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I couldn’t tell how long the drive lasted. Part of that was the disorientation of the wound. And part was the stifling heat and suffocating weight of the comforter. When I had moments of clarity, I felt more alert. More aware of the pain, too, but able to think. The wound was in my chest. I hadn’t bled out, which was one small miracle. I wondered if it had nicked a lung; maybe that, more than the comforter, explained why it was so hard to breathe. I wasn’t dead; that was the bottom line. But I would be, sooner or later, if I didn’t get out of here.
That was easier said than done. They’d wrapped me tightly in the comforter, and after a few attempts to work myself free, I gave up. Every movement sent a nauseating wave of heat and pain through me, and I just couldn’t do it. The thought was made all the worse by the knowledge that, if I could get free of the comforter, it would be a simple matter of finding the trunk release and letting myself out. Simple, I thought. Unless Rory still had the gun. And I’d have to wait until we weren’t driving sixty miles an hour. But since I couldn’t free myself from the Bed, Bath, and Beyond equivalent of a bondage wrap, it was all fucking moot.
I could tell when we left the road; the car turned, and I slid—as much as I could—along the bottom of the trunk. Instead of the smooth, thrumming progress, now we began to bounce and rock back and forth. A dirt road. Or maybe no road at all. It was hard to gauge how far we’d gone because I’d lost track of time, but we were outside the city limits. There were a lot of empty places in the middle of Missouri. A lot of places you could dump somebody, and they’d never be found. Not anytime soon, anyway.
When the car stopped and the engine died, ambient noises began to filter in. Air moving against the body of the car. Birdsong. Somebody would have known what kind of bird it was. Hell, Emery would have known its name and address. It was just another bird to me, and it didn’t tell me anything.
A door clunked shut. Steps moved toward me, then past me, growing more distant. What felt like a long span of time opened in that sweaty, claustrophobic darkness, and all I could do was pant, trying to get enough air to stay conscious.Then another sound cut through the haze of my panic.
It was metallic, a kind of shiiiing and then clink. It took several long, disoriented seconds before I recognized what I was hearing.
A shovel.
He was going to bury me. Alive.
I thrashed inside the rolled-up comforter, trying to unroll it enough to give me room to use my arms. But the confined space of the trunk kept me from making any progress. I heard my own shallow breaths, tasted my own breath and blood. It was getting harder to breathe. Or maybe that was just the terror, clamping down on my chest. Finally, I worked myself up enough that the black spots whirred faster and faster in my vision, and I was gone again.
When I came back, a trace of cooler air met me, and the light had changed. The trunk lid was open; that made its way through my muzzy thoughts. And then hands grabbed me and dragged me, still wrapped in the comforter, over the lip of the trunk.
It was slow going. Rory was struggling—I was a full-grown man, and he was trying to lift me out of the trunk without Eddie’s help. His breathing sounded labored, and I remembered, that night at Sunny’s, how quickly he’d gotten winded. Fucking kids and their fucking glamor muscles, I thought, fighting a laugh. Run a fucking mile. It was hysteria more than humor, but in the moment, it felt like a lifeline.
He readjusted me, lifting the lower portion of my body, and a fresh jolt of pain ran through me. I cried out. Rory dropped me with a shouted “Fuck!” He beat a retreat, his steps heavy and uneven. Silence. And then “What the fuck?”
It was outrage more than surprise the second time. Because I hadn’t had the decency to die during the drive.
“Rory,” I said. Or tried to say. It was harder than I’d expected, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I couldn’t get a full breath or if it was my head or maybe everything. “You don’t have to do this.”
But I wasn’t sure how much of it he could understand. I was vaguely aware that the words had come out mushier than even I’d expected.
Then he was back, grabbing my legs again, hauling me forward.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Shut up.”
“Rory.”
“Stop talking. Stop saying my name!”
He gave a big heave, and this time, he staggered backward, carrying me with him. I slid free of the trunk, and Rory and I must have realized at the same time what was going to happen: enough of my body passed the tipping point, and gravity pulled me the rest of the way. Rory let out a startled noise, and then I hit the ground.
