Emmett entered, closing the door behind him.
“Sure. Come on in.”
Emmett pulled up a seat.
“You’re not quitting, are you?” Rick said with a feeble chortle.
Emmett pretended as if he hadn’t spoken.
“First, I just need to say,” Emmett began, “how much I’ve appreciated my time on this team, and especially the opportunity you gave me to step up as a leader. Unfortunately, I think the time has come—”
“You’re quitting.” It wasn’t a question this time. “Unbelievable. I guess you think you’re too good for us now that you’ve lost a little weight.”
Emmett was incredulous. Rick seemed to take the news as a personalinsult. There was something insecure in his anger; the manager buttoned his jacket over his paunch.
“Just remember, we were here for you before you were Mr. Handsome. We gave you a job when you were just a big fat nobody.”
Anger flared through Emmett, like a gas leak catching a spark. He wanted to reach across the desk and throttle the man, tear his weak flabby body to pieces, scrape the meat off his bones with his teeth—
Jesus, Emmett thought, alarmed his mind had gone there.
He collected himself and pulled the folded envelope from his pocket. “My last day is the twenty-second—”
“Don’t bother. I’m cutting you loose after tonight.”
“What?”
“You’re a crap team leader anyway. Everyone’s scared of you. Rumors have been going around for weeks, and here I’ve been defending you.”
“Rumors, what rumors?”
Rick didn’t elaborate; he looked scared. “Get out. I don’t want to see you again, even as a customer. You’re banned.”
Emmett rose to his feet, fire billowing up his throat, his fists white-knuckled. “You’re not gonna tell me where to shop, you officious little fuck.”
Rick blanched, open-mouthed and shrunken behind his desk. He looked nearly as shocked as Emmett felt. Where had that come from? That sudden desire to strike, to hurt… todevour.
He stormed out of the store and traipsed across the parking lot to his car. He couldn’t finish his shift now, not after that.
The setting sun smeared the sky with gold and purple. The breeze sighed across the parking lot, putting a lazy rustle in the palms.
He slowed as he approached his Taurus at the back of the lot, his nose wrinkling. What was that smell? A foul, stomach-turning funk like shit and decay. Tossed around on the wind, it strengthened in waves the closer he got.
A skein of flies buzzed around the back of the car. More frantic and agitated than earlier, they pinged off the trunk like BBs, as if attempting to force their way inside. Hungry.
No.No.There was nothing in there. There couldn’t be.
He held his breath as he twisted the key in the lock, his heart crashing around his chest. The trunk popped open with a wheeze of rancid air.It forced Emmett’s hand over his face, preventing his ragged bellow of horror from filling the lot.
He turned away, retching. A body lay folded up in the trunk like a fleshy beach chair. The cracked lips hung open. Dark eyes stared. Where the left arm should have been was a weeping black circle of raw flesh and jutting scapula. Buckets of blood soaked the upholstery so thickly it still hadn’t fully dried. A divot in the side of the head matched the shape of the aluminum baseball bat glinting at the back of the trunk. The bat Armando had been looking for—it had been here the whole time.
Part of Emmett had known it all day, but now the truth was staring him, literally, in the face: He had killed someone.I’m a murderer.
Then a realization: He recognized this man. The gym bro who’d given him a hard time for forgetting to clean the chest press. The same string tank top, torn down the front, revealing a muscled, tattooed physique pockmarked with festering flesh wounds like meaty potholes no larger than the circumference of Emmett’s bite.
He turned and retched again, as if his body were attempting to force out the memory of Emmett’s bloody face from that morning, the bits of meat, he now realized, he’d been pulling out of his teeth all day.
But how could he have found this man to kill him? Emmett didn’t even know his name, only that he worked out at 24 Hour Fitness. Was that where he’d gone after leaving Aaron’s apartment, the only place he was sure would be open? Had he sought the man out or just happened to run into him, perhaps seen him leaving the gym and seized an opportunity? Had Emmett done it right there in the parking lot, or had he followed the man home before attacking him with the bat?
