Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
ARLOW
Willing my heart to slow into a safer tempo, I put the safety on my gun and tuck it in my waistband. I have to keep reassuring myself that Calli is okay. I made it here in time. When I clicked on the notification for the trail cam, all I expected to see was another deer or raccoon. My heart must be okay, because the sight of Calli marching past with a gun held to her back should have been enough to stop it. I’ve never felt such terror and panic. I couldn’t tell you anything I did or thought between grabbing my gun and running to the woods.
I knew one thing. If I found him, he wasn’t leaving the forest alive. No one is taking her from me. If he was arrested, his jail sentence would end eventually. She’d have to leave and run again.
It never occurred to me that she led him out here to kill him.
She steps up and cups my face, looking into my eyes. “Are you okay?”
Look at her, standing here bruised and scraped with blood splattered on her. Asking if I’m okay. “Now that I know you’re safe, I’m fine. How do you feel? Your breathing…”
“I can breathe fine. I’m just sore.”
I take her hand and lead her back toward the field. “Come on. We need some stuff to move him.”
At least we have over twelve hours of darkness to get him underground. There’s little chance anyone will see us. I can’t remember the last time someone set foot in the graveyard unless they were with me. That’s the best place to put him. The forest will be hard to dig, too full of roots. Plus, I already have a long strip cleared that I planned to plant bushes in this spring.
The motion lights blink on when we get back to the driveway and I pull up the app that controls them, shutting them all off, along with the security and trail cameras. I’ll have to go back and delete everything they picked up so far.
Calli closes her car door that’s still standing open, then asks, “Are we taking the ATV?”
“You need to ice your neck, drink some water, and rest. I’ve got this.”
“Absolutely not. I’m helping put that motherfucker in the ground. Don’t waste your breath arguing.”
I didn’t expect her to agree but I had to try. It’s hard to see her so banged up. “Alright. We’ll take the ATV and the log hauler. It’ll fit through the forest easier than the trailer. Where’s your metal detector? We need to find his phone and gun.”
“At my cabin. I’ll get it.”
“Do you want me to?—”
She flaps her hand back at me, already on her way. “He’s dead. The threat is gone. I’m not afraid.”
She isn’t afraid but she’s running on pure adrenaline. I can hear it in her voice. How long will this terrifying night haunt her?
That’s a problem for later. Right now, I need to move. While she retrieves the metal detector, I run in my house and take one of my pills that keeps my heart rate and blood pressure lower. Shoveling for hours isn’t exactly an approved exercise but it needs to be done.
Calli meets me beside the barn as I’m connecting the log hauler to the new ATV. I hand her a couple of pain pills and a bottle of water. “Take these, sweetheart.”
She swallows them with a slight grimace. “Where do you want to bury him? Behind the cabin?”
“No, at the perimeter of the graveyard. I’ll show you.” After we get the supplies we need loaded onto the ATV, she climbs on behind me. Her arms wrap around my middle, and I take a moment to squeeze her hand. It feels like I’m functioning on auto pilot mode as we make our way back through the forest and field.
It’s all happened so fast. We’re heading out to pick up a dead body—a man I killed—and bury him on my property. Surreal isn’t a strong enough word. Not one ounce of me regrets it.
“Will you look for the gun and phone while I get him chained to the hauler?” Calli nods and turns on her metal detector. The faint beeps play as I wrap the chains and straps around the body, strapping it to the hauler like I’ve done so many logs.
My stomach flips at the way his head hangs, dangling to look at me with open blank eyes. Before Calli can see, I toss a tarp over his top half.
“Got them,” she says, returning with the gun and phone.
“Good. Let’s go.”
The trip back through the forest is uneventful. The creek is low, and I make sure to cross at a spot that the hauler had no problem handling before. The last thing we need is to get stuck. A bitterly cold wind strikes us as we pull into the clearing of the graveyard, and I feel Calli press her face into the back of my coat.
We’ll be warm soon enough. Digging is hard work.
I park the log hauler in the trees at the edge of the graveyard. It isn’t hidden. I’m not worried that we’ll be interrupted but this is going to take a while and we don’t need to look at him.
“Right beside the other bushes? Is that what you’re thinking?” Calli asks.
“Yes, it won’t look like the ground has been disturbed in a strange spot if the police end up investigating us. We’ll plant more bushes over him. In spring, he’ll be covered by foliage.”
She nods and tosses me a pair of gloves, then puts hers on. “We should burn him like he did your poor bees.” I’m glad she’s angry. It’s as good a way to get through this night as any. “We only need to put him about three feet down. That’s deep enough to keep animals from digging him up.” She shrugs when I look at her with my eyebrows raised. “I watch a lot of crime shows.”
“Good to know.”
