No.
I quickly turn the key back toward me and then forward again. The same sputter sounds, laughing at me, followed by an awful grinding noise.No. No. No.I turn the key back and forth once more, my chest tightening. This stupid piece of shit. Thiscannotbe happening. I literally just got an oil change a week ago. I mean, yes, the guy did list off a bunch of things it could use, but I don’t have the fucking money!
“Fuck!” I slam my hand on the wheel.
“Don’t get worked up,” Nix says.
“Worked up!?” I spin on her.
“You just got out of the hospital.” She folds her arms. “I think you’re supposed to be taking it easy.” Her tone insinuates that I don’t know this.
“Oh, gee,” I snap. “I didn’t think of that. You know what? Maybe you could tell me how to take it easy. Maybe you could tell me what I’m supposed to do with adead bodyin the back of a truck that won’t start. Tell me. Come on, tell me. And then maybe I’ll take it easy.” I run a hand through my hair. Fucking take it easy. Yeah, right.
She huffs and kicks a foot up on the dash. “Well, I have an idea, but if you’re going to be a bitch, we can sit here all night. I’m sure Nosy Nellie will be looking out her window any second.”
I roll my eyes but glance at the house next door just in case Nellieislooking out the window. The crazy old bat has probably already seen us loading the body and has the police on their way.
“Yeah, an idea?” I raise a brow at my infuriating sister. “You got a car stashed somewhere I don’t know about? Because otherwise, we’re fucked.”
“No.” She shrugs, avoiding my eyes. “But Caleb has a car.”
Chapter Five
Kira
We’re so fucked.
I rub my temples from the backseat of Caleb’s sleek Audi, orange streetlights whizzing by on the highway. But the flare is hazy, barely able to penetrate the tinted windows, and it’s as if I’m tucked into my own little dark cocoon back here, sectioned off from the adults like a child. Nix sits in the passenger seat, the glow of the touchscreen console illuminating her silhouette, while Caleb drives. And they have music playing.
Music.
Playing.
While we have a body crammed into the trunk.
I can’t. I truly fucking can’t.
Maybe I had a stroke when I had the tear. Maybe that’s why I’m letting two high schoolers chauffeur a dead cop through Cloverwick, because clearly, I’m not in my right mind. But to my credit, I thought really hard about an alternative, meticulously going down the list of friends who would be willing to help me hide a body. But I had the sad realization that my only friend, my only ride-or-die willing to help me hide a body, is my baby sister.
I suppress a groan.
I suppose Icouldhave entertained the idea of calling Marshal—if he wasn’t dead—but that would have gone beyond theoccasional groceries he helped out with. And he was a cop for fuck’s sake, probably a bad idea, even if he didn’t turn Nix and me in all those years ago.
“I bet you never heard this one,” Caleb says to Nix as we round a bend, turning the music louder, and I can make out just a shadow of a grin on his profile.
Nix looks over at him and smiles, a soft, flirty thing, and I silently scream into my hands. This isn’t a fucking date. This isn’t cute. You don’t bond over a corpse in the trunk unless you’re the type of couple who end up on documentaries..
I want to tell them to knock it off, but I’m saving my energy. If I thought that moving the body from the house to the truck was hard, I’m in for it when it comes time to cart it up into the hills. We have to take it deep enough that no one will stumble upon a freshly turned mound. Thankfully, Caleb helped Nix move it from the truck to his trunk, but I can’t expect them to be able to carry it the whole way. And really, I shouldn’t expect Caleb to do anything but strand us at the first sign of hard work.
This car… his clothes… He comes from money. And I’m not saying that it doesn’t take hard work to make money, but I am saying he’s only achildof someone who worked hard. He doesn’t know what it takes. Not yet, if ever—considering his parents seemed to think a teenager needed a car as nice as this. What did he say his dad did? A lawyer? Shit, must be a really good one if the warmed leather under my ass is any indication.
I let myself sink into it, close my eyes, and try to eat up as much of a break as I can. God, I could have been a lawyer. Or a doctor. Really, I had my sights set on psychology—the idea of figuring out what makes people tick. What makes a man abandon his newborn baby after his wife dies during childbirth?
That.
Thatwould have been nice to know. And who knows, maybe I could have helped families—prevented what happened to meand Nix from happening to others. But then again, people like that—fathers of babies with dead mothers—would have to seek out help.
Our father only sought help from the bottom of a bottle.
