We Were Never Here(17)
Christ, it was heavy. Like we’d lifted a tarp filled with rocks. I felt it yanking away from me, back toward the earth, and thought wildly that this was weight I’d feel forever. The shower curtain tugged at our palms and we paused to make sure it wouldn’t rip at the bottom and spill pooled blood as Paolo rushed back to the floor. After a frozen moment, I murmured, “Let’s go.”
The load was bulky, awkward, swaying and knocking against our knees as we shuffled and whispered and stumbled outside. Oh God, was that Paolo’s head pushing against my shin, glued with blood to the inside of his backpack? My fingers cramped against the sweat-slick plastic, and the pain crept up my wrists, my forearms, my whole upper body tensing against the weight.
We reached the trunk and I almost cried out with relief. Another countdown and we lifted the bundle toward the back of the car—but Kristen raised her side too quickly, those toned arms like a lever, and for a wild second I thought we’d catapult him inside. My heartbeat scattered as we jostled the curtain, almost overcorrecting, but then we evened out and lowered him into the trunk. I dashed back inside and loaded my arms with his other clothes, whipping my head around to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. A migraine surged behind my eyes as I hustled back into the cool air and dropped Paolo’s clothes on top of him.
The trunk squealed as we pushed it shut, and we glanced around the small parking lot. No movement on the street or in the blackened windows of a nearby guest room. Of course, if someone was watching us from inside, we wouldn’t be able to see them. We were staking so much on luck, on the gamble that I’d understood the hotel receptionist correctly, that most of the property was vacant.
“Shovels,” I prompted, moving toward the stone steps. This was another reason we couldn’t just pack up and leave: We couldn’t dig with our hands, and borrowing and returning shovels from the hotel before dawn was another microstep in our gambit to remain forgettable, under the radar. A process that already felt painstaking and nearly impossible, like building a ship in a bottle.
Kristen followed me upstairs and to the end of the pool. The air up here had that cold, steely-clean smell, and it was oddly bright, as if the water weren’t just reflecting the night sky but actually amplifying it. A shudder ran through me, guilt like a sprinkler: Paolo on the bar patio earlier that night, a flesh-and-blood being with secrets and dreams and loved ones and—
No. He was a bad man.
He attacked Kristen.
She was fighting for her life.
She reached the shed and ran her palms over the door’s particleboard surface, then found the lock: a smooth padlock that hung from two strips of metal screwed into the door and the frame.
“Shoot.” She gave it a tug. “It’s locked.”
My brain recentered, an auto-refresh. I nudged her out of the way and lifted the lighter I’d brought from the suite. My problem-solving instinct clanged on, the same knack that makes me so good at escape rooms and brainteasers and my job as a project manager. Maybe focusing hard on this simple problem—door is locked; we need what’s behind it—would distract me from the larger and more horrifying issue on our hands. The stained backpack heaped in the trunk, and the pile of bones and organs and pooling blood inside. “Here, hold this.”
As Kristen clutched the lighter, I dug in my pockets, then selected the tiniest coin—an octagonal one-peso piece. I eased its side into a screw that held the lock against the door, then turned.
She gasped. “It’s working.” She held her fist to her mouth as I rotated the coin.
My mind scuttled ahead. “We have to leave everything exactly as we found it,” I whispered. “We should even mess up our footprints here.” Everything would need to look locked, secure, untouched—nothing to raise suspicion. Hopefully ever, but at least long enough for the signs of our presence to grind down to nothingness, for the hotel suite and walking paths to move back toward their median condition. Like we’d never set foot here.
I plucked out the screw with a surgeon’s care, then pulled on the still-locked padlock. The door swung toward me, and the hardware with it.
Kristen pushed in front of me. “You’re a genius. Let’s find those shovels.”
I almost couldn’t believe they were there: leaning against the back wall, caked in dirt and jumbled with rakes and hoes. Each tool looked like a deadly weapon, something meant only for pummeling human flesh. For a wild second, I pictured it: Kristen in Cambodia with the metal lamp held aloft, sa-wing batter batter batter. Her eyes as electric as a storm. The image flipped: Kristen in the same stance, but here, with a bottle of wine. I felt a brief swoop of fear and pushed it aside.
I grabbed a shovel from Kristen, and she ducked back into the shed, rifling around.
“Yes,” she hissed, then held out two flashlights. “Let’s go.” She plunged back toward the stone steps, the spade slung against her shoulder. Like she was one of the Seven Dwarfs. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to bury a body we go.
CHAPTER 8
Kristen squinted out the windshield, her shoulders buckled in concentration as we rolled out of the driveway and down the mountain road.
“Can you see?” I whispered. Her night vision was better than mine, as we’d discovered on a stargazing tour a few nights ago, when she had to guide me by the hand to the massive telescope the guide had set up. My astigmatism made the darkness staticky and dull. Astigmatism and asthma—small defects mostly sidestepped in the modern world. It was the big things that got you: bottles of wine, the metal legs of a bed frame. A lengthy plummet from the lip of a cliff.