We start digging and it goes a little quicker than I anticipated. “We’re lucky only the top crust is frozen,” I remark, stepping on the blade of the shovel to drive it deeper. “Another month and the ground would’ve been too solid.”
Calli nods, wiping sweat from her forehead and leaving a streak of dirt behind. We’re both covered in grime. I’m surprised to see her lips tilt into a grin. “Remember the day I brought you the cobbler?”
Of course I do. I remember the fear on her face at the sight of the burlap bundles and shovel, and how we laughed after I explained what was going on. “You said burying people is more of a winter activity.”
She gestures to the snow flurries with a chuckle. “I was right. This would be awful in the heat.”
Maybe she will be okay after this. Maybe we both will.
The moon rises as we work, casting a blue hue over everything. It makes me think of the first night I brought Calli to the firepit. She was afraid to walk through the graveyard alone. Now she’s burying someone here without any qualms. Life is so twisted sometimes.
“I think that’s good enough, don’t you?” Calli says, flopping down to sit alongside the grave and blowing out a harsh breath.
Assuming he hasn’t gone into rigor, and we can bend him a little to stuff him in, it should work. “I think so.”
She guzzles her water then holds it out to me for a drink. A sudden realization strikes her. “Arlow, your heart. Are you supposed to…this is too much, isn’t it?”
“The list from the cardiologist didn’t specifically say no murder or body disposal.” She gives me an exasperated look. “I’m fine, Peach. And we’re almost done. Filling it in will be easier and we have all night. I’m not in danger.”
After a moment of thought, she seems to realize there isn’t any other choice and nods. She waits by the grave while I move the log hauler over. There’s no good way to release the body and it plops to the ground once the chains are undone.
“Wait,” Calli says, when I start to roll him into the grave. Her face crumples in disgust as she searches his pockets and pulls out a wallet. “We don’t want to leave identification on him.”
“Good thinking.”
She kneels beside me to help roll him, but before he budges, her hand clamps onto my arm. My name slips out in a cracked voice, filled with despair and terror. “Arlow.” Her wide eyes are locked on the graveyard where a man makes his way toward us. “Someone’s coming.”
I’m not proud of the thought that hits me in the first few seconds, before I recognize who it is. We’ll have to dig a deeper hole. That I could even entertain killing a stranger because we were caught is terrifying and my only excuse is that I love her. I won’t let anything happen to her, no matter who stands in my way.
“It’s okay.” I lay my hand over her fingers that are digging into my bicep. “Calli, it’s Lee. I’ll talk to him. It’ll be alright. I promise.”
The tears that slip out of her eyes say she doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t know Lee’s background, or the things he’s done. Though he’s moved on from his former life working for a vigilante group, this isn’t anything he hasn’t seen or participated in before.
And he’s my best friend.
He stops a few feet away, his gaze skipping between Calli, the body, and me. “I was going to say you better have a damn good reason for ignoring my calls, but this is a hell of an excuse.”
“He came after her. I didn’t have a choice.”
Lee nods, and though I doubt he needs any convincing, I pull out my phone and load up the video of Calli being marched through the woods at gunpoint.
He looks up from the screen to Calli. “He choked her.”
“I got there just in time. She was losing consciousness.”
“Do you think he had any partners?”
“There’s no reason to think so. He’s the one she saw in the forest before. If he had help, they would’ve stepped in once I showed up.”
He drops his voice so she can’t overhear. “Is this a secret you think she can keep? Can she live with it?”
It’s a fair question, but not one that worries me. “She led him to the woods to push him over the cliff herself.”
His lips twitch up. “Good for her.”
Calli looks up at him with fearful eyes when he approaches her. She doesn’t resist when he lifts her head to look at the angry bruises on her neck. “You won. Whenever this night comes back to haunt you, remember that. You won.” Her stiffened posture relaxes as he continues. “Did you check him for ID?”
She nods and holds it up. “And his phone and gun.”
“Good.” He picks up her shovel and runs his hand along the blade of it, then picks up mine and does the same. “Look away,” he tells her, holding the blade of the shovel over Carl’s fingers.
Calli jerks her head away and closes her eyes while he chops off the tips of the fingers, driving the shovel down with his foot. It takes a few tries on each hand, but he manages. Calli hands over the ID when he reaches for it. He walks a few feet away, then drops the fingertips and ID in a pile. He pulls a lighter out of his pocket, cracks open the bottom of it and douses them in lighter fluid. The last of the fluid is used to strike the lighter and set the pile aflame.
The ID melts and blackens almost instantly and the smell of the fingers makes me never want barbecue pork again. Leaving it to burn, he approaches the body and nods at me. “Let’s get this done. I want to get home before the storm.”
With Lee’s help, it doesn’t take long to fill in the hole and even out the ground. The whole area is dirt and will be muddy soon with a storm coming. It won’t look like we’ve been digging here. Calli sits at the edge of the grave to rest while Lee collects the gun, phone, and charred remains of the ID and fingers.
