Rogue (Dead Man's Ink, #2)(55)
Soph and I climb up into the Humvee, and she doesn’t mention it but she must know I have Dela Vega’s body in the back, out of sight. I drive thirty minutes south, heading in the opposite direction from the spot where we buried Bron yesterday. Lowell hasn’t paid us a visit yet but there’s every chance she’s having the compound watched, so I don’t turn on the car’s headlights. I just drive in a straight line, my eyes accustomed to the dark, and Sophia stares out of the window, her thoughts clearly weighing heavily on her mind.
When we stop and get out of the car, the night air smells weirdly like eucalyptus and something else. Something sweet that I can’t put my finger on. The dark shadow of Sophia’s form moves quietly around the car, where she opens the rear passenger door and takes out the two heavy shovels I put there before we set off.
“How many times have you done this?” she asks me. Her eyes shine brightly, full of pain and sadness, but they’re dry. I get the feeling I won’t see her crying over Raphael Dela Vega again; the firm set of her jaw and her ramrod straight posture speak volumes.
I want to lie to her and tell her I’m new to this. That I haven’t been burying people out here in the desert for years now. But I can’t. What would be the point in deceiving her? She’s a smart girl—maybe too smart for her own good—and she must already know the truth. I want her to know me, dark, evil things included, and telling her otherwise would only be misleading her. “Too many times to count, beautiful girl.”
“Were they…were they all men like Raphael?”
Nodding, I drive the point of my shovel into the ground. “And worse. Far, far worse.”
She seems to think about this for a long moment, the sweet smelling breeze lifting tendrils of her dark hair about her face, and then she nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. If they were worse than Raphael, then they deserve to be here. I get it.”
I’m not prepared for her acceptance of this knowledge, so I don’t have anything to say at first.
The two of us start digging; it’s not long before Sophia sheds her sweater, stripping down to the thin t-shirt I gave her to wear, and I’m naked from the waist up. We’re both sweating and breathing heavily by the time the hole is deep enough to dispose of Raphael’s body.
I purposefully haven’t covered him up. He’s all blood and horror and loose-limbed madness as I heave him out of the back of the Humvee and drag him under his arms to the grave we’ve prepared for him. His skin a strange mottled purple color, apart from where he’s covered in his own dried blood, which has turned the color of rust and dirt.
“Are…are his eyes meant to look like that?” Sophia asks softly. She’s glancing at Raphael’s already decaying body out of the corner of her eye, as though, if she only manages to glimpse him in small snapshots, she’ll be spared the true horror of what she’s done. That won’t do her any good, though. That’s why I left him uncovered. She needs to see him. She needs to come to terms with the fact that she killed him.
“Yeah.” I drop Raphael on the ground, and then go to stand beside her. Taking her hand, I draw her to my side, trying to stem the body-wide shivering that seems to be taking her over. “That always happens.”
Her fingers feel icy and cold in mine. “Do you know why?” she asks.
“It’s the potassium breaking down in his red blood cells. Makes the eyes go cloudy.”
“He looks…looks like he has cataracts. He doesn’t look real anymore.” Taking a deep breath, she finally looks at him properly. “I get why you’re making me do this,” she whispers.
“Tell me.”
“Because you want me to have closure. You want me to be the one who buries him. You want me to be the one who shovels dirt onto his body and sends him away forever. You want me to understand he’s never coming back, and he’s never going to hurt me again. That’s why.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to. She’s hit the nail on the head; without this sort of closure, she’ll only ever remember him with his hands on her, trying to force himself on her. He would always seem stronger than her in her mind. More dangerous. He would forever haunt her. Now, like this, broken, just a slowly degrading husk, he has no power. Yes, he looks terrifying, covered in all that blood, staring up at the star speckled night sky with his mouth yawning open in surprise, but he also looks small. Weak. Incapable of causing her any more pain.
I nuzzle my face into her hair, breathing her in, trying to transfer some of my strength to her. She’s already so damn strong, but that’s irrelevant. If I could carry this burden for her, I would. If I could have been the one to kill him, I would have. I should have. I don’t ever want her to hurt or suffer any more than she has to. “Do you want me to help you?” I whisper.
She squeezes her hand in mine, taking a deep breath. “No. No, it’s all right. I can do this.”
She gets to work. Even after she’s pulled on the gloves I gave to her at the clubhouse, I can tell she doesn’t want to touch Raphael. She has to in order to get his body into the hole, though, so she steels herself and then grabs him under the arms, the same way I did when I dragged him from the car.
Raphael was a big guy, and Soph is nowhere near as strong as me, so it’s not as easy for her to maneuver him to the side of the grave. She doesn’t give up, though. She positions his body directly beside the gaping hole in the ground and then she straightens, staring down at the man who’s plagued her dreams since that night back in Seattle.