Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(26)

Vero and I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the field. The muddy clumps of churned-up dirt glowed gray under the moon. The night was warm for October, quiet except for the rush of fallen leaves tumbling along the line of tall cedars behind us. There wasn’t a headlight or porch light anywhere for miles. I could picture Steven and Bree out here, screwing in the back of his pickup after hours. It was the kind of place secrets could go undiscovered for years as new grass grew up all around them.

I drove the tip of Steven’s shovel into the ground, relieved to find it soft, pliable. Mercifully, Steven and Theresa hadn’t been home when Vero and I parked a few car lengths from her driveway and I’d crept along the thin tree line behind their town house to raid the toolshed in the backyard. I’d slunk off with a heavy shovel boasting a broad steel blade, along with a pair of gardening gloves.

“We’ll take turns,” I told Vero. “I’ll dig first. You keep watch.” With any luck, Steven would seed this field before anyone knew Harris Mickler was gone.

My throat went dry as I stared down at the shovel. If this had all been a novel, this moment would be a turning point. A point of no return. If we left right now and went back to Georgia’s house, we could still claim negligent homicide. I could tell her everything that had happened in that bar. How I’d accidentally killed Harris Mickler when I’d left my van running in the garage. I could turn in all the evidence on his phone and try to do the right thing, even if it meant going to prison and losing my kids for a while.

I glanced back at the car where they were sleeping. Once this hole was dug, there was no going back. Stealing a shovel, burying a body, claiming the money Patricia Mickler promised—it all pointed to a premeditated crime. A felonious, horrible, unspeakable crime. And as my foot hovered over the lip of the shovel, I wasn’t sure I was any less a monster than Harris Mickler.

“C’mon, Finlay!” Vero’s sharp hiss jolted me. I leaned into the shovel and hauled out the first full scoop of dirt as she paced, her breath bursting out in short hot clouds that looked like ghosts against the night sky. “How far down do we need to go?” she asked, bouncing on her heels, her eyes darting between me and the kids and the rural road through the line of cedars behind us.

I’d hoped for six feet—deep enough to keep the farm machinery from accidentally tilling up his corpse, but my back was already on fire, I had a cramp in my side, and I hadn’t even cleared the first foot. At this point, I’d settle for four.

Impatient, Vero grabbed the pink trowel and jumped into the field with me, scooping up the small mounds of dirt that cascaded over the sides of my shovel.

“Next time we do this—”

“There isn’t going to be a next time,” I panted, glaring at Vero sideways as I dug faster, anxious to be done with it and get home. “This was an accident. That’s all.”

“Maybe the world could do with more accidents,” she said under her breath. “If I had as much money as Patricia Mickler, I probably would have hired you, too.”

I paused, letting the shovel rest against the ground. I’d assumed Vero had so readily signed up for this because of the money. I hadn’t stopped to consider the money wasn’t worth the risk for either of us. That maybe she had her own reasons for digging herself into this hole with me. She threw me a sharp, urgent look and shoveled faster with her trowel. My own hands were already stiff and sweaty inside my gloves, and the skin was raw with searing, fresh blisters. I kept digging anyway.

“Who would you have gotten rid of?” I asked between scoops.

Vero only shrugged. “I’m just saying, there’s no shortage of assholes out there. And in this town, there’s no shortage of money either. I say we corner the market while it’s hot.”

I dumped a pile of dirt beside the hole, the edge already level with my knees. “Easy for you to say,” I said between labored breaths. “You have the small shovel.”

“Exactly why we need one of those.” She pointed her tiny pink trowel at the hulking outline of the front-end loader Zach had been so eager to climb only hours ago.

I held out the big shovel, swapping it for the pink trowel, hoping after fifteen minutes of heaving dirt she might feel differently about the likelihood of a “next time.” Or maybe because I was worried I might start feeling differently about that front-end loader if I had to shovel any more. I checked the time on my phone. An hour had already passed. At this rate, we wouldn’t be home until dawn.

“We don’t even know how to drive one,” I reasoned.

She jammed the shovel into the ground, her sneaker braced against the blade, grunting as she heaved out a scoop. “There’s nothing you can’t learn on YouTube,” she said between ragged breaths. “My cousin Ramón learned how to hot-wire a car. How hard could it be?”

Her cousin sounded like he should be the one out here digging the hole. “We are not adding grand larceny of farming equipment to our growing list of felonies.”

“Think about it.” She leaned against her shovel, her face coated in grime. “We could have had this entire hole dug in five minutes with one of those things. I learned about this in economics class. It’s the time value of money. If we’re going to be professionals, we need to start acting like professionals.”

“And professional contract killers bury bodies with front-end loaders?”