The comforter provided some padding, but not enough to make a difference. Pain exploded through me, and I was gone again.
Later, he was dragging me. The ground was uneven, and grass whispered against the comforter. Rory’s ragged breathing was interrupted by snuffling and sniffling, and through the fog in my head, I thought, He’s crying.
“Stop making those noises,” he said. “You have to be quiet. Why won’t you just be quiet?”
I tried to say, “Rory,” again.
“Stop saying my name!” he screamed. “Stop! Stop it! Stop!”
He jerked the comforter back and forth, like I was a child and he was shaking me by the arm.
“Please,” I mumbled.
With another scream, he dropped the end of the comforter he’d been holding. Then he shoved me. It jarred the gunshot wound, and the pain flared up, but I stayed with it this time. I rolled once inside the comforter, then again, tumbling down the rough grade of a slope. When I hit the bottom of the trench or pit or whatever the fuck he’d dug, the pain burst into life again, but I rode it out.
Not far, I thought through the daze. Not deep.
And then something else came to me—when he’d rolled me down the hill, the comforter had started to come unwrapped. I could move my arms. And my legs. Not much, but enough that, after a moment of agony, I managed to roll myself over again, and another fold of the comforter came loose. I had enough room to get my hands under me. I drew my knees up. A wave of nausea washed over me, and I braced myself like that, fighting the dizziness, the urge to lie down again. Everything was wet, and a clinical voice inside me said it was a lot of blood. How much, I wanted to know. How bad?
Rory’s sudden, disbelieving inhalation told me he’d noticed me. That was bad. I hadn’t thought about that. I should have waited. But I couldn’t wait because he was going to bury me alive. I should have—it was hard to finish that thought. Hard to do anything but hold myself on my hands and knees and try not to collapse.
The skitter and scrape of stone and loose earth came from nearby, and then the familiar chink of the shovel. Rory was making wet, gasping noises. Sobs, I thought. He’s crying harder now.
“Stop!” he screamed. “Stop! You can’t do that!”
I picked at the comforter with one trembling hand, trying to find the edge of it. I was getting more and more of that fresh, cool air, and it was so sweet, I wanted to gulp it down, drink it like ice water.
“I said stop!” And then Rory wailed—the sound frustrated, bewildered, and full of a child’s rage at a world that wouldn’t play by his rules. “Stop!”
The first blow from the shovel came as a whistling noise, and then it hit my head, and the world went white. I fell. Another blow landed, low on my back, barely felt through that bright, soundless storm inside my head. And then another. And then one hit the gunshot wound, and everything got scrambled.
Through the static, Rory’s sobs and shouts penetrated thinly. “Why are you doing this? Why won’t you just stop? Stay down! Just stay down!”
He stopped, eventually. The sounds came of his scrambling progress up out of the trench. Metal clanged when he dropped the shovel, and then steps moved away.
I had to get up. It was hard to think, but I knew I had to get up because—
He was going to be so mad.
Something sticky was under me. The floor was a mess. A long way off, someone was crying.
I had to get up because she needed me.
But it wasn’t the kitchen, was it? It was the hospital. I hurt so much, it had to be the hospital. They’d told me. They’d tried to tell me. But I hadn’t understood until I’d seen a mirror.
I had to get up.
The ground was rough. Rocky. A confused part of me recognized it couldn’t be the hospital. I was outside. I could hear a bird. The night came back to me, the asphalt biting into bare skin, the rubber tread of a boot pressed against my neck, the hot piss slashing the air.
I had to get up.
Again.
I had to get up again.
In the academy, they’d called it the winning mind. You had to believe you were going to win. You had to believe it so strongly that you knew it. That belief was why some officers survived impossible odds. It was why they kept fighting, when everyone else would have lain down to die.
