Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(111)

It comes to me slowly, and with growing horror. If he’s carrying me with both arms, then by definition, he can’t be carrying a shovel. Meaning he’s already been out in the woods. He’s already dug the trench.

Now he’ll drop me straight into it. No more time for me to prepare. No more somedays, maybes, eventually. This is it.

Sure enough.

He stops. His breathing hard and heavy. Then.

I fall down. Down, down, down, into the deep, dark earth.

Do I scream? I can’t scream. I’m already dead, I’m already dead, I’m already dead.

But I am screaming. Deep inside my mind, I’m screaming Vero, Vero, Vero. I’m so sorry, Vero.

The first heavy thump of wet earth. Followed by another, then another.

I close my eyes, even though I can’t see. I fist my hands, even though I can’t move. I am dead, I am dead, I am dead. I am Vero, tucked in the back of the closet, willing myself not be afraid of the dark.

Shovelful after shovelful of earth.

How long does it take to bury a body? I don’t know. I’m too lost in the blackness of my mind. Vero. Vero. Vero.

But the sound stops. The weight of earth settles, remains the same.

Then . . .

I panic. I can’t take it one second more. I wiggle and twist and thrash to and fro. And I scream. Out loud. Full throttle. Long and frantic and high-pitched and wailing.

I was dead, but now I am alive. And my lungs are bursting, crying out frantically for air.

Suddenly, the night sky is above me. I don’t know how I’ve done it, but I’m free. I can feel the rain on my cheeks. I can taste the mud on my lips. I open my mouth and inhale greedily.

Just in time to hear the gasp. As Thomas stumbles back, his hands still clutching the edge of the death-shroud rug.

“You!” he exclaims. “Oh my God! You. I knew it!”

Thomas does not run away.

Instead, he listens to my story. Then he threads his fingers into my own.

And he says, “This is what we’re going to do next.”


* * *



“OUCH . . . YIKES, DAMMIT! IS this road over yet?”

Wyatt’s SUV hit another rut; Tessa’s body bounced up, her head banging off the window.

“I don’t think this is a road,” he said. “More like a washed-out drive.”

“Which clearly hasn’t been used in years.”

“Not true. Look at that.” They jounced by another low-hanging tree, its limbs screeching across the vehicle’s roof overhead. “Freshly broken branch.”

“Nicky and Thomas?”

“That would be my first guess.”

“Wyatt, there’s no way another car followed them all the way out here without them noticing. The road is too deserted, this driveway too difficult to find.”

“The second vehicle would have to be right on their tail,” Wyatt agreed.

“In which case, they’d know they had company.”

“Third partner in crime?” Wyatt asked.

Tessa shrugged. “Gotta be someone who already knew how to find this place.”

“So either a third partner in crime, or a less welcoming blast from the past.” He glanced over at her as the vehicle hit another massive rut. “Which’ll make this very interesting, very fast.”





Chapter 40




YOU SAVED ME.” I stare at my husband, the memory so real, so vibrantly alive, I feel as if I should be able to reach out and touch it.

“Did you just hear something?” he asks me sharply. Thomas turns, the beam of his flashlight bouncing along the ruins, but I can’t focus.

I’m breathing hard. My whole body is trembling, which I don’t understand. I’m safe. I’m out of the grave. Thomas pulled me out. Thomas saved me.

Twenty-two years ago, we found each other in the dark.

So why is my heart already constricting painfully in my chest?

“You told me to stay in the woods,” I murmur now. I’m talking to air. Thomas has left me, walking closer to the jumble of granite blocks. He still holds the shovel. Why did he bring a shovel? “You told me to stay out of sight. And that’s what I did.”

It comes to me. Slowly. Like a whisper. The wind against my cheek.

“Smoke.” I turn toward my husband. “There’s smoke in the air.”

The smell of smoke. The heat of fire.

Screams in the air.

Smoke.

I reach out my hand, but once again my husband isn’t there to take it. He stands too far away, the flashlight trembling in his grip.

“When I returned to the house, my mom was waiting for me in the foyer,” he says. His voice sounds funny. Strained. “She started with her usual snapping demands. Don’t track in mud. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Is the body taken care of? Well, is it?

“And . . . I saw her. I finally saw her. She wasn’t my mother. She wasn’t even a person. She was a monster. Like something out of an old horror movie. She would devour all of us. And it would mean nothing to her in the end.

“I told her I was done. I told her I was leaving, taking the car. That was it.

“She laughed at me. Where would I go? What would I do? I was just a kid. I knew nothing of the real world. Now, upstairs.