Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(25)
I gestured to the TV. “I’m sorry you missed your night out with the boys from OCN.”
Georgia loosed an exhausted sigh as she watched two men descend the courthouse steps and disappear into a sleek black limo on the screen. “There’ll be plenty more nights like it,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing sticks to these guys. The Russian mafia could murder half the city and still find someone to bribe. That asshole will never spend a day behind bars as long as Zhirov’s around to bail him out.”
I hadn’t watched the news in as many weeks as I could remember, and I had no idea what Georgia was talking about, but I nodded sympathetically as I slid the diaper bag over one shoulder and scooped Delia onto the other.
“Thanks for watching them for me,” I whispered, feeling the weight of Georgia’s eyes on me all the way to the door. The day, the adrenaline, and the hangover were all catching up to me, dragging at my heels.
“Finn.” My name was a quiet command. Slowly, I turned around, terrified I’d given something away. “I’ve been worried about you,” Georgia said. She handed me Delia’s cap and scratched her chest, grimacing as if something inside it made her uncomfortable. She stared at her feet, at the diaper bag, everywhere but right at me when she said, “I’m glad you’re not alone.”
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat, suddenly unsure which was worse: the secrets I was hiding from my sister, or the body I was hiding in Vero’s trunk. Georgia was always alone here. And as much as she’d insisted that was exactly how she wanted it, sometimes—times like this—I wondered how she could stand it.
I folded Delia’s cap into my pocket and held her body a little tighter. The duct tape in her hair stuck to my jaw. For a moment, I considered telling Georgia everything. About what had happened in Panera. About what had happened in my van, in my garage.
Georgia reached for the TV remote on the table.
“Georgia…?” I started in a thin voice, clutching Delia to my chest. When my sister looked up at me, it was hard to hold her stare. My gaze skipped away, to the replaying scene on the TV behind her. All I could think of was Patricia’s warning. About dangerous people with friends in high places. About how my children would never be safe if anyone knew what I’d done. If Georgia and her police friends couldn’t keep dangerous people off the street, maybe Patricia had a reason to be afraid. Maybe Vero was right, and I didn’t have any choice but to see this through and keep it to myself.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
I turned for the door, feeling those cop-bright eyes on my back all the way to Vero’s car.
* * *
“Where to now?” Vero asked as I shut the door. She made a face at Delia’s duct tape crown in her rearview mirror. The kids slept like the dead in the back seat, as still as Harris Mickler had been when we’d shut him in the trunk with the little pink trowel.
“I don’t know.” I hadn’t had time to think about what we’d do with the body. Maybe because part of me figured we’d never make it this far. I gnawed my thumbnail, my mind spinning over every gory bit of research I’d ever done about body disposal. If we tossed him into a river, with my luck he’d wash up. And a fire would attract far too much attention; the last thing I needed was an arson investigation on top of a murder charge. “I guess we should find a place to bury him.”
“Any ideas?” She pulled slowly out of my sister’s apartment complex, careful to use her turn signal as she eased out onto the road.
I choked back a laugh. Part of me wished Steven was here. I’d never been good at hiding things. I could never keep secrets the way he could. He’d always been the one in charge of hiding the Christmas presents from the kids and the Easter eggs in the yard. In hindsight, the hardest ones to spot were the most obvious, loosely covered in foliage or patio cushions right under the kids’ noses. It was the same way he’d hidden his affair with Theresa for months. He hadn’t taken her on extravagant trips or squirreled away money in strange bank accounts. He’d screwed our real estate agent during his lunch breaks in her home office right down the street and buried the scent of her perfume under his own cologne. He’d handled all the household bills, so I’d never see the expenses and connect the short distance between the dots. Like the fling he was probably now having with Bree, Steven kept his secrets close, hiding his indiscretions in mundane places no one would bother to …
“Oh.” I felt the breath slip out of me. Felt Vero’s eyes dart to my face as an idea took hold. “Go to Steven’s house,” I said.
“Why the hell would we go to Steven’s house?”
“Because we need a shovel.” A really big shovel. And if anyone had the tools to bury a secret as big as Harris Mickler, it was definitely my ex-husband.
CHAPTER 12
It was well after midnight by the time we snuck the shovel from Theresa’s shed and made the long drive to Steven’s sod farm. The dark, unmarked rear entrance to the property wasn’t nearly as inviting as it had been in the daylight. Vero killed the headlights and we sat in the car, listening to the children’s soft breaths in the back seat, waiting for our eyes to adjust. Blue moonlight draped over the grass. It billowed for acres all around us, except for a single square plot in the rearmost field where the earth had been freshly turned, waiting to be planted.