Rust gives a smug hum. “Sure.” He peeks into the trunk. “Did the dead fella come with the empty bag of sour gummy worms and the empty beer can, too?”
“Those are my emotional support sour gummy worms and my emergency beer. I needed something to calm my nerves!” I snatch up the trash and throw it on the ground.
“Some things never change. What would the world say if they knew the famous country diva Tally Creed prefers beer over champagne?”
I kick up some dirt. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Rex would be fucking livid if it came out, though.”
Rust’s demeanor shifts on a dime. Rage rolls off him in waves and his hands ball into fists.
My brows quirk. What got him so pissed off?
The two men never met and Rust doesn’t know anything about my manager’s shitty behavior. Rex’s temperis one of the industry’s best kept secrets. Nobody on the outside could guess what he’s really like.
Rust takes a deep, shuddering breath. It seems like he forcefully relaxes his hands before he hauls the body from the trunk and puts it on the ground.
“At least you wrapped him up real good,” he comments, peeling off the tape I slung haphazardly around the bundle of remains.
“I always keep a roll of duct tape and tarp in my trunk cause you never know when you’ll need ‘em. Learned that from a certain cowboy.” I kick his boot softly.
He grins. “Smart guy.”
The thick plastic crinkles as he unwraps the corpse and my mouth pulls into a grimace. Except a trickle of blood on his temple and a slightly twisted arm, the grey-haired man looks unharmed. I must’ve hit him at a bad angle to kill him instantly. He wears dirty jeans and a mottled brown sweater and I don’t even want to know when they were last washed. If ever.
But he was still a human. He was a real, actual human and I… I…
Tears well in my eyes.
“What have I done?” I whisper.
Rust gives me a worried glance. “You’re lookin’ a lil pekid, Trouble.”
“Cause I killed an innocent man! I ended his life! I terminated his existence!” I throw my hands in the air.
He hums, nonplussed. “It was an accident. From what you told me, he’s pretty much at fault.”
“You really think so?”
“I do. Besides, nobody’s truly innocent if you think about it. Bet this fella had some skeletons in his closet.” He pats the drifter down until he finds a ragged wallet in his pocket and looks through it. “Five dollars. NoID. No photos. Lucky for you. That means nobody’s gonna miss him or come looking.”
“He had a small bag too,” I say, gesturing at the car.
Rust takes a frayed cloth backpack from the trunk. He unties the top and a sour expression twists his features. “Forget about skeletons in the closet. This is so much worse. I think you shouldn’t feel too bad about killin’ him.”
My stomach flips. “Why would you… Let me see that!”
He shows me the bag and I gag. It’s full of female underwear in all shapes and sizes, glazed in a dry, milky-white residue. A few panties are small enough to belong to kids.
My guilt dissolves as I back away. “Ew! What the actual fuck? He was a sicko who steals underwear and gets off on it?” I holler. “Some of these look like they belonged to little girls. I should’ve hit him harder! Maybe backed over that disgusting freak for good measure.”
Rust nods. “I think you did a good deed in ending the fucker. When we get back, I’ll make a fire and burn all this.”
He ties the bag and discards it. Then he lifts the body over his shoulder like it weighs nothing and closes the trunk with his other arm. “It shouldn’t be more than a thirty-minute hike eastward. Once we get there, we?—”
The rumbling of a motor cuts through his voice.
My head whips around. “Are you expecting somebody?”
“Yeah, I always invite guests ‘round my place when I got a corpse to bury. The more the merrier. Make it a fuckin’ group activity,” Rust snarks.
