Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
With that, we ended the call and I grabbed the knife and gun and booked it back to the house.
Inside. The knife and gun went into the laundry room sink with bleach. I washed my hands and went back upstairs, pleased to find Runa out of the shower and dressed.
“Runa, listen, Huck is going to be sending some guys over from Shady Valley. Maybe four to six hours from now.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding a little less detached.
“I need to deal with the body.”
She tensed. “No, I should—”
“No,” I cut her off. “I need to do this. I know what I’m doing. But it’s gonna take a while, and I need you to hold onto my phone, to answer it if it rings, or if anyone texts you. No details about the body or anything like that. But in texts, pretend to be me. We need an alibi just in case.” Her eyes went panicked. “I’m not going to get caught. I know what I’m doing. But I like being careful.”
“Okay. I answer calls and texts, being you.”
“Yep. That’s all. No one is going to ask about the incident. They will likely be giving you ETAs or asking for an address. That’s all I need you to do. Well, that, and I need you to be with Denali. I got the call from Arty and locked her in her room. She’s scared. She needs you.”
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.”
Crow checked his watch. “So long as you’re done before dark, shouldn’t rouse too much suspicion. What do you need from me?”
“I need someone to empty out the bed of the pickup truck back that way.” I pointed toward the excavation site. “Then I need that car driven to the guy’s house, wherever that is. And to have a call or text made once you get there.”