Page 16 of Secret Obsession
“Okay, so we load it up into the truck and drive it down to Steele’s pop’s house, secure it, and head back like nothing’s happened.” Jacob circles the area rug, careful not to step in any blood. “But first, we need to make sure that this place is spotless.”
Steele heads for the door, his keys dangling from his fingertips. “I’ll get supplies.”
We wait for Greyson and Steele to return. There’s not much else we can do—Willow has some organic cleaning stuff that definitely won’t get rid of blood the way we need.
When they get back, we jump into work: taking photos of Willow’s entire apartment, rolling up the body in the carpet and plastic wrapping, then taping the whole thing. It feels vaguely ridiculous, like at any moment the police are going to burst in the door and arrest us.
But nothing happens.
The street is quiet, the whole house eerily silent. Knox goes searching and finds that the first-floor apartment lady’s car isn’t in the driveway, giving us a modicum of relief that we won’t be immediately discovered.
Then the frenzy of cleaning. The smell of bleach embeds itself in my nostrils, and we go through countless paper towels scrubbing and erasing every speck of blood.
Willow’s apartment probably hasn’t been this thoroughly sanitized since before she moved in.
“If police come looking, they won’t find anything obvious here.” Jacob ties off another stuffed trash bag.
I loathe the idea of police scouring Willow’s apartment. And truthfully, I’d do everything in my power to stop that from happening. But thefearthat Willow might have of them doing that to her… that’s worth it.
When we finish, we’re all crabby. It takes three of us to lift the man-rug and walk him down the flight of stairs, sliding him onto the waiting tarp in the bed of Greyson’s truck. The other two haul out our trash and toss it in alongside the body. We secure the cover over the bed, slam the tailgate closed, and pile in.
Steele gets the front seat for once, since he has to navigate. Knox, Jacob, and I are stuck squashed together in the back, Jacob between Knox and me. Which is good because prolonged contact with my brother never ends well.
Our parents used to build a wall of pillows between us on longer road trips. They thought that if we couldn’t see each other, we wouldn’t fight. Of course, all it really meant was that we couldn’t see what we were hitting when we struck blindly through the barrier.
An hour passes, and we pull up to Steele’s driveway. There’s a fucking gate and everything.
I forgot that his dad wasrich-rich. And Steele, too, I guess. Our parents are upper middle class. Not fancy, but well enough off. But they worked hard for their money, and they made Knox and I learn that same lesson. We had jobs from the age of fifteen onward, every summer between school. We squirreled away money and bought the hockey house my freshman year, sparing me from living in the dorms like Knox.
The rent from the other guys is mostly passive income, but it also pays the mortgage. Dad keeps saying he wants us to buy another property—but he doesn’t hear us when we say the hockey house would beconsiderablyworse off if neither of us lived there. At least we half give a shit, and we’re renovating this summer. Upgrading some stuff, like the kitchen and bathrooms, electrical. We’ve got this year and next with the house, and then it’s going on the market. After that, hopefully we’ll both be playing professional hockey and far away from Crown Point.
That’s the dream anyway.
The gate swings open, allowing Greyson to pull his truck through, and we drive another two minutes before the house even comes into view.
I lean forward, frowning. “How come you’ve never taken us here?”
Steele grimaces. “Because I avoid this place as much as possible.”
That’s fair enough.
But it doesn’t stop us from springing out of the truck in the garage and immediately going to explore the house. It’shuge. And so wildly un-Steele-like, I can see why he wouldn’t be comfortable here. Or maybe it’s the wife. All traces of his mom are gone, replaced with photos of Aspen’s mother and sisters.
A big, happy family. Shiny and new.
Gross.
“Okay, okay,” Steele finally sighs. “Are you guys done?”
Knox hooks his arm around my neck, dragging me through the kitchen and back to where Steele waits. “Ready.”
“Ready,” Greyson echoes, Jacob close behind him.
We heave the body out and carry it out of the car garage, which is apparently one of two garages. It’s connected by a short hallway to a second one, which seems to be a man-cave toolshed sort of place. Steele empties out the few remaining pieces of meat from the freezer while the rest of us cut open the rug.
The body looks even worse than it did before. But we shove him into the long, low freezer, forcing his limbs to fold, and slam it shut. It closes. The guyfits. Miracle upon miracle, because he was huge and heavy. Sure, his legs are at a weird angle, and I think we broke something to get him jammed in there, but it works.
Steele has a padlock in his hand, which he loops through a hook at the front. It secures the lid to the base. Once it’s clicked shut, he hands the key to me.
