“I didn’t …”
“That’s not the only thing we’re gonna take,” Deke says, cutting her off, and then I hear him undoing her pants behind me.
“No!” she cries out. Her hands fisting as I hold them down above her head. “It’s retina … it’s a retina scanner,” she says in a rush.
“Fucking technology,” he growls. “What happened to the good ole days where you just flipped the phone open, and it fucking worked?”
He holds it up to her, my flashlight lies on the ground next to us, shining on her face. It must open because he pulls it back and starts to go through it. He grunts.
“What is it?” I ask.
“No videos or pictures. But there is something interesting.”
“I tried to tell you. I didn’t record it,” she says, panting. My weight on her chest makes it hard for her to breathe.
“What did you find?” I ask, ignoring her.
There’s a long pause before he finally says, “Austin Lowes.”
My brows shoot up. “As in Bruce Lowes?”
Silence.
I chuckle. “Well, well, well, I didn’t know he had a daughter.” She looks around our age. Seventeen, eighteen at the oldest.
She clamps her mouth shut. Interesting. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the bastard either. Good for her. He’s a sorry piece of shit.
“We don’t have time for this,” Deke growls, his patience wearing thin since he isn’t going to get to play with her. He stands and pulls out the gun tucked in the back of his jeans. “Let’s just kill her.”
She narrows her eyes up at the darkness. My eyes trace the blood on her wrists, neck, and chest. She’s too beautiful to kill. Too precious to destroy. Yet. He’s afraid she’ll talk, go to the police, but I’m not. She fears us. Thinks we’ll hurt her. She’s not wrong.
“Put the gun away,” I order.
“But …”
“Now.”
He tucks it back into his pants. “Let’s take her with us. I don’t trust her not to call the police afterward.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she snaps.
I almost smile at her bravery. “You’ll do whatever the fuck we say,” Deke replies flatly.
“She won’t call them,” I tell him. Placing both of her wrists in one of my hands, I run my free hand down the side of her face, smearing more of her flawless skin with blood. “Will you?”
She clamps her mouth shut.
He snorts. “You don’t fucking know that.”
“No one will believe her.” I lick my lips. “She’s covered in his blood. It’s underneath her fingernails from where she scratched my chest. It’s on her clothes. In her hair. As far as they’re concerned, she will be an accessory to murder.”
“You fucking bastard …”
I get a thought. “What did you guys do with the body?”
“Kellan got a call and had to leave; he rode with Bennett, so they all left. I told them we would take care of it.”
“Perfect. Call my phone with hers.”
“What? Cole, we don’t have time …”
“Call my phone with hers, Deke,” I snap.
He lets out a huff, but then moments later, I hear mine ringing in my pocket. They remain quiet, probably wondering what the fuck I’m thinking, but they’ll find out soon.
I stand up off of her, and she tries to scramble away, but I grip her hoodie and yank her to her feet. Wrapping my hand around the back of her neck, I start shoving her forward. She twists in my grip, and my hand slips, allowing her to get a few steps ahead of me. I run after her and fist her hair, pulling her against me. She whimpers. With my free hand, I grip her hip and press my front into her back. Her soaked clothes feel cool on my warm skin. Leaning my head down, I whisper in her ear, “We’re not done, sweetheart.”
“Where are we going?” she demands, and I smile against her skin. I love that she keeps fighting even though it’s not going to do her any good.
I don’t answer, and Deke doesn’t say because he doesn’t know what I have in mind.
I remove my hand from her hip but continue to hold her by her hair. I walk her over to where I know they had the body, and Deke shines his flashlight down on the now dead man. She doesn’t gasp like I expected her to, which tells me she saw quite a bit earlier. She expected him to be dead.
“Hold her,” I demand, shoving her into Deke’s arms.
“Let me go, you son of a bitch!” she screams as her chest hits his.
I hear him grunt. “Fuck,” he hisses. “She punched me.”
Ignoring them, I reach down into the black bag we brought and yank the now clean knife out of it. “Pin her to the ground. Face down.”
The darkness covers us, but I hear her grunts as she curses him while he easily tackles her to the ground.
Grabbing my flashlight out of my back pocket, I shine it down on them. He straddles her ass, his hands wrapped around her wrists, pinning them to her lower back. Her head is to the side, facing me. Those plump lips have thinned, and her green eyes simmer with rage.
I kneel beside them and yank up the right sleeve of her hoodie. “What are you doing?” she asks in a rush.
“Insurance,” I say simply, and then I drag the blade against her forearm.
She cries out in the cemetery as the skin gives and blood starts to pour from the wound. I take the knife and run it through the stream of blood. Then I turn to the body and stab him in the chest with it. “Now your DNA is in him with the murder weapon,” I say simply, and I hear Deke chuckle as he realizes what I’m doing. “You go to the cops. They dig him up and investigate his murder, and you go down with us.”
“Fucking …”
“And you called me. More proof that we were communicating the night of the murder. Around the time of death.”
Her breathing is labored, and I shine the light down on her again to see the tears rolling down her face, cutting through the blood like my knife just did her skin. But they’re not tears of sadness. They’re tears of anger. She looks so beautiful.
“Return her phone and let her go so we can bury this body,” I tell Deke.
He releases her wrists and then stands over her. She scrambles to her hands and knees and starts to crawl away. He tosses her the phone. She stands up on shaky legs as she holds her arm where I cut it. We both shine our lights on her.
“Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind,” I growl.
She turns and runs.
“We should have killed her.”
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” I argue.
He fists his hands. “I don’t fucking care about the plan. What I care about is not going to prison. We should at the very least have taken her with us.”
“Did you want to take her home?” I arch a brow. “Keep her as a pet?” I shake my head. “She won’t say anything.”
“She will …”
“She won’t. She’s Bruce Lowes’s daughter. We kill her, and they start looking for a missing girl.” I shake my head. “Then that brings questions.”
“They’d never find her body, and you know it,” he adds.