“I won’t take the SIM card out until I get to the lakes,” he says. “This looks like a burner—no contacts or anything in it—but if anyone ever tries to trace it, it’ll end at the lakes, not here. It’ll be on the bottom of the lake with the gun.” He sweeps his eyes over us. “You two need to clean everything the body touched with bleach and burn the clothes you’re wearing.”
Calli doesn’t ask how he seems to know what to do, but I can see her curiosity as she nods. “Lee,” she calls as he starts to leave. He pauses to look back. “Thank you.”
“Thank me by keeping this between the three of us. No one else. Ever.”
“I swear.”
After he leaves, I hold out my hand to help her to her feet. We still have a few things to do before the night is over, but all that falls away when she cradles my face in her hands, stopping me in place.
Her thumb brushes over my jaw as she looks me in the eye. “I love you.”
It’s the last thing I expect to hear and my heart races every bit as fast as it did on my run through the woods. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, and the shake of my head is an involuntary denial. “Calliope.” Her name slips out on a whispered prayer to the heedless universe.
“No.” Her voice is unwavering, resolute. “You don’t get to kill for me and then say I can’t love you.” She kisses me softly, then rests her forehead on my chest. “All I could think about as I was losing consciousness was that I should’ve told you before it was too late. I’m not asking you to feel the same or say it back, but I need you to know.”
Her words crush me. I’m overcome by so much emotion. The intensity of my love battles with guilt for letting it happen and allowing her to think for even a moment that it’s one-sided. I can’t let her go another second believing she’s the only one.
“Look at me, sweetheart.” She gazes up at me, and I cup the back of her head gently. “I love you to the edges of my sanity. If I felt any more, there’d be nothing of me left, only you filling the space.”
The tears that slip from her eyes break my heart. After everything she’s been through tonight, that she would cry for this. For being loved.
We’re both exhausted. I wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Come on. Let’s get the clean-up finished so we can go home.”
It’s after three in the morning by the time we have the log hauler and all the tools we used cleaned and put away. Both covered in dirt, blood, and dried sweat, we strip down in my bathroom to share a shower.
“I liked those jeans, damn it,” she mumbles, throwing her clothes into the paper bag along with mine to be burned in the fireplace.
I’m too busy running my eyes over her to respond. In the harsh overhead light, the finger shaped bruises on her neck are more noticeable, along with the swollen lump under her eye. Dusky purple splashes across her ribs on both sides. He must’ve been squeezing her with his knees as he straddled her. When she turns to step into the shower, an array of bruises and marks are visible on her back as well.
My frozen stare draws her attention as she steps into the spray. “What’s wrong?”
It takes me a minute to swallow the rage and let the knot in my stomach loosen before stepping in to join her. She looks up at me as I run my fingertips gently over her bruised ribs. “He hurt you so badly. I wish he was standing in front of me right now so I could kill him slower.”
She swallows hard. “He’s dead. That’s what matters. It’s over. We won.” Her words are strong, but exhaustion washes out her face.
“Let me take care of you.” There’s no argument when I take the soft washcloth from her hands and gently run it over her shoulders. She tilts her head, letting me continue to her sensitive neck. I wash her from head to toe, wishing I could erase all the painful marks as tears slip down her cheeks.
She looks up to let me shampoo her hair and winces when my fingers brush over a small lump on the back of her head. “Sorry,” I murmur, being more careful rinsing out the soap. “Did you hit your head too?”
“He slammed it into the ground. Good thing it was mud.” Her quick, forced smile isn’t reassuring.
“I think you should go get checked out at the hospital. You could have a concussion, broken bones. We can think of something to tell them. A random attack…attempted carjacking.” It’s not the most realistic idea but what if she’s seriously injured?
“No. It’s been over eight hours and I’m not dizzy or anything. I don’t even have a headache. I’m just sore and tired. I’ll be fine.” She traces the scar on my chest and looks up at me. “Are you okay?”
It feels like so much is contained in that question. Am I okay after killing a man? Is my heart okay after a strenuous night? Am I okay with her loving me? “I’m with you, darling. I couldn’t be better.”
Her lips lift into a cautious smile. She hooks her arms around my neck, folding her hands over my nape. “Are you? With me?”
I am. Selfish or not, I’m done spending my time alone, desperately struggling to rearrange the pieces of my life to hide the gap love has left. She loves me and I’ve never loved anyone like this. She’s mine. “If you’re sure that’s what you want. For what it’s worth, you’ve got me.”
Her smile widens and her wet lips brush mine. “It’s worth everything. Every risk and worry running through your head right now. You’re worth it. So let that go and just tell me you love me.”
Our warm wet bodies press together when I pull her close. “I love you, Calliope.”