Page 54 of Peak Cruelty

Vance

W e don’t talk for a long time.

Not because we’ve run out of things to say, but because the weight of what she just admitted fills the car like gas. You could light a match with the wrong question.

Eventually, she takes the next exit. Rural stretch. One gas station, one church, one diner too clean to be honest. She pulls onto a back road behind the gas station, gravel popping under the tires.

Then she kills the engine.

Leaves the headlight on.

Doesn’t move.

I wait a beat before I say, “You want to tell me that again?”

She grips the wheel like it’s going to fight back. Then leans her forehead against it.

“He was hurting my kid,” she says.

The words come quiet. Like they’re more dangerous now that they’re out in the open.

“I didn’t know at first. You think you know someone—think you’re safe, finally—and then your daughter starts flinching every time she hears the garage door open.”

I say nothing.

She sits back, eyes forward. “I told myself it was stress. Kids act out. The world’s insane. Maybe it’s nothing. But then the babysitter quit out of nowhere. Wouldn’t answer my texts. And one night, I hear screaming. Not crying—screaming.”

Her hand moves slowly to the door handle. “I don’t need sympathy. I need you to understand I didn’t plan this.”

“I never said you did.”

She gets out. I follow, wincing with every step. My ribs have started burning again. The kind of pain that feels earned.

Rachel walks to the back of the car. Doesn’t look at me when she says, “It wasn’t supposed to go like that. I just wanted to scare him. Make him leave. I had a hammer in the glove box.”

A beat.

“I meant to hit the window.”

She opens the trunk.

It’s not what I expected.

There’s no blood. No limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Just a sheet—clean, tucked like a hospital corner—and a duffel bag beside it.

The shape under the sheet is unmistakable. Not big. Just heavy.

“His name was Brad,” she says. “He had a LinkedIn full of leadership quotes. Smiled too wide in photos. You’d think he was the kind of guy who’d mow your lawn without asking.”

“And under it all, a sadist.”

She nods. “A coward. The worst kind.”

I lean slightly on the car, watching her, not the body. “Why not dump him? Leave him in a ditch. Or fire station. Or hell, somewhere that isn’t...your trunk.”

“I was going to,” she says, voice tight. “But then I ran into you. And suddenly it felt like the universe was putting something together. Some puzzle I hadn’t known I was part of.”

I shake my head. “That’s not the universe. That’s bad luck.”

She laughs. It’s sharp, unsweetened. “You say that like they’re different.”

She steps back and looks at the body. Not with guilt. With calculation.

“I wasn’t sure what to do after. But then you needed help. And I thought, maybe I’m supposed to see this through.”

“Through to what?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. But if you’re planning to burn your own life down, it’s nice to have company.”

I look at the sheet again. There’s something about how carefully she arranged it that sticks with me. Like she wanted him to be comfortable. Or maybe she just didn’t want a corpse jostling around on corners.

“How’d it happen?” I ask.

She flinches. Then answers anyway.

“He called my daughter a liar. Said the bruises were from school. That I was hysterical. That I was trying to make him look bad.”

“And you snapped.”

“No. Not then. I swallowed it. Said nothing. Took my kid to a friend’s house, came home and cleaned up the kitchen. And then I waited for him to fall asleep.”

She meets my eyes.

“Then I used the hammer.”

We stand there a moment longer. Just two people beside a car that holds more weight than it looks like it should.

I say, “It might be time to dump him.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But I’m not quite done being satisfied.”

“Most people go with therapy.”

She shrugs. “This has closure baked in.”

“Any particular reason he’s still in the trunk?”

“Yeah. Because the freezer was full.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“And because,” she says, a little more level now, “because I want to remember who he was. What he did. I want it to stay real long enough to remind me that next time someone smiles too wide, I don’t let them in my house.”

I nod once. “Let me guess, you want me to do the heavy lifting.”

“I just covered your ass with a state trooper. And I’ve run pre-murder errands for you like an Uber driver with a body count. We’re past the point of take-backs.”

“Fair.”

She closes the trunk gently. Wipes her hands on her jeans like she’s touched something wet.

Back in the car, she starts the engine again, lets it idle.

“You think less of me now?” she asks, staring straight ahead.

“No.”

“You think I’m dangerous?”

“Yes.”

She smiles. “Good.”

Then she pulls out, back onto the road, and we don’t say another word for twenty miles.