But it had been something else before the academy. It didn’t have a name. It wasn’t decision—at least, not a conscious one. It was just this red, screaming part of me that wouldn’t give up. Not when I saw what that psycho bitch had done to me. Not when I’d been a child lying on a dirty kitchen floor. A dazed voice added, Not for some thirsty little twink.
So I got up. Again.
Hands and knees. And then, fumbling blindly because my eyes still weren’t working very well, I ripped my way free of the comforter. The light dazzled me. The fresh air on my skin made my eyes sting. I tried to suck in deep lungfuls, but the pain in my chest made me dizzy, so I had to settle for soft, whispery gasps. The wet hair on my nape. The crumbling dirt between my fingers. That bird was still singing. Get up, I thought. Get up. Get up.
I crawled, slipping and sliding and falling in the loose soil. When I got to the top, I sat on the grass. I was shaking. Blood loss, the cop inside me said. Shock.
Not yet, I told the cop.
Calling it a pit would have been misleading; it was a hole in the ground barely a couple of feet deep. If Rory had gone ahead with his plan of filling it in, the comforter—with me inside it—probably would have stuck out in several places. It was obvious that the kid hadn’t had any idea what he was doing, and he’d given up once he thought he’d dug deep enough. It was also obvious Rory was an idiot, which made my whole situation kind of insulting.
I was about to get on my hands and knees again when I noticed that the earth looked dry. Not wet, like he’d just dug here. Enough time had passed for the dirt to dry out. And when I looked closer, even with my eyes acting funny, I noticed what I’d missed the first time. Light sparked off a bloodstained knife, half-buried near the comforter. Next to it lay a bundle of filthy clothing.
Good God, I thought. How fucking stupid was he?
Although, I guess in Rory’s defense, this place—wherever it was—had worked well enough the first time.
I took a moment to look around. My car was parked about thirty yards away. The trunk was still open, and there was no sign of Rory. When the breeze dropped, though, I thought I heard his voice.
Get to the car.
I started to crawl. Then I noticed the shovel, which still lay where Rory had dropped it. The blade was covered in rust. Either he’d left it here after burying the knife and clothes, or it had been out here to start with—wherever here was. The handle was wood, and old. Not something he’d picked up at a hardware store. I dug the blade into the ground to anchor it, and then I used the shovel to drag myself to my feet, the gunshot wound screaming with every movement.
Blood rushed to my head, and black spots whirled in my vision again. But I didn’t fall. My heartbeat pulsed behind my eyes. In my shoulder. I took deep breaths, adjusted the shovel as an improvised crutch, and started forward. The blade clink ed each time it bit into the ground.
As I limped toward the car, Rory’s voice became words I could understand.
“—because he’s still alive, you stupid fuck!” Weeping made him choke. “Get out here and fix it! This isn’t my fault!” Then he screamed, and a cracking noise rang out. Eddie had hung up on him, I figured, and Rory had thrown his phone. Sobs wracked him again, the sounds floating out into the heavy heat of the summer afternoon.
I was almost to the window when he noticed me. I could see him in the side mirror. His eyes widened. The color drained from his face. My ghost drifted along in the window next to me—a faint reflection that didn’t give back the details but was enough for me to see the bloody, dirt-crusted thing that had crawled out of its own grave. Rory opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. And then, audible even over the rise and fall of leaves in the breeze and the birdsong and the slow, metallic chime of the shovel as it scraped across the ground, he pissed himself.
When I reached the window, I stared at him for a second. His mouth still hung open. His pupils were huge.
“Phone.”
He moved like a zombie to pick up the phone from the dash and hold it out to me.
I took it. “Keys.”
It took him two tries to get them out of the ignition. He was shaking now, and the keys jingled as he extended them.
Once they were in my hand, I leaned a little more heavily on the shovel. He was moving his jaw now, still trying to say something.
But I spoke first. “Get out of the car, and I’ll kill you. Understand?”
He might have nodded. Or maybe it was just the shakes.
I didn’t even bother unlocking the phone; I just held down the button for emergency services and asked for the police.