Vero grumbled to herself as she stepped out onto the uneven surface of the field and thrust her shovel in the dirt. “Let’s get this over with. It’s freezing out here.”
I switched off the headlights. Better to work in the dark so no one noticed the light from the road. I ventured a few feet from Vero, closer to where she had pointed before, in case she was right. My blisters had hardly healed into calluses, but at least we had two pairs of gloves and two sturdy shovels this time. Between all the digging and Spinning these last few weeks, I felt stronger somehow, capa ble of hefting more. Our shovels cut through the soil with a steady rhythm, our two holes widening, converging somewhere in the middle. The loose dirt formed mounded piles around us that made us feel deeper in the ground than we probably were.
“Where are we going to move him?” Vero asked through a puff of blue fog. “To a cemetery? Like in your book?”
I choked out a breathy laugh between shovels. If we did that, this damn book would probably be the reason we ended up in prison. “No. We’ll hold on to him for a couple of days until the investigation wraps up, then we’ll put him back in the same spot. The police aren’t likely to get another warrant to dig up the same piece of land again. And the ground will be soft. Easy to dig. Easy to hide,” I added between huffs.
“A few days?” Vero leaned on the handle of her shovel and dragged her sleeve across her brow, her disgust clear, even in the dark. “Ramón is going to kill me when I give him back his car. Do you have any idea how bad a decaying body’s gonna smell? Cling Wrap may be a whole lot of things, but a giant Odor-Eater isn’t one of them.”
I drove the blade of my shovel deeper, the hole already up to our hips. “JCPenney is having a fall clearance sale on those big chest freezers. We can pick one up in the morning and put it in the garage.”
She chuckled darkly. “And to think you were worried about a damn shower curtain. Nothing says ‘serial killer’ like a chest freezer in a garage.”
“You have a better idea?” A thud resounded from the ground at my feet. I tapped it with the tip of my shovel and connected with something hard. Moving the shovel a few inches, I tapped it again, in case I’d hit a rock.
“Wait.” Vero wrinkled her nose as she poked the ground a few feet away from me. She sniffed cautiously, the air suddenly pungent and sickly sweet. “I think I found him.”
I abandoned my shovel for the flashlight in my pocket, aiming the beam at the ground by Vero’s feet. I turned away from the smell. “How bad is it?”
“Um … Finlay?” Her voice rose with an odd lilt as she knelt to clear away the dirt. “Harris wasn’t wearing jeans when we buried him, was he?”
I dropped to my knees beside her, frantically brushing dirt from a long denim pant leg. A Nike swoop appeared below it. “No.” I swallowed the urge to be sick. “And he definitely wasn’t wearing running shoes.”
“Then who the hell is this?”
“I don’t know, but it’s definitely not Harris.” Gingerly, I patted the pockets of the man’s jeans, searching for a wallet, but they were empty. Head craned away from the smell, I scooped handfuls of dirt from the dead man’s face. Saliva pooled in my throat. “Oh! Oh, no.” I buried my nose in my sleeve.
“What is it?” she asked, crawling closer to see.
The man’s eyes were clouded white, wide and open. His pale skin sagged, a hideous shade of gray, and his blue lips spilled dirt from the corners. A purple hole darkened his temple. “I think he’s been shot in the head.”
Vero jolted to a stop. She glanced down slowly, prodding the dirt beside her knees. “Finlay?” She brushed a handful aside, swearing in Spanish, her voice shaking when she said, “I hate to tell you this, but I just found another pair of shoes. And I’m pretty sure these aren’t Harris’s either.”
I pushed myself to my feet, the ground unsteady beneath them. The smell grew stronger. My eyes watered as we dug out two more pairs of shoes. Nick was right. Feliks was using Steven’s farm for business. As a dumping ground for bodies. “How are we going to find Harris in this mess?”
“I don’t know.” Vero sounded on the edge of panic. Her flashlight skipped to my face.
“Point that thing down,” I snapped, shielding my eyes. “I can’t see.”
“Point what down? I’m not pointing any…” The sudden break in her voice sounded all wrong. I held my arm above my eyes, blinking, but I couldn’t make out her face against the light. “That’s not a flashlight,” she whispered frantically. “Someone’s coming!”