Page 74 of Bound to a Killer

The image of Tanner’s partially decayed body set aflame turns my stomach, but I box the emotion out until I’m numb again. He’s already dead.

It’s best to never look back. Move forward. Think later.

Or perhaps it’s best to never think of it at all.

“Oh,” she says in a threadbare whisper. “What about me?”

I catch her wince through the mirror as I turn out of the narrow alley.

“What’ll happen to me now?”

My gaze snaps back to the road ahead, the car jostling over cracked pavement, the vibrations jerking all of us in our seats. “Will you tell the cops what happened?” I ask. The question sits heavy between us for a brief moment.

“No,” she quickly assures once she’s able to form the words again. “I-I told you I wouldn’t. Everything I told you before was true.”

Her words should evoke a visceral reaction in me, but everything inside of me is hollow. Past promises feel empty.

I know her words hold inklings of fear, of uncertainty. Who’d blame her? I’ve always been someone to be feared. Not to come close to.

She just wants to go home. I could take here there now. I should.

Frankie stays quiet, stiff as a mannequin, her head resting against the window, her body shaking from the car’s vibrations.

Guilt racks through me. My little sister needs me right now.

I can’t help her with Aria tethered to us. Besides, it wouldn’t be what Frankie would want. What either of them would want.

My mind’s made up.

“Repeat after me,” I tell her. She snaps her eyes to the front, resting on the back of my headrest. “You didn’t see anything. You left the Shaws’ early.”

“I-I left early,” she stumbles. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Where did you go?” I quiz.

“Out of town?” she echoes, slow and uncertain. Then, more panicked, “My mom picked me up. It was an emergency. My…My grandma died. She picked me up from the sleepover early and we left town. I didn’t see anything.”

“What time?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Eleven thirty,” I clip. “Now again. More confidently this time.”

She doesn’t skip a beat, stringing the constructed story together again and again until the lines roll off her tongue with practiced ease.

The warehouse fades to a speck as we disappear into the distance, leaving everything I once knew behind.

PART TWO

“What good is freedom when the soul is starved of the one thing it was never allowed to have?”

– Unknown

21

ARIA

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER