Page 81 of Agency

“Why don’t you start by closing that front door?” I suggested. “Then we’ll see about finding a tarp, or some bed sheets or something to put Joergensen on.”

“Uh… Not anything else?”

I knew what she was referring to. She wanted to know if she needed to be cuffed again… If she was still our prisoner. Or, well,myprisoner. The guys clearly had some disagreement with me on that arrangement.

Yes. She had run. But, she’d come back, and she’d had our backs. Former contract killer, or not, there weren’t many people I could say that about. Now, did her coming back mean things between us were where they had been on that first night we’d met?

Hell no. But, they were definitely in a better place.

“Breakfast, then Joergensen?” I asked. “Andrew was itching to cook something. Might as well let him before we head out of here.”

She snorted a laugh and just shrugged. “Sure. Some eggs sound great. Need plenty of calories to bury dead bodies. I prefer mine sunny-side-up, by the way.”

“Tell Andrew, not me,” I said as I left the living room. “He’s the cook.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Morgan

There’s nothing quite like the sound of soil sliding off the blade of your shovel, or the smell of rich, damp loam being cut from the earth. Nothing else quite compares.

That smell, though, is even better when someone else is doing the digging.

“So, scale of one to ten?” Andrew began as he lifted a shovel’s worth of soil from the depths of the grave, throwing the dirt out and to the side. “How fucked do you think we are?” The depth and more cylindrical shape to the hole gave his voice a hollow, echoing quality that made him sound far more distant than he would have otherwise as he bent for another shovel-full.

“With Jericho? Or with everything else?” I asked.

“Start with Jericho.”

“I’d say a five. We’re going to get torn a new one, but nothing serious.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.” I looked in the vague direction of where I knew Joergensen’s Audi was parked, then down to Joergensen’s tarpaulin-wrapped corpse, then the trash bag of his clothes and personal effects destined for the burn barrel out back of the cabin. We’d stuffed in some other odds and ends, as well, like the rags and towels used to mop up his blood.

“If we were at a ten, I don’t think he’d have taken Ambyr with him to inspect this guy’s car.”

“Good point. Unless he comes back and says we’ve got to dig a second pit.”

I barked out laughter, shook my head. “Not likely. You saw the way he was looking at her, right? He knows she could have been gone, but chose to come back and help.”

“Fair.”

“What about the rest?”

“Contract killers and some agency coming to kill us all?”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty sure we’re at an eleven on that one.”

He grunted out his agreement.

“Need a break?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I helped him out of the hole, which was already near to the six-foot mark, but still had a bit deeper to go. Most people who hide bodies don’t hide them very well. They just bury them with a bunch of their identifying information on them in a traditional, easily spotted, horizontal manner. Then, the decomp process starts and gasses escape–which draws wild animals, or even hikers, to the source of the smell. The solution is to dig deeper and in a more circular shape, then drop the corpse in head-first and cover the rotting organs contained within the body’s trunk with as much soil as possible.