Page 129 of Reaper and Ruin

He shook his head.

Levi and X abandoned the laptop and came to join us.

We all just waited for Dax to say something.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked. “I’ve searched everywhere I can think of. I don’t know where else to go.”

I sighed. “We don’t know that for sure.”

Anger radiated from him. “Don’t bullshit me, Whip!”

Just as quickly as the anger had come, it disappeared. His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. “Please. Just tell me she’s dead so this fucking pain can stop. I can’t keep doing this. I need to let her go.”

Levi’s mouth pulled into a grim line, and he said the kindest words he could have to a man in Dax’s situation. “She’s dead, Dax.”

I winced at the finality in his tone, but I knew what he was doing. Dax was clearly running himself into the ground, searching for the woman he loved. Even though Levi had nothing to go on, other than Travis’s word that he’d killed her, he was trying to give Dax some closure.

Dax shook his head miserably, and we all knew Levi’s words weren’t enough. “I need to see her body.”

I opened my mouth to say something, maybe try to convince him that he might never get that. Thousands of people went missing every year, and their loved ones never got that sort of closure.

But Levi was nodding at him. “I know, brother.” He glanced at me.

I didn’t need his words to know what we needed to do.

We’d already checked the dump site once, when we’d made sure Lynx hadn’t left his calling card on those bodies. But there was a gap in the timeline. A couple of days where we’d been in the city, and Travis could have dragged Nyah’s body out there. None of us had been there since then, even though we’d talked about it.

But looking at those bodies, and the things he’d done to them, wasn’t easy, even for those of us who could take a life without blinking. It had been easy to talk ourselves into doing it later. We had the kids to settle. New jobs to go to. Cooking and shopping and exercise and anything else we could think of to avoid it.

X frowned, clearly also following the silent conversation between me and Levi. “It’s not smart to keep going out there. The cops could be watching it.”

It was another of our excuses, but one that also rang true. We didn’t know who Travis had told about the spot. He had to have followed one of us out there, so others could have too. He could have anonymously reported it to the cops, and they couldbe biding their time there, just waiting for us to come back and add to the body count. I knew Trig, Ace, and Torch had gotten rid of Travis and Violet’s foster parents’ bodies at a new site, one well away from where those poor women lay, exposed and decomposing in the elements.

We’d gotten lucky twice. My gut said we may not be as lucky a third time.

But the agony on Dax’s face ate away at me. And all I could think was how I would feel if it were Violet.

I picked up my keys. “Come on then. We’ve only got a few hours until school pickup. We need to go now if we’re going.”

Levi put his hand to the back of my neck and squeezed it, a silent thank you. X didn’t seem as keen, but in typical X fashion, he shrugged it off quickly. “I call shotgun.”

Levi and Dax sat in the back of my car, and X filled the silence by yammering about the pros and cons of baby-led weaning, a new term we’d all learned today, courtesy of his Pinterest surfing.

But I didn’t miss the worried tapping of his fingers on the center console, and I knew none of us were very happy about where we were going. It felt like beating a dead horse. Like we’d been here, done that. We were all only here for Dax.

Otherwise, I was pretty sure we would have avoided this place forever. Always saying we should, but finding an excuse.

Seeing dead bodies of people who were inherently evil was entirely different from seeing the dead bodies of women who had been beaten and abused and mutilated. But if Nyah had been a late addition to the pile of women Travis had left here, then Dax needed to know, even if it hurt.

Travis had said she was dead.

My gut said he wasn’t lying.

We got there as the sun was high. The flies buzzed, and birds and other small animals scattered as we approached.

Dax choked on the horrific stench, but it was nowhere near as bad as that house we’d pulled Ari and Will from. The dead body smell had permeated the walls and the carpets there, and I doubted that would ever be removed. At least out here, there was a breeze to carry the scent of death away.

“Fucking hell.” Dax turned away to puke.