Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I shove my hands in my pockets. “Yeah, probably.”
He looks up at me. “What?”
“Well, there’s the contact at the EPA.”
He rubs at his forehead. “Yeah, you’re right about that.”
“And…” I shuffle my feet.
He glares at me. “And what?”
“And…Dad.”
Falcon shakes his head. “Dad doesn’t know. You can’t think that he has anything to do with this.”
“I don’t want to think it,” I say. “But something’s going on with him. I mean, he tried to kill himself.”
“Yeah.”
“And then he wouldn’t wake up, and there was no medical reason for it. I’m not saying he was faking it. I don’t think you can fake a coma. But it’s kind of like he willed himself into it. Like he didn’t want to face whatever he had to face.”
“Man,” Falcon says, “I don’t like thinking about Dad like that.”
No, of course he doesn’t.
Falcon was Dad’s right-hand man. His firstborn and his oldest son.
Falcon was everything to Dad.
It nearly killed Dad when Falcon had to go to prison.
I doubt he would’ve been that upset if I had been the one to cop to the killing of that young police officer.
But Falcon insisted. He was the older brother, and he felt it was his responsibility.
To be honest? I’m not sure I could’ve done it.
Not even to save Eagle. Because I’d be damned if I was going to confess to something I didn’t fucking do. It’s just not right.
“I know you don’t, Fal. I know how close you are to Dad.” I take a few steps toward my big brother. “But let’s face facts here, man. Something is eating at him, and now I think he’s trying to tell us, but the words won’t come out.”
“You think we should tell him about this?”
“For fuck’s sake, no.” I look around the barn, my heart beginning to thrum. “The fewer people who know about this, the better.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “But you seem to be insinuating that you think Dad knows.”
I look at my feet, shuffle my weight between them. “I’m not insinuating anything, Falcon. I don’t know. All I know is that eight years ago you and I buried a body here, along with some drugs. And while the drugs were still there, the body is fucking gone.”
“Right. And you said the dirt was hard.” He scratches the side of his head. “So this happened a while ago.”
“Exactly.”
“You want to do some more digging?” he asks.
I draw a breath. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”
My body is sore from the digging yesterday. Still, I worked like a horse on the ranch today. Nothing like good physical labor to keep your mind where it needs to be. And I wouldn’t mind a little more right now.
We head back to Falcon’s truck and grab the supplies we need.
“You sure we should be doing this in the daylight?” I ask. “E and I were here after dark.”
He gestures broadly. “Look around you, man. No one’s here. No one knows we’re here.”
I simply nod.
We walk back into the barn and take a look around.
“If you were a dead body, where would you be?” Falcon asks.
He means to be funny, but I don’t laugh.
This is all a little too macabre. We can laugh about it when the mysteries are solved and back in the ground where they belong.
“Let’s just try here, right next to where we buried Vega.” I stick my shovel in.
We dig for about an hour and come up empty-handed.
I pull off more floorboards and continue to dig.
I sigh. “I’m sweaty as a pig,” I say. “And I’m not seeing—”
The sun is moving toward the west, and it’s sliding through the slats on the roof.
And something glints.
I kneel down, pull a small object out of the dirt.
And I gulp.
It starts in my chest—tight and hot, like someone lit a match under my ribs and now I can’t breathe right. My hands go cold first, even though I’m sweating. My fingers twitch inside the leather gloves, like they’re trying to shake something off that’s already inside me.
My mind goes loud. Too loud. Thoughts crashing into each other like a hundred people shouting in a tunnel. I can’t catch a single one. Can’t focus. Can’t think.
I’m there. Back in that moment I’ve spent so long trying to bury. But it doesn’t add up.
My heart stutters. Not like fear. Like recognition. Like, oh—this again.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. Anger? Panic? All I know is I want out. Out of this barn, out of this body, out of this memory that’s wrapping itself around my neck like a noose.
But I can’t run.
So I stay still, hoping my brother can’t see how hard I’m trying not to fall apart.
“Hey, man,” Falcon says. “You okay?”
I breathe. In, out, in, out.
Then I nod. I can’t talk. Words will fail me in this moment.
For in the palm of my gloved hand, I hold a silver earring in the shape of a star.