Page 105 of York

I barely got that sentence out before she was rushing across the hall, reaching for the knob, but it didn’t turn.

“Munchkin? It’s Mommy. Unlock the door for me, okay?”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I whispered to her. “Stay upstairs for at least half an hour. I need to get supplies.”

I heard the lock slide and rushed to head downstairs. I paused to scrub the shit out of the knife, which I took with me after I put on gloves.

The gun went in a cabinet to deal with later.

I grabbed trash bags, paper towels, more bleach, a hammer, and then a wheelbarrow and a shovel.

I had no idea where I was going to bury the body. Yet. But I gathered anything I might need.

Then I went back to the site, removing his phone from his pocket and placing it in his truck along with his keys.

Then his body went in several trash bags and into the wheelbarrow.

Then I spent an ungodly amount of time cleaning up the blood in the cavern, needing to break some of the precious rock up in places when I couldn’t get the surface clean.

That was the golden rule of crime scene clean-up—when you think you’re done, you’re not. Keep going. Over and over.

I’d never cleaned up a scene that didn’t take me at least three to four hours. Unless I was lucky enough not to have a mess. But, let’s face it, with the guys I was involved with, it was always a mess. Some worse than others.

I’d take a gunshot over arterial spray any damn day of the week. But at least Sonny got stabbed in the femoral artery, not the carotid. At least all the cleanup was below the waist, not making me reach above my head to get to it.

Finished, all that trash went in a separate bag that I took with me as I left the site with the body, taking it way out on the back of the property.

The problem?

Wyoming dirt wasn’t New York State dirt.

The shovel pinged off something every two seconds. There was no way I was getting a body buried deep enough in this ground without—

“Fuck.”

I glanced back toward the ranch. I couldn’t see it from so far away, but when I’d toured the place with Denali the day before, I’d explained to her all about the farm equipment we’d seen.

A tractor.

A baler.

And a backhoe.

A shovel wouldn’t work in this soil, but a backhoe would do the job.

It was a solid hour-long walk all the way back to the house.

And as I rounded the house, a figure stepped out of the shadows.

“I feel like the clubs should have some sort of secret password,” the man said, holding up his hands in surrender.

I knew a lot of the guys from the Shady Valley chapter, but this one wasn’t familiar to me—with his long, dark hair, his tattooed body and neck, his facial piercings. But I knew the lore of his club well enough to recognize him.

“Crow.”

“That’s me. Raff is inside with your girl and little girl. Colter and his girl are just doing a perimeter check. What do you need?”

“I’m taking the backhoe out to dig. The ground is too hard for a shovel.”