Prologue
HARLOW
Stop crying.
My nails dug into the dirt as the shovel I’d been using finally fell to the ground, having done its job. My hands were shaking—no, my whole body was.
Stop. Crying.
My eyes fell shut, seeing flashing images of his blood running from the many holes on his neck. His mouth was still open, eyes bloodshot when I had finished.
Stop crying!
The blood was—
STOP! CRYING!
—everywhere.
Sniffing, I opened my eyes. It felt like my lungs had lost its oxygen and was just filled with too much dirt. As if I was the one under the ground. My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my throat and shrivel up into nothing like the man that was buried underneath.
A tear leaked out of my eye again but I knew it would be the last one to fall. There was no time to be emotional anymore. I needed to think logically. I needed a lot of things that I didn’t have right now.
I stared at my hands again—dirt everywhere and blood under the fingernails. It was a bad move to wear my favorite white dress but, who cares right? It would have to get burned along with the rest of the things that I would have a hard time getting the blood off.
And right after?
Staying meant that I’d be leaving larger footprints. Leaving immediately would cause less footprints to be tracked. Everything would have to be changed once more and I knew that if I kept running, it’d take forever to actually be safe.
It clicked then.
I’d have to go back. There was no choice.
With one last look on the fresh grave, I took a deep breath and did what I thought of at that moment, standing topside rather than lying six feet underground like him.
I flipped him the bird.
Fuck you.
If none of this happened, I would have just been sleeping everything off in a motel. Instead, here I was—standing in a grave I dug and filled all by myself. Grabbing the shovel with shaky hands, I took out the burner phone in my pocket and dialed in the number that I knew by heart.
He answered at the third ring and the tightness in my chest slightly—very minute—faded. “Whoever is calling at two fucking am better have a good reason.”
I let out a sigh, my anger and exhaustion clashing. Soon, my adrenaline would burn through my body, leaving me nothing in the tank. Helpless and unconscious.
This was the last move to make. I had no more.
He was the only person to call.
“It’s me.”
The silence on the other line indicated that I was acknowledged. We didn’t need much when we communicated anyway. He knew that I would only call if I was in trouble and this was the best time to call him.
“Text me your location.”
With a nod I knew he couldn’t see, I hung up and started typing slowly, trying to get every detail right as my fingers pressed on the keypad. I tried not to think about the mud that was spreading around the screen.
Mud from the blood and the dirt.
Stop it.
Finished, I blew out a breath and started walking where I knew the motel would be. They’d meet me there and take me back to the one place I had sworn over my grave that I would never come back to.
I guess breaking this promise to myself was just another thing that happened.
