Hailey home in the tech van. I’ve got it from here.
He’ll turn up in the morning. Hit-and-run on a frontage road outside Greeley.
Cops will run his plate, find his hideout, and what looks like a half-packed bag, like he was getting ready to skip town.
There won’t be a single thing about it that points anywhere near a single one of us. ”
Tyler climbs into the driver’s seat of the van and reaches for the door. Just before he closes it, he leans out and looks me dead in the eye. “Tell anyone about this, and we really will have to consider rebranding to Killers Anonymous.”
“Got it.” I give him an awkward smile. “Lips sealed.”
“Good.” He smiles, slapping his hands on the steering wheel. “Well, we’ll see you at the next meeting with Tracey.”
Before I can say anything else, he slams the door shut, starts the engine, and begins driving off. Just as I’m about to turn to walk back to Hailey in the tech van, Tyler slams on the brakes and throws the cleanup van into reverse. He manually cranks the driver’s side window down.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I really like Hailey. She’s a good one, and now that I’ve seen how the two of you look at each other… I understand why you did everything. We’d all go that far to protect someone we love.”
“Thanks, man.” I bump his arm with my fist. “See you Tuesday.”
Tyler nods, then pulls his head back inside the van and drives off into the night. I watch the taillights until they disappear completely, then go to check on the girl of my dreams.