Page 39 of With Spite

We sat in the driveway another ten minutes before the front door opened and Creed stepped out, looking worried.

“Shit.”

“Come on,” I said as I shut the truck off. “Let’s get it over with.”

I got out and rounded the hood.

She had the door open and was about to step out when I caught her the same way I’d picked her up earlier.

Slamming the door closed, I walked us across the yard that was covered in a foot of snow and dropped her on the front porch.

“What’s going on?” Creed asked.

Birdee appeared at the door behind him.

I jerked my chin. “Inside before she freezes.”

Creed stepped inside, caught the blanket around Bernice’s shoulders, and tugged her inside as well.

I followed, kicking my boots off in the plastic tub near the front door.

Birdee threw the door closed behind me just as Creed said, “You didn’t shoot that moose with a twenty-two, did you?”

Bernice rubbed her face with her hands, the red rescue inhaler clutched between two fingers before she miserably said, “I was the target of a serial killer.”

An hour later, Bernice sat at the kitchen table sipping a hot cocoa as Birdee, Creed, and I sat crowded around her.

Apollo was on my phone, Denver, the Dixie Wardens Sawtooth Montana Chapter club president, on Birdee’s. Then there was Silas, the national chapter president, on Creed’s.

Bernice had just spilled her guts for a second time in an hour, and it was still just as much of a shock as it was the first time I’d heard it.

“That guy hasn’t given fucking anything up in nineteen years. Then he fucks up, fucks this corpse in front of you in a bathroom stall, then you ID him, and he stalks you for nearly a year before you escape.”

“How tight is your security, Apollo?” Denver asked, worried. “From what I understand, this Corpse Loser is connected. He has people helping him. He’s been able to adapt with the times, and he hasn’t been caught on any video camera in the years that they’ve been out there. In fact, just as fast as information is brought up on him, it disappears. Someone who has knowledge in technology is helping him. This guy has to be old by now.”

“It’s like a vault,” Apollo assures us for the second time. “And I know y’all were worried about Birdee’s visit to see Bernice, but I erased any and all information involving their little meet-up. This Corpse Violator won’t find anything that leads him back here.”

“Other than he could start trying to connect his dots. It’s not like it’s a secret that Birdee was down there in the same hotel as me,” Bernice pointed out. “I’m not saying that he’ll make the leap, but he could. He could start looking at anything that might help him find me. Maybe it’d just be a cursory look, but it’d be a look, nonetheless.”

Apollo hummed. “I will do another look-through, but I’m not worried about this. The only way he’s finding you is if he comes here accidentally.”

“You said that you didn’t bring anything with you, right?”

“Not a single thing,” Bernice confirmed. “Everything is new. I didn’t bring even a single photo with me.”

“I did.”

I looked over at Birdee, who looked worried.

“You took something of mine?”

“Just a photo,” she said. “You left your wallet open on the table, and I snuck out a photo. It was of you and Creed.”

“That’s not a problem,” Apollo said.

“Are we not worried that Bernice was being watched at the moment that she met with Birdee?”

That question was asked by me.