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‘I guess I’m really doing this,’ Jet said to Billy and to herself, carrying the sledgehammer over toward the new foundations. She climbed down and over the trench, standing in the footprint of the garage-to-be.

‘What are you doing over there? Get out!’

‘Sorry, Jimmy,’ she called back, raising the sledgehammer. ‘I don’t think you and me are going to be friends.’

She brought the hammer down, double-handed, into the center of the concrete channel. It cracked, the pressure locking her wrists, riding up her arms, the thud ringing in her ears.

A large chunk came loose, a crater where it used to be.

‘What are you doing?!’ Jimmy screamed, voice finding a new octave. ‘Stop that!’

He barreled toward Jet, sliding in the mud, hands out to reach across the trench and grab her.

‘No!’ Billy got there first, stood in front of Jet, blocking Jimmy’s way. A barricade made of arms, flexing his shoulders. ‘You leave her alone,’ Billy said, straightening up to his full height, leaning over a red-faced Jimmy. ‘Please.’

‘But she’s –’

‘– I know she is,’ Billy said, calmly. ‘But neither you or me are going to stop her. Believe me, she can’t be stopped.’

Jet swung again, another thwack, another slice of concrete, the size of her hand.

‘Please.’ Billy doubled down, too damn nice sometimes, should have just told Jimmy to go fuck himself. Give Jet a second to catch her breath and she’d do it herself.

Jimmy growled and Jet glanced up, ready to swing at him if he dared to hit Billy. But he wasn’t, he didn’t. He spun on his boots, walking away, pulling a phone out of his back pocket.

‘He’s gone,’ Billy said, the last word lost as Jet swung again, widening the hole, fault lines cracking, spidering along the once-smooth surface.

‘I love it when you fight over me, honey,’ Jet told him, already breathless. ‘You got some balls now, huh, Billy Finney?’

‘And you’ve got a death wish.’

‘Billy, I’m not even going to comment on that one.’

Jet swung again. She guessed she was really doing this. She had to – she was dead in five days and she had a murder to solve. And … well, she’d kind of always wanted to just smash shit up.

And shit was smashing. The middle of that hole might have already been two feet down.

Billy was watching her, his teeth out, pressing little moons into his bottom lip.

Jet shifted, aiming closer, trying to break the crater into a cross section. She’d need to check the entire trench; it could have been anywhere along it.

‘I get it, Billy,’ she said, feeling his eyes.

‘You’re stuck because you want to help, because helping is what you do.

But you can’t help me now.’ Jet wiped her sleeve across her face, beads of sweat prickling her nose.

‘You still have to think about consequences. But I don’t.

It’s OK. You cover me. Save me from more angry builders. ’

She swung again.

Again.

Stopped to remove her jacket – too hot already – and swung again.

Billy wasn’t there when she glanced up; he was gone.

Jet sniffed, letting go of the sledgehammer, dropping to her knees to clear some of the debris, chucking it behind her, out of the way.

She stood up and started again, digging toward the outer boundary now.

Swung.

Thud.

Looked up.

Billy was back.

Crossing the trench, a blue sledgehammer gripped in his hands.

He came to stand beside her, didn’t look at her, looked down instead.

‘Only you,’ he said.

He raised the sledgehammer above his head and brought it down, the sound so loud it shook the world beneath Jet’s feet, a huge pit where he’d struck the concrete.

‘Always getting me in trouble,’ he muttered, swinging again.

‘I am not!’

She waited for Billy to go again, then took a turn.

‘What about the time you made us put red food dye in your parents’ pool because you wanted to make a shark movie?’

Jet removed a huge slab of concrete, dragging it out of Billy’s way.

‘Let’s not talk about the pool,’ she grunted. ‘Actually, let’s not talk at all. This is fucking hard work.’

Jet swung, made a dent, then Billy swung, his dent twice the size of hers.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘your sledgehammer’s better than mine. Switch.’

It wasn’t the sledgehammer.

Billy took a turn, and then Jet, one strike then two, while the other reared up, ready. Like a broken clock, the ticking uneven, too slow then too fast, counting down to something, seconds and minutes Jet would never get back.

‘Stand back, Jet. Let me do a few.’

Billy smashed, once, twice, and again, concrete breaking up, springing free. ‘We’re at the bottom here,’ Billy panted, dropping the hammer to move the rubble.

They’d done it: cleared a jagged passage in the middle, about three feet wide and three feet down to the soil underneath.

‘Let’s check it,’ Jet said, dropping her hammer, standing directly over the channel, one foot on the concrete either side. ‘Billy, grab that spade over there.’

