Page 111 of Take Your Breath Away

When my cell phone rang, the sound coming from the front pocket of my jeans, Matt perked up.

“Toss it over,” he said.

I got out the phone, saw that it was Jayne calling, then threw it over to Matt. It landed in the leaves. Matt bent over, grabbed it, then circled around me to reach the huge rock. Holding the phone screen down, he slammed it onto a jagged outcropping of the rock’s surface three times before he was satisfied it was dead. Then he pocketed it.

“Carry on,” he said.

I’d moved to the new dig location, only a couple of steps over from where I’d made the first hole. While my idea to start digging in a new spot had been simply to buy time, Matt was considering the possibility he’d had me start in the wrong place. I was ready to shovel a hole as broad as a tennis court if there was a chance it might give me time to figure out how to keep Matt from killing me.

I dug the blade into the ground and turned over some dirt. If the blade didn’t connect with bone—Jesus, the idea of whose bones it would be made my head swim—once I’d gone down twelve inches, I’d ask Matt whether he wanted to consider a third location.

“Anything?” Matt asked.

“No. You can take over anytime you want.”

Then it was his turn to have a cell phone go off. He took out his phone, glanced at the screen, rejected the call. I stopped and looked at him

“Wife,” he said.

If only he were closer. I’d fling some dirt in his face, try to temporarily blind him. Long enough to either tackle him and try to get the gun from him, or hit him over the head with the blade. Go in sideways, open the son of a bitch’s skull like a melon.

But what I actually did was drive the shovel into the ground for what felt like the thousandth time. “What if—”

I hit something.

A sliver of something gray-white, and what looked like nearly disintegrated fabric, could be seen through the dirt.

Matt took a step forward, still keeping his distance, but close enough to see that maybe I’d found something.

“Now we’re into detail work,” he said. “Hands and knees.”

I crouched down, the forest floor feeling cool on my knees even through my jeans. I began the process of scooping away dirt, a handful at a time, as though I were on some archaeological dig. Slowly, what looked like a rib cage began to materialize.

“I need a minute,” I said, and sat back on my butt.

“Don’t get all fucking weepy on me.”

That wasn’t going to be easy. I was overwhelmed. I’d seen more than a few movies where someone had been forced to dig his own grave, but I couldn’t recall one where a man was expected to dig up his own wife. I put my soil-smeared hands over my eyes and took a few breaths.

“Come on, let’s do this,” Matt said. From where he stood, he tried to get a better look at what I’d uncovered. “This is good. Means she didn’t crawl out or anything like that. Now we just have to make sure I didn’t grab the wrong person.”

“I left my DNA kit in the truck,” I said. “Wait here, I’ll go get it.”

“Funny,” Matt said. “Keep going.”

I resumed digging, shifting my attention to where I figured the head would be. Slowly, I began to uncover what appeared to be a forehead, then eye sockets. Wisps of hair. A head. I was still hoping that maybe, despite the odds, this skull, and the skeleton it was connected to, could not be Brie. That somehow this was someone else, however unlikely that seemed. That maybe that woman who’d mysteriously appeared during the weekend really was my wife.

But then my finger caught on something.

A chain.

As I brushed away more dirt, I uncovered a choker. A necklace that would have held close to someone’s neck. It was silver, made of dozens of small loops of chain, interspersed with several links shaped like the letter G.

Gucci.

The choker I’d bought Brie for her birthday. The one I had seen her wearing when we had our FaceTime chat on that Saturday night six years ago, the night before she disappeared.

I let go of the chain, threw my hands out ahead of me to brace my fall, and collapsed over the grave of my darling Brie.