Hans swings one of the backpacks off his shoulder and pulls my favorite tennis shoes out of a side pocket.
I automatically drop them to the floor and start to shove my feet into them.
As soon as my second heel slips into the shoe, Hans grabs my hand and pulls me out of the strange surveillance room.
A tiny part of me was wondering if Hans would try to keep me down here, so him guiding me out of the room is a good sign. But then I remember the way he ate my ass in the garage last weekend, so Hans locking me up and keeping me as his little sex pet might not be a bad thing.
Hans pauses to make sure both doors close behind us, then we’re back to moving.
I follow him up the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the garage.
Like last time, the garage is pitch black, but Hans keeps his hold on my hand and guides me to the pickup truck.
I hear the door open, but no light comes on.
“Climb in.”
“I can’t see.”
“Oh, right.” Hans says it like he didn’t realize there is zero light in here.
His hand leaves mine, and I hear his footsteps across the floor, then the garage door starts opening.
It’s dark outside too, but there’s enough ambient light to illuminate the truck in front of me.
I climb in and am closing my door just as Hans opens his.
He tosses the two backpacks into the back seat, then gets in himself.
“So…” I start as he turns the truck on. “Can you see in the dark?”
Hans turns his face to me. “What?”
“You walk around like you can see everything when I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.”
He shrugs and puts the truck in reverse. “I just have things memorized.”
Memorized.
Hans backs out of his driveway, then right up mine, stopping with his rear bumper a few feet from mine.
Ah yes, my car that won’t start.
“Stay here,” Hans tells me, then jumps out, leaving the engine running.
Watching him circle around to the back of the truck, I realize I never got an answer when I asked where we were going.
Hans lowers the tailgate, and I watch him open a panel I didn’t know was there in the side wall.
He pulls something free, then slams the panel shut and jogs off around the corner of the garage.
My eyes widen.
Is that…？
Just before he disappears into the dark, he gives the plastic a shake, and it unfurls into what can only be described as a body bag.
I bite down on the completely inappropriate urge to laugh.
A man with a basement full of guns and camera angles of my house, who also keeps body bags in his truck, has to be a red flag. Right?
I stay turned in my seat, my eyes glued to where I last saw Hans.
If he’s running into the backyard with that, then the man must be dead.
On cue, Hans reappears with an occupied man-sized bag slung over his shoulder.
It hasn’t even been a minute.
He must be good at bagging bodies.
Hans stops at the back of the truck and bends forward with a heft of his shoulder, causing the body to thud into the truck bed.
The impact reverberates through the vehicle, and my mouth pulls into a frown.
Ew.
Hans slams the tailgate back into place, then pulls a retractable cover across the top of the truck bed, blocking anyone’s view of what’s inside.
He opens his door, but before getting back into the truck, he takes a little bottle of hand sanitizer out of the pocket in his door and slathers his hands with it.
“Safety first,” I try to joke.
Hans drops the bottle back into the pocket, then climbs in. “Can never be too careful.”
“From the number of scars you have, I’m guessing you learned that the hard way.” I clamp my mouth shut, but Hans just lifts a shoulder.
“The hard lessons are the ones you usually heed more.”
I think about that and have to agree.
Hans drives us off our street, through our little neighborhood, and toward the main highway.
“So…” I drag the word out. “Is there a reason we’re taking the corpse on a joy ride? Do cops like delivery service on murder victims?”
“We’re not involving the cops.”
His words shouldn’t bring me such relief, but I don’t want to spend my life in prison for accidentally killing someone.
“But what if people ask—”
Hans is shaking his head before I finish. “Nothing happened for them to ask about.”
“But—”
“Nothing happened, Cassandra. No one died in your yard. You want to talk about it, we can talk about it. But you only talk to me, okay?”