“I’m not crying. My… my fingers are just cold and I can’t do the buttons right now. I’ll get them, though.” He held his shirt closed with his hands and looked at the dead man on the floor. “What do we have to do? Can’t we leave?”
“We’re going. Let me know if you need any help with those stubborn buttons.” I walked back to the body and took hold of his legs again. “We’ll leave this son of a bitch for the wolves,” I said.
Taylor looked at the mess I had made of the man who had tormented Jensen.
“Ah, I recognized your handiwork on the man in the kitchen,” she murmured to me.
I looked in the doorway at Jensen. “Come on, buddy. We have to go now, man.” Jensen nodded but looked pleadingly at me. I went over to him. “You ready?” I asked him.
“Promise you won’t tell her?” he asked. I turned to look at Taylor.
“She’s a really good secret keeper.”
“No, I mean Aria.”
“Deal. I won’t tell her. I promise.”
“Sawyer, we’ve got to go. Daniel just sent a text saying Wade is on his way back,” Taylor said as she rushed over to us. She quickly crouched and tied Jensen’s ratty boots.
“Ready?” I asked Jensen as I pulled off my coat and helped him into it. “I’m going to zip this up for you. It’s a finicky zipper,” I told him. I didn’t want him to struggle and get frustrated with not being able to zip it up. The zipper was fine, but his hands were too shaky to do much right now.
Jensen nodded, and the three of us briskly walked to the bridge. His knees buckled, and as he stumbled to the ground, he grabbed onto the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I caught him, and when I looked down at him, I saw his other hand was holding his stomach.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” Taylor stretched her hands out for him.
“Stomach bugging you?” I asked him.
He lowered his head and nodded. I remembered Michael was often nursing an ache in his lower abdomen from everything his psycho father did. I glanced at Taylor, hoping she wouldn’t baby him; that was the last thing this kid needed.
“Hey, don’t lower your head in shame, Jensen. None of this was your fault. When we go across the bridge, you leave that shame in the shed. You’re a strong young man. Come on, get up, buddy.” I put my hands under his arms and lifted him off the ground as gently as I could.
“Would you be okay with me carrying you?” I asked him.
Jensen must have felt confident that we weren’t going to hurt him and would help him because he nodded, giving me permission. I quickly bent and put one of my arms behind the backs of his knees and the other against his upper back. I picked him up and took long strides across the bridge with Taylor beside me. Jensen didn’t weigh what a kid his age probably should, so I didn’t feel like it was slowing us down. Carrying him made our trek to the vehicles faster.
“When I got here there was only one other car,” I told Taylor when I noticed there were now two other cars that were parked in front of Wade’s house. I scanned the area between the lake and the house.
“The white SUV is my rental, and I assume the other car belonged to the guy I shot in the back,” Taylor said nonchalantly.
“That’s my girl,” I said as we stepped off the bridge. “Jensen, you can lie down in the back seat, okay?” I looked down at him.
“Okay,” he murmured.
I knew he had to feel like he’d been run over by a bus. I just needed to get him and Taylor in the car and the three of us out of here.
“Taylor, can you get the keys to my SUV out of my right front pocket?”
“Yes, what do you need out of it?”
“Just my suitcase in the back and my cell phone from the cupholder.”
“Got it!” Taylor jogged ahead of us and opened the door to the back seat of her rental SUV before she raced over to mine. I continued scanning the house to make sure there wasn’t someone unaccounted for who might pose an issue.
I helped Jensen into the back seat, shut the door, and went to the back of the SUV. I opened it and took my suitcase from Taylor and tossed it in the back of hers. I shut the hatch and raced to the driver’s side.
“Sure, go ahead and drive,” Taylor sarcastically said. She raced around to the passenger side and got in just as I started the car. I quickly pulled away from the house and onto route 222.
“Jensen, are you doing okay, sweetie?” Taylor asked.
