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The temptation to slam my foot on the gas and get the hell out of there was strong, but I kept my cool. The last thing I needed was to drive off the road and into one of those barbed-wire fences. My breathing steadied as I stared at the road ahead, forcing myself to focus. I had too much to do.

I grabbed my phone and dialed Eddie’s number again. It rang. And rang. And rang.

No answer.

“Fucking hell, Eddie,” I muttered, tossing the phone onto the passenger seat.

My jaw tightened as anger flared hot in my chest. Maybe he really did get taken by a crocodile in that swamp.

Served him right. Or maybe he got smart, or stupid, just like Cooper did in the end.

Thinking too much. Thinking they could outsmart me or outrun me.

They were wrong.

They were always wrong.

When my legacy was finally revealed, they would be shocked to learn I had been living among them for decades.

Right under their noses. Half the cops knew me.

Border Force too. Ryder and Whisper, those self-righteous bastards.

Hell, I even had face-to-face dealings with the Alpha Tactical Ops team, and every time, the urge to put a bullet in their brains nearly got the better of me .

Had they died in that warehouse explosion?

They had to. If the blast didn’t kill them outright, the building collapse would’ve finished the job. The whole team was dead in an instant.

Now that was the stuff legends were made of.

Maybe that was what I would become. A legend. Maybe someone would make a movie about me–a sixty-three-year-old woman who brought a special ops team to their knees and shattered the systems they thought were untouchable.

A laugh burst from my throat, giddy and wild, dancing on the knife’s edge between triumph and hysteria.

"What do you think, Alice?" My voice cracked as the words spilled out to her ghost. "Will they write about us in history books?"

Alice had always pushed me to tell our story, two orphan girls against a world of wolves in sheep's clothing. But I'd brushed her off. Who would want to read about us? Just two more victims of a system everyone pretended was saving us, when instead it had stripped away our souls.

Maybe Alice had known all along that our story wouldn't end in that orphanage, and that one day we would burn down the walls that had caged us.

“Maybe I’ll write that book after all,” I said, feeling a grin tug at the corners of my mouth.

I could almost see her smile . . . the one she gave me when I told her my stories. She loved those tales, especially the ones about the bastards who’d wronged us and abused the other kids. We were the avenging angels, she and I, killing all the devils.

And there were so many.

As I navigated the winding, deserted road, I tried to do the math. How many had I killed? My fingers tapped the wheel as I counted. Most of them were men, of course. But two had been women; teachers at the orphanage who thrived on cruelty like it was their lifeblood.

The memory of their faces surfaced, unbidden. They hadn’t been so brave when I’d given them a taste of their own brutality.

Like the bitch who’d humiliated Thomas. Miss Williams had broken him so completely that it ultimately cost him his life.

When she knew I was going to kill her, she’d begged for mercy, sobbing harder than Thomas ever had, pissing her pants.

But just like she’d done to him, I showed her no compassion.

A cold satisfaction curled in my chest. They’d all deserved it. Every single one of them.

The thoughts trailed off as I turned onto the main highway. Instead of focusing on the pulsing ache of memories I’d been facing forever, I tried to work out where I would take Alice.

My mind drifted, though, over forty years of our lives together, too many of them burdened with horrors and sadness we couldn’t shake.

But there was one little place I hadn’t thought about in years—a little fishing shack by the ocean at Stanage Bay. A tiny hamlet with barely sixty homes, a local store, café, and pub. There were no tourists. Just a rugged stretch of coastline and the endless whispers of the waves.

I could still see it clearly in my mind’s eye as though I’d been there only yesterday and not over twenty years ago. The fishing shack had been small, weathered by salt and sun, but cozy in a way that made it feel like home the moment we stepped through the door. Alice loved it there. We both had.

It was during the time when we’d dared to believe the horror was behind us.

We’d spent those days swimming in the cool, turquoise waves, the saltwater washing away the weight of everything we’d been through. Afternoons were lazy as we stretched out in the hammock together, reading books. She liked the mysteries, the ones where the bad guys always got what they deserved.

At night, when the world was still and the only sound was the rhythmic crash of the waves, she would curl up in my arms, just like she did when she was a teenager. I would hold her close and feel, for the first time in forever, like we were safe. Like the darkness couldn’t touch us there.

