“What are you doing?” Shane asks her.
“Gotta get rid of everything.” She looks up at Cole and snaps her fingers, ordering, “Knife.” Once it’s in her hands, she continues. “Who knows how much they shared through texts? Messenger?” Then starts pushing buttons on the phone. “I’m going to uninstall the messenger and Facebook app.” We all stand silently as she does all three.
Then she begins to beat the shit out of them with her hammer.
Once she’s done, she picks up a fishing net that she also found in the garage of her father’s house and begins to cut it in three sperate pieces. “Hand me a few pieces from that broken headstone,” she orders Bennett.
He does so without hesitation, then looks at Cole, and he just shrugs. He’s just as much in the dark as the rest of us.
She lays the three pieces of fishing net down on the ground and then places a phone and a part of the headstone in each one. Then she ties them all off. Standing up, she walks over to the cliff and throws them over. Turning back to us, she places her hands on her hips. “If the police go looking for the guys, they will be able to pin their last location using their phones. But without the evidence, they don’t have shit. And even if for some insane reason they manage to find one of their phones, they won’t be able to get anything off it after it’s been sitting at the bottom of the ocean. After I took a hammer to them.”
We all just stand there staring at her in shock that she thought of that. She’s one hell of a shark, and I’m glad she’s on our side. I’m not sure how many of us could have beat her had she not fallen in love with Cole and joined us.
Shane chuckles to himself. “I knew you’d do well at a challenge.”
“I love you,” Cole says, pulling her into him and giving her a long kiss.
I turn away from them and pull my cell out of my pocket to call my sister. “Hello?” she answers.
“How is she?” I ask immediately.
“She’s doing well. She’s awake …”
“I wanna talk to her.”
“One second.”
“Hey?”
I let out a long breath, at the sound of her soft voice. “Hey, princess. How do you feel?”
“I’m okay. Just tired.”
I run a hand down my face, feeling my shoulders loosen. “Listen … I want to come see you, but …”
“It’s okay, Deke. Is Austin okay?”
“Yeah.”
I look up at my friends and watch them toss the ashes of the sorry bastards who hurt my girls over the cliff, and my chest tightens for what they’ve been through. And how it could have ended if not for Cole and that damn tracker. How long would they have been missing before we realized it? Would we have thought to check the Lowes house? I hate that the answers are no. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I promise her.
After we found Austin shot, Cole didn’t get to go to the hospital right away either. He had stuff he had to take care of first, and that’s exactly what I have to do now.
“I’ll be here. Shelby said she’s gonna stay with me. And she’s called my dad. He’s here as well. Just stepped out for some coffee.”
“What does he know?” I ask, wanting to know what we’re up against. I didn’t kill Becky because it would be too hard to explain why she hasn’t been seen or phoned home. But the sharks will see to it that she pays. Plus, I once told Demi that people don’t have to die to stop living.
“That I passed out and hit my head on the way down.”
I frown. “And he believed that?”
“He looked skeptical until Shelby showed him my chart.”
I let out a sigh. “Let me talk to her again. I’ll see you soon.”
We say our goodbyes, and then my sister is back on the line. “Thank you,” I tell her.
“No need to thank me. Just do what you gotta do, and we’ll see you once you’re done.”
“Ready?” I ask, pocketing my phone.
“Yes,” Austin answers, slapping her hands together to knock off what was left of the ashes. “What about their wallets?” she asks. “We don’t wanna put those with their phones. It all needs to be separated.”
Agreeing with her, I pat my back pocket that doesn’t hold my shirt. I’ve got both of them. “We plant the wallets in the glovebox of the Maserati, then drive it about an hour out of town and put it in a river with the windows rolled down. If it’s ever found, the cops will think they drowned and washed downstream,” I answer.
It’s the best option we have, given our timeframe. This isn’t our first rodeo committing murder, but every time is a different situation.
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” Cole tells her.
She looks up at him. “I’m fine, Cole.”
He fists his hands down by his side at her refusal. “You have a pretty good size knot on your head. You may have a concussion—”
“Let’s get this over with,” she interrupts him. “It’ll be daylight soon, and I need to go get Lilly once we’re done.” She places her hands in the front pockets of her now filthy skinny jeans and starts walking down the hill, not giving him a second to argue.
“What are we doing with her?” Bennett asks, looking down at Becky. “We can’t leave loose ends lying around.”
Becky begins to rock back and forth; her hands still tied behind her back.
I walk over to her and kneel. Gripping her face, I force her to look up at me. “I’m not gonna kill you, Becky.” She whimpers. “Death would be too easy for you. No, instead, I’m gonna spare your miserable, pathetic life.” My fingers tighten, gripping her cheeks. “Instead, you will watch your sister get the love that you always wanted.” Her bloodshot eyes widen. “You’ve already seen me fall in love with her. And you’ll live to watch me marry her and her have my children. You’ll watch her be everything you wanted to be.”
I release her, stand, and look at Shane. “She belongs to us, but at this point, you’re the only one who will touch her.”
Cole has Austin, I have Demi, and Bennett has my sister. Shane is the only one who can get any use out of her. So she’s all his.
He gives me a smile, and I turn and walk down the hill back toward the house and Austin. She was right. It’s time to get this shit wrapped up.
EPILOGUE
DEMI
DEKE AND THE rest of the sharks killed David and Maxwell. I wish I could say he killed my sister too, but he told me that death was too easy for her, and I understood what he meant. The more I thought about it, the more I understood his decision. She’ll have to forever watch us together. She’ll watch us live happily in love. Get married. Have children. I love Deke Biggs, and I don’t plan on going anywhere without him.
Plus, she was theirs now. No matter what she did or where she’d go, she would never escape them. And I understood exactly how scary that would be for her.
I was released from the hospital the following day. We all got together and had lunch with my dad, sans Becky. She made up some excuse about feeling bad. The sharks didn’t force her to join us because none of us wanted her around anyway.