They approached a small building in the center of the facility, but when they tried the door, it was locked tight. Dimitri steered him around the side where they found another open gate separating the front from the back, stopping short in a clearing of sorts to stare upwards at an enormous piece of machinery.
“What in the actual fuck is that?” Arlo whispered.
“I have no idea,” Dimitri said.
There was a sound like an electrical current tripping and then bulbs flared to life above, leaving them standing in a wide spotlight. They both covered their eyes, blinking, as a figure walked out of the darkness. “It’s a car crusher.”
Arlo gripped Dimitri tighter as he squinted, waiting for the man’s features to become clearer. He wore all black, right down to the leather gloves covering his hands. Arlo knew him. They both did. He was a Mulvaney.
“August, right?” Dimitri asked.
The man gave a cool smile. “Yes. I apologize for all the cloak and dagger stuff with my assistant, Cricket, but I thought it might be good practice should this be the beginning of your life of crime and not the end. Besides, I wasn’t certain you were trustworthy.”
“Trustworthy?” Dimitri echoed.
“Mm, people do dumb things when they’re cornered. And while I trust your mother implicitly, I don’t know you. But you clearly know of us, which was not only a surprise but a liability.”
Arlo didn’t know the Mulvaney family. They were just a name in the paper, sometimes a picture on the cover of a tabloid. It was clear after tonight; they were much more than that. But it had never occurred to Arlo to tell the world what he knew. What did he know, in the grand scheme of things?
“To be fair, my mother didn’t tell me about you. I figured it out myself,” Dimitri said. “It took a long time for me to put the pieces together, but the truth is, I never really cared enough to look that hard. Your family is none of my business.”
Was that why this man had brought them there to the salvage yard? To tie up loose ends? Had they just delivered themselves on a silver platter to a murderer?
“Are you going to kill us?” Arlo heard himself blurt.
August somewhat assuaged his fears when he gave a surprised chuckle. “Is that what you think? That I’ve brought you out here to the middle of nowhere to get rid of you?”
“It seems a valid fear,” Arlo countered, looking once more at the machine rising behind him.
“I suppose that’s fair. But no. You have nothing to fear from me.” He looked at Dimitri. “I’m the one who should be afraid. I’ve directly disobeyed your mother.”
Dimitri frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She asked that we stay out of it. My guess is that she wants you to clean up your own mess. A little life lesson on why murder is never the answer. And while I respect her thought process, she’s wrong.”
“Wrong?” Arlo muttered, his pulse pounding in his throat and his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth.
“Yes. Wrong. You can’t unring a bell, and you can’t simply know how to cover your tracks if nobody’s given you the skills or tools to do so. So, allow me to give you your first lesson. No body, no crime.”
Arlo’s heart thudded heavily against his ribs, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth as the man paced before them like he was giving a lecture to a new batch of students.
“What does that mean?” Dimitri asked.
August’s smile chilled Arlo to his core. “It means Holden no longer has a corporeal form.”
“You burned him?” Arlo asked.
“Burning leaves behind bones, teeth. Your abusive ex-boyfriend is nothing but a memory.”
“Why?” Dimitri asked. “Why would you help us?”
August shrugged. “The reason my family is so good at what we do is that we don’t kill people on impulse. By the time we pull the trigger—metaphorically speaking—our alibis are already in place and we know whether it’s better to make the victim disappear or to stage the crime scene.”
Arlo shivered at his matter-of-fact tone. “Okay.”
“But when you kill impulsively, you’re left to…split the baby, so to speak. Calliope was forced to decide whether she would help you create an alibi or focus on damage control.”
“Damage control meaning what?” Dimitri asked.
“When people go missing, families worry. They make phone calls, they call the police.”
“Are you saying people are looking for Holden?” Arlo asked, panic climbing into his voice. “Did his dad call the cops? Are they looking at us?”
August raised his hand as if to silence Arlo. “I’ve taken care of it.”
“You, what?” Dimitri asked.
August sighed. “I’m sure Calliope did what was best in the moment, but this was far too big for you to handle yourselves. And I say that selfishly. Exposing you could expose all of us. My family can’t have that.”
“What does that mean? What did you do?”
“Holden doesn’t exist anymore,” August said ominously, glancing behind him at the car crusher. “And neither does his car.”
Arlo shook his head. “But…his father won’t just let it go. He’s rich. Connected.”
August waved a hand. “Oh, I’m aware. I did my research. The thing is, with people like corrupt federal judges, you have to make them think they’re the ones getting away with murder.”
“Meaning…” Arlo asked, breathless.
“Meaning the judge received a series of increasingly frantic texts from Holden explaining that he’d done something terrible and had to get out of the country. Now.”
“And his father just bought that?” Dimitri asked.
August shrugged. “Probably not at first, but there was an accompanying name and date in the texts that, when investigated, would point to a monstrous crime that was well within someone like Holden’s temperament. This puts the judge in the position of making a very dangerous choice. If he suspects Holden’s not the one texting him and alerts the police, he risks putting his son on the radar for the aforementioned crime. Conversely, he can just take his son at face value and tell him to get the hell out of the country. Which is what he did.”
“And you think that’s enough?” Arlo asked.
“Honestly?” August said with a smile. “I think it’s overkill. According to Calliope, he was in the closet, so there was no real tie between the two of you. No reason to think that you would somehow have any involvement with the man’s disappearance. Sure, they might have seen your split lip and thought Holden was a gay-bashing douchebag, but I don’t think they would have fingered you as someone capable of caving his skull in.”
“But I did,” Arlo muttered.
“Oh, I know. It’s impressive, really.”
“Thanks?” Arlo said. “So, what do we do now?”
“Nothing. You do nothing. You go home, and you live your lives and you forget this night ever happened. The judge won’t file a missing person’s report. He’ll likely make sure people everywhere know that Holden’s studying abroad or taking a mental health break.”
“But eventually, the judge will figure out Holden’s not where he thinks he is,” Dimitri said.