That little shack had given us a taste of something we’d never known before: bliss.

I swallowed hard, my throat tight. That was where Alice would want to be. Of course it was. That little shack, that little slice of heaven. It was the only place we’d ever truly felt free.

By some miracle, it wasn’t far. A few hours’ drive at most. Even better, it was secluded, tucked away from prying eyes. No neighbors, no busy roads. Just the ocean and miles and miles of sand, and our beautiful memories.

Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, but I blinked them away.

“I’ll take you there, Alice,” I whispered. “I’ll take you home.”

The thought steadied me, like a weight lifting off my chest. For the first time since I’d learned that her body had been dug up, I felt like I had a plan. A real plan.

The fishing shack. That was where I would lay her to rest.

Where we’d both known what it felt like to be happy.

The hum of traffic surrounded me as I merged into the steady flow of trucks, semitrailers, and cars towing caravans. I kept my speed in check, sticking to the limit. Just another car on the road. Just another nameless driver.

No one would look twice.

“Shit,” I muttered, my stomach twisting as realization hit me. I wasn’t just another anonymous car. I was driving a goddamn cop car. I stood out like a fucking black eye.

My hands tensed on the steering wheel as another realization slammed into me.

The car wasn’t just a problem because it stood out.

It was trackable.

Of course it was. A cop car! A rolling beacon packed with God-knew-how-many tracking devices: GPS, radio systems, maybe even a hidden transponder I couldn’t disable. The second Cooper didn’t report back, an alert would go out, and this cop car would be pinging on every scanner in the region.

Fuck. Fuck!

My heart hammered as I flicked a glance at the dashboard. Was it already too late? Had someone already noticed Cooper was overdue? Had they flagged the car?

I forced myself to look in the rearview mirror, scanning the stretch of road behind me. Nothing. Just distant headlights and the occasional flash of a reflective road marker. For now, I was alone.

But for how long?

I gripped the wheel tighter, forcing my breath to steady, forcing my mind to focus. Panicking wouldn’t help. I needed a plan. Fast.

I needed a new car.

Something ordinary. Forgettable. A family sedan, maybe, or an old station wagon. Anything that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow when it passed by.

My thoughts churned as I weighed my options. The longer I stayed on this highway, the more exposed I was. I needed to get off the main road and find somewhere quiet to ditch this car, and “borrow” another.

“Hang on, Alice,” I muttered. “I’ll get us out of this mess. I promise.”

I checked the fuel gauge. Half a tank left. Decent. It was enough to put some distance between me and this highway before I abandoned the cruiser.

The pale glow of the half-moon bathed the endless expanse of the Bruce Highway ahead, stretching like a silver ribbon through hectares upon hectares of pine trees framing the road.

Alice and I used to joke about this part of the highway.

“I bet there are some bodies in there,” she would say, her voice laced with that sly humor of hers. She always knew how to make the darkness feel lighter.

Of course, she’d known full well there were bodies in there.

The monotony of the highway stretched my nerves taut. Every car that came near felt like a threat. Every truck that loomed in my mirrors felt like a shadow chasing me.

I needed an out.

Up ahead, a small courier truck veered off the highway, taking an exit ramp marked Midgee, Local Traffic Only .

My pulse quickened. Perfect.

I flicked on the blinker and eased onto the ramp, gripping the steering wheel so tight my arthritis reminded me that I was too damn old for this shit .

A new problem hit me. How was I going to get Alice out of this trunk and move her into the next car?

I stayed back, keeping the courier truck in sight as it veered off the highway and onto a stretch of smaller, less-traveled roads.

My mind raced ahead, piecing together the plan even as the doubts gnawed at me. I wasn’t strong enough to move Alice on my own. My knees were shot, my hands barely worked on a good day, and this wasn’t a good day. I needed help and that fucking pissed me off.

The truck slowed as it passed through a quiet stretch of scrubland, no houses, no lights. Just an endless sprawl of bush and dirt roads. My pulse quickened. Now or never.

I scanned the dashboard until I found the switch I was looking for. A flick later, and the blue and red lights on the roof burst to life, painting the trees in frantic flashes of color.

The courier truck’s brake lights flared, and the vehicle rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

Exhaling sharply, I eased the cruiser to a stop behind the truck. “Here we go, Alice. Wish me luck.”