It’s theover my dead bodykind of no, which is not at all my favorite.
Probably my least favorite, in fact.
I eyeball one of the shelves, decide there’s no way I’m testing my weight on it, and try to jump a little to peer out of the root cellar instead.
Nothing.
“I already took out your bodyguard. You think I can’t take you out too? Give me the fucking box.”
I shiver at the malice in Patrick’s voice.
I shiver again at Davis’s repeated, “No.”
Shit.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
What did he do to Giselle?
What did he do to Giselle?
I jump a little more, but I still can’t see anything.
“Hand. It. Over.”
“Where’ve you been hiding, Dixon? Half the state’s looking for you.”
I look around the root cellar again.
Shovel.
Metal detector.
That’s it.
That’s all I have, aside from some?—
Some jars.
I grab one, and I pull a raccoon, and I throw it as hard as I can out of the hole.
“They can keep—Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell was that?”
So I was close.
I throw another one.
Then a third.
A fourth.
“Stop fucking throwing things,” Patrick bellows.
“Go to fucking hell,” I yell. “The bad hell. The hell where you’ll be butt-plugged by spiny-tailed lizards every day for the rest of your life until you start to enjoy it, and then they switch to stabbing you in the heart and the liver and the spleen until you can’t fucking stand it.” I keep throwing jars. And yelling. And throwing jars. And yelling. And throwing. Until I realize I’m sobbing and everything is silent overhead.
Eerily silent.
Nothing rustling.