He handed it to her and Jet raked the spade through the exposed mud, driving the tip in and loosening the soil. ‘Nothing here. Let’s keep going.’

‘Let’s open it out this way.’ Billy pointed with one hand, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the other, adding a smear of mud. ‘Closer to the road, to where the killer would have approached from.’

‘OK,’ Jet said, following his lead.

The builders were all watching them now, sitting and standing around in an amphitheater of their making, paper cups in hands, following each rise and fall of the hammers with their stupid yellow plastic heads. Jimmy at the front, arms folded over his belly.

They found their rhythm again, the heat creeping up Jet’s chest, sweat creeping down, trickling, following that dip between her ribs. The same in her lower back. No, lower than that. Lower. OK, yes, fine, her ass was sweating too.

They cleared another three feet of width, a little easier now that they could chip away at it from the side. Checked the mud underneath, moved on.

Billy paused to take off his hard hat, throwing it over his shoulder.

Then his jacket five minutes later, then his shirt five minutes after that, down to just the white T-shirt underneath, a see-through ring of sweat around his neck, the muscles in his bare arms straining and twisting as he struck the concrete.

Jet watched him for a moment, taking a break, catching her breath, but she caught something else instead: movement. Someone jumping out of a car, short buzzed hair, heading straight toward them.

It was Luke, breaking into a run now. Any chance he hadn’t seen her yet?

‘Jet Fucking Mason, what the fuck are you doing?!’ Luke screamed across the site.

Jet brought the hammer down, an island of concrete breaking free, falling to the bottom of the trench.

‘Jet, what are you doing?’ Luke yelled, voice pitching up, near-hysterical.

‘Construction!’ she yelled back. ‘Decided to go into the family business after all!’

‘Why are you smashing up my foundations?!’

Jet stole a breath; the air didn’t want to give itself up, her throat too tight.

‘Because they weren’t good enough – you need to start again!’

Billy looked at Jet. She nodded and he kept going.

Jet swung again.

‘Jet, stop!’ Luke roared, pushing past the rows of watching builders. ‘Why are you doing this?!’

‘Because I have to, Luke! Fuck sake, it is hard to do this and talk! God, my head hurts. God, I’m thirsty. This is what dying must feel like.’

Luke had almost reached them. ‘Give me that hammer!’ he roared, approaching the trench, fury staining his face red. ‘Now!’

‘Come any closer and Billy will hit you with a sledgehammer!’

‘I’m not going to hit you with a sledgehammer, Luke,’ Billy clarified, the only one not yelling. ‘What she means is that we can’t stop, and we’re very sorry.’

‘Jet!’

‘Luke!’ she screamed back. ‘It is important! And stop making me talk or you’re going to kill me off early!’

Luke’s hands balled into fists, scabs pockmarked across his knuckles. The scabs he didn’t get from tripping at a work site Friday morning, the ones he must have got sometime after the Halloween Fair, and then lied about.

‘I’m calling Dad!’ he shouted, unclenching one hand, pulling out his phone.

‘Fine, call him!’

‘And I’m calling the cops!’

‘No, Luke, don’t call them!’

‘They’re already on their way,’ a voice pitched in from across the site.

‘You’re such a fucking rat, Jimmy!’

Jet channeled it, taking it out on the concrete. One hit, two, three, a huge slab cracking and falling away, revealing the dark dirt underneath. She bent to pick it up, double-handed, wrenching her back to haul it out.

Luke was off the phone already, more yelling.

‘Why did you let her pick up a sledgehammer, Jimmy? You let anyone just walk in off the street and pick up your tools? Who are these people now?’

Jet glanced up. These people , ones without yellow helmets, standing by the open gate, watching. Probably neighbors from River Street, being nosy, drawn here by all the fuss Luke was making.

‘Stand back, Jet. Let me clear this part.’

Billy moved into position, standing wide across the trench, slamming down, again and again, a trail of sweat escaping down his temple, blinked into his eye. He didn’t stop to wipe it, not until his sledgehammer found soil instead.

He dropped down to remove the rubble, his hands dusty and scratched. ‘Here, cleared another section. Let’s check it.’

Jet had been leaning on her hammer, using it as a crutch. She dropped it now, swapped it for the spade. Raked it, blade down, over the new section of mud. Dug the tip in to overturn the surface, moving from back to fro–

The spade found something.

Flipped it out of the soil.

A corner of material, filthy and sodden.

‘There’s something here,’ Jet said, breathless, jumping down into the trench to get closer.

She used the tip of the spade to loosen the mud, brush it away. A corner became a flap, and Jet could see a pattern printed into the material now, underneath all that dirt. A pattern she recognized: little cartoon oranges, freckled, green leaves out the top like hair.