Page 17 of What We Bury

“Okay. Do it,” I say. “Start with?—”

Brock’s phone buzzes in Milo’s hand. He glances at the screen.

“Text from someone named Stephen.” He reads it out. “‘Waiting for you.’” He looks up. “Plus eggplant and water emoji. Brock had a boyfriend?”

“Looks that way,” Holden says, reading over his shoulder.

“Huh.” Milo shrugs and types out a reply, thumbs moving fast. “‘Can’t. Something came up.’ Send.” He glances at me. “Should I add anything? Sorry? Rain check? Limp flower?”

“Don’t overthink it.”

“I never overthink. If anything, I’m a proud under-thinker.” He pockets the phone and glances up toward the SUV. “We should move. Face ID has a window on dead tissue. I want to get into his banking app before his face stops being viable.”

Jesus Christ.

“Problem,” Holden’s voice cuts through the planning.

“What now?” I say.

He crouches near the edge of the jetty, then straightens with a small pink beaded clutch in one hand and a cracked cell phone in the other.

“Sage,” he says.

We all look at him.

“Her name,” he says, holding up the ID he’s found inside, “is Sage.”

The name settles into the silence.

Sage.

“We’ll need to get that back to her,” Micah says.

“And I need to run her information,” Holden says, digging through the bag and coming out with a tube of lip gloss and a set of house keys.

“What weneedis to keep eyes on her,” I counter. “Knox is on her tonight. After that, we rotate. She’s a loose end until we know she’ll keep this shit locked down.”

“She’s more than a loose end,” Holden says, appreciation sharpening his voice. “That girl is a fucking hand grenade. Reckon I’ll be jacking off to the memory of her turning that guy into pulp until the day I die.”

“She’s a girl who just got assaulted,” Micah says, quiet and sharp. “She also watched five strangers hang the guy who did it. So maybe we pump the brakes on the objectification?”

Holden holds up his hands. “I’m not objectifying. I’m appreciating. Even a die-hard feminist like you can appreciate the difference.”

“When you’re standing there with a hard-on, there’s literally not,” Micah says.

“Children,” Milo interrupts, already heading back up the dune path to the SUV. “Can we fight about gender politics after we Kermit the Frog a dead man across the country? Time is literally of the essence.” He turns back, walking backward as he makes a droopy face. “Decay waits for no man.”

SIX

SAGE

The water runs pink.

I watch it swirl around the drain in lazy, thinning ribbons. Dark at first, then copper, then pale, watery pink. I stare until there’s no color at all.

But I don’t trust clear, so I stay under the spray with the rough side of a washcloth, dragging it over my arms, wrists, fingers, under my nails. Soap, rinse, washcloth again—until my skin is raw and stinging and the water has been clear for too long to matter.

It doesn’t matter. I can still feel it on my skin. Still feelhimon me.