Page 232 of What We Bury

“I got shit splatter on my shoe, Milo.”

“Occupational hazard, detective.”

With a shake of his head, Holden starts the engine and pulls out of the lot. He drives the speed limit exactly, headlights on, two hands on the wheel. We merge onto the main road and become just another car on a Wednesday night, heading nowhere in particular.

“Clean job,” Micah says finally. His hood is still up, face half-shadowed in the passing streetlights. “No complications. No witnesses. The staging will hold. We should let Dean know we won’t be bringing him anything tonight.”

“I’ll do that now,” I say, shooting off an innocuous message to Dean. He immediately sends a thumbs up. “Milo, the feeds are back up?”

“Restored the second you exited the locker room. Camera shows Hudson entering at nine-oh-two and an empty room after that. Morning crew finds the body, finds the note, family finds the browser history. Open and shut. Tragic, but not surprising—guy had been struggling for months, according to his very real and very sad secret journal.” He mimes a chef’s kiss. “My finest work.”

I run through the checklist in my head.

“We did good,” I say.

The car goes quiet. The exhale after taking a life. Your body coming down from the thing it was built to do, recalibrating to the version of you that exists in daylight.

I pull out my phone and type one word to Knox.

Me:

Done.

The reply doesn’t come from him. It comes from Sage. A single heart in the group chat.

I stare at it longer than I should. A black heart on a dark screen.

Milo leans forward between the seats. “So. What’s the move? It’s barely ten. We dropping everyone home, or . . .?”

Nobody answers right away. Holden drives. Micah stares out the window. I look at the heart on my phone.

“I don’t want to go home,” Micah says quietly.

Milo looks at him. Then at me. Then he and Holden lock eyes.

“Me neither,” Milo says.

“Swap the car then head to Sage’s?” Holden suggests.

“Knox is already there,” Micah says. “He’ll want to hear about the op.”

“I’m gonna text, kitten,” Milo says. “Tell her we’re incoming. All of us.” He already has his phone out. His thumbs move fast, and a second later her reply comes through.

“She says she’s waiting.”

Micah takes the next left.

SIXTY-THREE

SAGE

“God. How long does it take to hang a guy?” I look out the window, impatiently watching cars go by. None of which belong to any of the guys.

They said it would be quick. Maybe not quick enough for the guy doing the dying, but for everyone else, clean and surgical and fast. But either they’re taking their sweet time, or something’s gone sideways, or maybe this is just how it feels to wait for a kill to finish. Slow. Empty. Anticlimactic in the worst possible way.

“It takes as long as it takes.” Knox’s voice comes from the kitchen table, where he’s nursing the coffee I made him an hour ago and watching me rearrange my kitchen. “They’ll make contact when it’s done.”

With a sigh, I lean against the counter, turning away from the canned goods I’m alphabetizing. “Does it ever get easier? The waiting?”