Page 170 of Secret Obsession
All at once, my body goes cold.
I remember the feeling of freezing.
“He was already dead when we put him in,” Miles says to me.
I blink hard, then look up at him. “Yeah.”
He nods and moves past me. He’s got the key to the padlock, and he wastes no time unlocking it and shoving the door up.
I inch closer, then peer down at the body.
He’s bent at weird angles, jammed in with folded limbs and a bent neck to fit. He’s wrapped in plastic, obscuring his face. It’s just his outlines that I can see. An elbow there, a hand there. His nose protruding through the opaque covering, the roundness of the top of his head.
“Still safe,” Steele comments. “I talked to Rhodes about this a few weeks ago. He suggested digging a hole, burning the body in it, then burying it. But the ground is still frozen.”
There isn’t as much snow here. And there was hardly any where their game was yesterday. The farther north we go, the more snow and colder it is. Even though we’re probably an hour south of Crown Point, it feels like a big temperature difference.
We have the lake effect, too. It compounds our weather, especially the snow.
“What’s his name?”
They don’t reply.
I glance over my shoulder at them, frowning. “Didn’t you check for a wallet or something? To know who you were… freezing?”
Miles shrugs. “It didn’t really matter at the time.”
I scoff. “If we know his name, we can find his brother’s name.” Taking a deep breath, I reach in and uncover the plastic wrap. It comes away easily, just having been tucked around him. I ignore his frost-bitten skin, the gaping cut on his neck, and pat down his pockets.
I pull a slim wallet from his pocket and open it, scanning his driver’s license. “Daniel Freeman. Crown Point resident, just a few streets over from me. Not so free anymore…” I try to laugh, but it doesn’t work out very well.
Seeing a photo of him alive, even though it’s a shitty DMV photo, sets me on edge. Nausea rolls through me, and I fold it back up and toss it on his lap. I shove the plastic down and take a few big steps back. He lived a few blocks over—and that, more than anything, makes me want to puke.
He was practically my neighbor.
“So what do we do?” I ask.
Miles and Knox trade a look.
“We could burn it without burying it,” Knox says slowly. “Out here, it wouldn’t raise much suspicion.”
“A fire in the middle of the woods would raise suspicion,” Steele counters. “At least if it was six feet down, the flames would be concealed.”
The room spins.
“Your family won’t get into it if we lock it again?”
Steele frowns. “He might find it suspicious to have a lock on his freezer.”
“We should move it,” Knox mutters. “Find somewhere else to stash it at the very least.”
“I don’t want to risk Aspen in this,” Steele finally says. “It was fine with them gone, but her sisters live here. And Dad will ask questions—”
Miles’ jaw tics. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing, yet. But if he asks, I’ll come up with something.”
Not the best plan—but it’s all we’ve got. Miles closes the lid and relocks it, and I can’t decide if I feel better or worse for knowing exactly where the body is.
