Page 15 of What We Bury
Brock’s in the trunk of the SUV, wrapped in the tarp we always bring and never expect to use. The guys put on painters’ overalls and hauled him up through the dunes while I was at the waterline with the woman.
The body is handled—for now.
I survey the sand under the jetty. It looks like a slaughterhouse floor complete with organs and all sorts of offcuts.
Milo sits on a rock, folding the suicide note into an origami chatterbox. Holden circles the perimeter, checking sightlines, his cop brain already running scenarios. Micah crouches near the water, rinsing blood off his forearm. Knox is on the girl.
Seriously. What a fucking cock-up.
“So,” Milo says, without looking up. “Tonight happened.”
“Yeah.” I keep my face neutral. Inside, everything that holds me together is one wrong breath from giving way.
It’s not that I feel bad for Brock. He earned the rope six times over. It’s the woman I feel sorry for—the way her eyes changed when she realized what he was doing, right before we hauled him up by his fucking neck.
I don’t lose sleep over the assholes we kill. I lose sleep over the survivors. Over the ones we don’t reach in time.
We should have killed him last week. She would have been spared.
Holden’s the first to break the silence. “If we’re lucky, the tide will clear most of the mess before sunrise.” He kneels by the blood, running his finger through it, then wipes the smear on his pant leg.
Grimacing, I weigh our options.
We’re gonna need to call in favors.
Shit.
“We may need Odin,” I say, already knowing how they’ll protest.
The boss’s name lands like a stone in still water. Everyone stops.
Milo cocks an eyebrow. “You want to call Odin and tell him we had a clean op that went sideways because a random girl in a party dress stole Knox’s knife and turned our target into a casserole?”
“Not unless we have to. But protocol says suicide, and this—” I gesture at the mess around us. “—is a freaking crime scene.”
“We need a woodchipper,” Holden says. “Feed him through, dump the slurry offshore. Fish food.”
“We’re not wood-chippering anyone,” I grunt, wishing I could slap them all over the head.
“Why not? It’s efficient.”
“We don’t have a woodchipper, Holden.”
Milo perks up. “Wait, I know a guy!”
I look at him. “You always know a guy.”
He presses a hand to his chest. “What can I say? People are drawn to me. I’m the human equivalent of an emotional support therapy dog.”
“You’re certainly a little bitch,” Micah teases, kicking sand at him. He glances at me. “We’ll do the pig farm. It’s about forty minutes from here, and pigs eat anything. Bones, teeth, everything. The body will be gone in a few hours.”
I stare at him. Micah—soft-spoken, gentle Micah. It’s weird to see him suggesting feeding a man to pigs with the same tone he uses to recommend cocktails.
“Da fuck dude? Where’d you learn that?” Milo asks.
He shrugs. “I watch documentaries.”
“Nobody’s getting fed to pigs.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “We’re not in a Quentin Tarantino film. We need some way to get rid of the body and make this look like a freaking accident and not a crime of passion. We have to try and keep the girl out of this or this whole thing will be blown to shit.”
