Chapter Sixty
Irvin
I stare at the concrete walls. The chains around my ankles and wrists bite into my skin. My eyes burn from the white lighting hanging on the wall. It reeks of piss and shit in here. The board members are carrying out my execution first thing in the morning.
I called Jameson and told him everything—that I’m innocent. I don’t know if he believed me; I was only granted a five-minute phone call.
Who the fuck would set me up for the murders on campus?
I have no enemies willing to go this far.
I close my eyes and lean against the padded wall. I picture Lilac happy. I picture her smiling. I hope she gets out of here. I hope she lives a full life. Even though she told me she hated me, I don’t care. I’d rather her hate me than feel nothing at all.
I shake my head. The terror on Lilac’s face sends pain straight through my chest. It doesn’t matter who set me up; I’m going to die in the morning.
I open my eyes.
The steel door opens.
A guard removes his mask, and Jameson shakes out his hair. Blood splatters across his chest.
“I knew you didn’t kill those people on campus,” he states as he removes the chains from my wrists and ankles.
He pulls me in and slaps my back.
“Thanks for breaking me out of here.”
“No problem. That’s what friends are for.”
I didn’t expect him to break me out of prison. I didn’t think anyone cared about me except Lilac.
“I knew when you called that it was bad,” he says, “but I didn’t think you were getting framed for those murders.”
He tosses clothes at me. “Put those on. I disarmed the place, but we only have twenty minutes before the cameras come back online.”
I pull on the guard’s uniform and slip the mask over my face. We walk slowly through the prison.
My heart is in my throat as we pass other guards. No one suspects anything—yet. Jameson scans a metal card. The screen on the wall turns green. We walk out of the building.
Inside the SUV, Jameson gets into the driver’s seat, and I slide into the passenger seat. I exhale and remove the mask. He hands me my phone, then pulls up a map. A single dot pulses on the screen.
“Your wife is at a cemetery,” Jameson says. “Do we go get her first, then figure—”
“Take me to Lilac.”
I’m fucking glad I put a GPS tracker on my wife. Without it, I wouldn’t have a clue where she is.
Why would she be at the cemetery where my mother is buried? Maybe she’s saying goodbye. That’s one of the things I love about Lilac—she’s sweet. She actually listened when I talked about my mother.
Jameson stops the car, and I jump out, following the blue dot. I stand exactly where it says she is—but she’s nowhere in sight.
I crinkle my nose and glance around the cemetery. The tracking device is one hundred percent accurate.
Jameson scans the eerie grounds. “Where the fuck is she?”
“The tracker is in her body—not her phone.”
I glance down at the fresh soil. Dug up. Recently.
My ears ring. My stomach drops.
“No fucking way… Is she buried in there?”
I check Lilac’s vitals through the app. Her heart rate is slowing. Her oxygen levels are dropping.
“No! No!” I bellow. “She’s in the ground! Go get shovels!”
My chest tightens. Goosebumps crawl up my skin.
Jameson rushes back with shovels, and we dig, throwing dirt everywhere.
“Don’t die on me, baby!” I scream. “Faster!”
“We’re going to get her out!” Jameson yells as we dig as fast as we can.
My phone explodes with notifications—her heart is dangerously close to stopping. Her pulse is weak.
“Keep digging!” I scream. “Stay with me, princess!”
We hit a coffin.
My phone wails like a siren.
I look down.
Her heart stops.
“Don’t leave me, baby!” I yell.
We tear the coffin lid open. Lilac’s face is pale, her lips blue. I yank her out and press my mouth to hers, starting chest compressions.
“Wake the fuck up, Lilac!”
I continue doing compressions.
Seconds later, her eyes snap open. She coughs violently, then freezes when she sees me.
I scoop her into my arms, but she fights—kicking, slapping.
“Lilac, baby. It’s me. It’s Irvin.”
She collapses against me, wrapping her arms around my neck, squeezing tight. Tears stream down her cheeks. She buries her face in my chest, trembling, making incoherent sounds. She kicks and screams, smacks me in the face.
“Get off me!”
I wrap my arms around her tight, kissing her forehead. “I got you, baby. I got you.”
She stares at me wide-eyed. “I’m alive… I’m alive…”
I tilt her head to meet my eyes. “You are, my love.”
“Irvin…” She squeezes me tighter, and I let her.
Rage eats at me.
“Princess. Who did this?”
“Emerson.”
My blood runs cold.
“Who the fuck is Emerson?” Jameson asks.
“Her ex-boyfriend. He works for the Quiet Gods. He killed her parents—but apparently, he faked his own death.”
“He… came… back,” Lilac struggles to say.
“To finish the job,” I answer for her.
My jaw tightens. “We’ll find him. And we’ll prove I didn’t do this.”
“I have a cabin in the middle of the woods,” Jameson says. “No one knows about it.”
I arch a brow.
“I like to get away from this stupid lifestyle sometimes.” He shrugs. “I’ll track him down. Since he faked his death, it’ll be easy to find him.”
“How?”
“Because he’ll leave a trail. No one’s looking for him.”
I carry Lilac back to the car and sit with her in the back seat. She cries into my shirt, speaking incoherently.
My hands curl into fists.
When I get my hands on Emerson, I’m going to gut him like a fish.