Page 36 of What We Bury

Holden pulls the car around to the side entrance and we get dressed in our costumes. A fake nose and mustache for me, a full beard, glasses, and a wig for Holden. He looks surprisingly excellent as a man with an ’80s mullet.

It takes a minute or five, but we manage to wrangle Brock into the wheelchair.

“Ready?” I ask Holden.

He stares at me. He has this look—I call it his Murder Contemplation Face—where his jaw goes tight and his eyes go flat and you can tell he’s running scenarios. I’m sure half of them end with me in a ditch.

“I’ll be at the bar,” he says. “If anyone looks at you too long, I’ll redirect. You have ten minutes.”

“Fifteen.”

“Ten. You want to hit more bars tonight.”

“Twelve minutes and I’ll never mention to the guys the time you cried at that fabric softener commercial.”

“That was allergies.” He levels me with a look. “Twelve minutes.”

He takes off toward the main entrance, and I spin the wheelchair toward the side. Brock’s head drops forward. I catch it, tilting it back, wondering if I should use the facelift tape and astick shoved into the back of the scarf to support his neck. In the end, I just angle it so it looks like he’s asleep in the chair. “Come on, big guy. Let’s get you a drink.”

The side entrance opens into a corridor by the bathrooms. Nobody’s there. I navigate us past the men’s room, which stinks of bleach, and into the main bar. Holden’s already on a stool near the front. The moment he sees me, he flags down the waitress to give me cover.

Grumpy as that guy is, Holden’s always got your back.

I steer Brock to a booth in the back corner, and using my knees to lift, I slide him in. It takes two attempts to prop him against the wall. His head tips a little too far, and I grab it and wedge a balled-up napkin between his skull and the wood paneling to keep him upright.

Better.

He looks drunk. Believably, magnificently, this-guy-is-gonna-regret-the-morning drunk.

I sit across from him.

“So,” I say, picking up a menu. “What are you drinking?”

Brock stares at me with his dead eyes behind his sunglasses.

“Beer it is. Good call.”

Holden has a bourbon in front of him now, so I flag down the waitress for myself—a tired-looking woman in her forties with a name tag that says RHONDA. I flirt heavily, ordering two beers and a plate of nachos because there isn’t steak on the menu. Plus, I wasn’t lying about being hungry and also because a man eating nachos at a bar is the least suspicious thing in the world.

“Your friend okay?” Rhonda asks, glancing at Brock.

“Lightweight.” I shake my head, fond, exasperated, the way you do about a buddy who can’t handle his liquor. “We pre-gamed. He went too hard on the tequila shots.”

She gives Brock a look that says she’s seen a thousand men in exactly this condition, shrugs, and walks away.

I let out a breath.

Phase one, public sighting. Brock Davis is alive and well, and drinking at Murphy’s on a Saturday night. Rhonda will remember him if anyone asks. He’s the guy in the sunglasses who couldn’t hold his booze.

While I wait for the beers, I pull out Brock’s phone. The real one. I’ve already cloned it—the clone handles the spoofed trail from here. The real one just has to be seen in the right places tonight before it conveniently dies.

I’ve also started a conversation with “Jessica”—a strategically vague college student from Canada who I invented because Brock absolutely seems like the kind of guy who would blow up his life for a girl with no last name and good lighting.

The text chain shows she met Brock while he was walking back from dropping Sage off last night. They chatted, went back to her place, and had a lovely night together. Tonight, Jessica’s suggesting they meet up in Santa Cruz for a spontaneous trip. Brock, because he’s an impulsive piece of shit going through our pre-planned, quarter-life crisis, said yes.

That’s the story. After tonight’s drunken escapades, Brock’ll leave town, make his way to Santa Cruz to meet a girl, and the trail will be planted. The Instagram posts will continue to trickle out—geo-tagged from locations a new couple would visit that I’ll spoof remotely. A sunset from the wharf. A coffee from a cafe downtown. Holding hands in San Fran.

Hmm. I wonder which of the guys has the most feminine-looking fingers?