“They disgust me,” I announce to Gabriel.
“I know. It’s okay, baby,” Gabriel says as he rubs my knee.
“I can hear you!” Matthew protests.
“I wish I had one of those window things like they do in limos,” I tell Gabriel.
“With your millions, I bet you could have one installed,” Gabriel says, and I nod, liking the idea.
I’ve never seen anyone so excited to dig a hole until I met Matthew, who is all smiles as he hurries out to rob a grave. He has tossed away his badge and all morals just to look sexy in front of Jesse.
What a weak human.
I glance at Gabriel, who smiles at me and makes me realize that I would burn down the world for him.
I grimace a little as I realize what that means and decide I’ll bully Matthew to feel better about myself.
“Listen up, I got different shoes for us so that any shoe treads will be unidentifiable if we are caught for some reason,” I say before glancing at Matthew. “Well… besides Matthew. Hopefully, those aren’t the shoes you wear every day.”
Matthew looks down at his feet before doing some strange Dorothy heel tap. “Of course they’re the shoes I wear every day!”
“New plan, we’ll leave traces of Matthew’s DNA around the gravesite,” I say as I pluck out some of his hair.
That makes him bat me back. “Dammit, Liam!”
“Make sure to sprinkle a little as you go, like a bread crumb trail,” I tell him.
“Matthew, it’ll be fine. Just like… uhh, if we get caught, burn those shoes… yeah, that,” Gabriel says with a warm smile. “Liam, stop taking pictures of his shoes, dammit!”
“I’m just saving this in my blackmail folder. Matthew, let me take a picture of the treads.”
“What else do you have in there?” Jesse asks.
“Shhhh, don’t worry about it,” I say before I pull out the three shovels. Gabriel takes one, I give Jesse one, and I put mine in Matthew’s hands. Then I take the one out of Gabriel’s hand and put it in Matthew’s second hand. I smile, pleased by this arrangement.
“This is for the best,” I decide.
Matthew doesn’t even complain and acts like he’s going to dig with two shovels if it makes Jesse look his way.
We walk across the old graveyard and toward the spot in the back. I’d already scouted it out online, knowing that something up front or near new graves would be noticed. We still run the risk of it being discovered, but with the snow coming, it’ll have time to recover before spring. And by then, all of this will havebeen swept under the rug, and I really don’t care if they find out because Whitaker will definitely be dead at that point.
We reach the gravesite where I lay out two tarps and set up a couple of lights. Then I take the flat-edged shovel from Matthew and start working in clean lines to cut out the grass so that when we lay it back down, the grass will be mostly undisturbed.
“It’s ridiculous how good at this you are,” Matthew says.
“My mom made me help my dad landscape our whole yard one time. Even though we had the money to hire people to do things, my parents preferred to do them. They claimed it was good to know how to do this stuff and not always rely on others… no idea why,” I mutter as I carefully remove the first square of sod and set it to the side so I know exactly where it goes. Once I’ve neatly arranged it all, I wave Matthew toward the grave. “Keep the dirt on the tarp. Do you understand? On the tarp.”
“I hear you speaking, and am now regretting how nosy I was being.”
Jesse slams his shovel into the dirt and when it barely sinks in, he gives the shovel a kick before tripping over it. “Fucking hell, the ground is hard! How did you cut those out so well?”
I shrug. “I do everything well.”
“Let me help,” Gabriel says.
“Gabriel, honey, no. This is why I allowed Matthew to join us.”
Gabriel shakes his head and proceeds to help, which means I have to push him back and begin digging in his place. The flat shovel is not made for this type of digging, but it gets dirt out, so I keep going.
