What Have We Done (74)

His mind snaps back to the woods around him. He feels light-headed. He tucks the old .22 in his waistband and sticks his hand back inside the knothole. He feels the glass of a bottle and tugs it out of the hole. He examines a half-empty pint of peppermint schnaps and shudders. You never forget throwing up that stuff. He thrusts his hand back in the hole and feels around. Ben was in Chestertown when he was killed, when he called the law clerk. He wanted Donnie to come to this hiding place for a reason. Donnie’s fingers land on a thin slab of metal and plastic, and he pulls out the phone. It has a gold chain tangled around it.

Donnie looks around, worried that the FBI agent or someone is gonna jump out from behind a tree, but there’s no one out here but Donnie and the insects bouncing off his skin.

He untangles the chain from the device, powers it on. The FBI must not have been able to track Ben’s device because it was off or because of no signal in the woods. When the screen pops on, it asks for a password. Donnie tries Bell’s name, then Mia’s. He thinks on this more, then tries “Calvin.”

The phone flashes to a screen. The camera app. A video shows up as the most recent image.

Donnie takes a deep breath before playing the video, and that’s when he notices that the gold chain has a decorative name engraved into it:





Annie


CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

JENNA

Jenna comes to on the dining room floor of Savior House. She must be seeing double because there’s two of the hit woman now: one standing over Derek Brood, the other crouching low, looking Jenna in the eye with the hint of a smile. Nico’s sitting on the floor, back to the wall, his hands behind him. He looks despondent, defeated.

Artemis walks up to Brood, whose face is covered in blood. “I’ll ask you again. Where are the bones?”

Derek looks at his lap. “I told you, I have no idea what you’re—” He’s cut off by his own deafening scream … as the hit woman’s weapon makes a whoosh and there’s the sound of cracking bone as she removes it from Derek’s thigh.

“You know what, Derek.” Artemis crouches in front of their old nemesis, who appears to be losing consciousness. “I think I believe you.”

Derek’s chest is shuddering, he’s blubbering now.

“You know what else?”

Derek dares to look up into Artemis’s eyes.

As she watches, Jenna is trying to clear her head. To formulate an escape plan.

Arty raises his voice. “I said: Do you know what else, Derek?”

Derek shakes his head timidly.

“Your father was a buffoon, which is the only reason he got stuck babysitting a bunch of kids.

Your uncle was probably relieved when he disappeared, except that he was stuck raising another buffoon.”

Arty stands straight. “But at least your dad wasn’t a bully.”

“Please…” Derek moans as the hit woman raises the tube weapon.

“No compute, no compute,” Arty says in a mechanical voice. “That’s how robots talk, right?”

“I was just a kid.…”

“And so was I.” Artemis says it again: “Where are the bones?”

“I … don’t … know.…”

Artemis looks at the hit woman, nods. The other woman—she must be the hit woman’s identical twin—has eyes on Jenna, watching for any sudden moves.

Again in a robot voice, Artemis says, “Terminate.”

The hit woman puts the cylinder weapon to Derek’s temple and whoosh.

Derek slouches lifeless in the chair.

As the woman pushes Derek onto the floor, Artemis’s gaze goes from Jenna to Nico.

“Which one of you is next?” He touches his chin. “Bring her to the chair.”

One of the ghastly twins drags Jenna off the floor and onto the chair.

Jenna’s head is still pounding, she’s concussed, but the adrenaline has heightened her senses, her fear, as the hit woman jams the tube weapon at the center of her chest.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

DONNIE

Still in the woods, Donnie watches the video on Benny’s phone. It has a night-vision filter that casts everything in a green tint, but it’s surprisingly clear. Ben filmed a figure on the same knoll where the five of them had put Mr. Brood in the ground.

A woman’s voice rises above the chirp of crickets through the tinny speaker.

“This is not what we signed up for,” she says.

It’s dark and the white coveralls she’s wearing are covered in dirt. She holds a phone in one hand, talking to someone on speaker mode. With the other hand she scoops up a pile of what look like rags, but when the camera zooms in they appear to be decaying clothes containing human bones.

“Quit whining,” the voice through the phone says.

“Um, fuck off. I’ve been doing all the dirty work while you get a tan,” the woman says. “There’s like so many remains here. The clothes look like they were teenagers.”

“Not our concern,” the voice on the phone says.

“Spoken like a woman sipping a margarita poolside on a cruise while I’m digging up human remains.”

The video jostles as Ben moves closer. His movement stops as the camera focuses in on the wheelbarrow. As the image resolves, Donnie sees that it does not hold kindling. The wheelbarrow’s filled with bones, including at least three skulls. A Black hand appears in the video; Benny seems to be taking something from among the remains. Something delicate, shiny. The hand freezes when the woman calls out.