Intrigue thickens the silence between us.

I wait for Jack to ask me what I mean, but he doesn’t. There’s only a near-silent rustle of leaves behind me and I know he’s closing the distance to where I’m working.

“Split sobered barons, Jack,” I say without turning around.

The movement behind me stops.

Silence.

“What?”

“Split sobered barons.”

More silence.

I straighten and raise my shovel to point downstream, globs of silt splashing into the dark water. “Unleashing disappeared toast.” I shift to point to the fields beyond the far bank, the tall grasses consumed by night. “My favorite, missing credited koala. What Three Words, Jack.”

I glance over my shoulder. He’s much closer than I anticipated, already on the narrow floodplain just a few feet away, his shoulders tight with tension in the dim light. He looks at the black expedition backpack lying beyond me before meeting my eyes with calculating menace. Confusion and curiosity are the only things that have stopped him from creeping closer.

“Is this a puzzle?” he asks.

I beam a smile at him in reply. I was expecting he’d give me an arrogant, derisive smirk and ask me if I’ve lost my shit, but he hasn’t. He’s playing along, trying to figure this out.

“It’s one piece, Jack. Sure.” I drive the sharp end of the shovel into the silt and lean on the handle, my boots squelching, the creek water trickling around the rubber encasing my ankles. “I guess you’ve never heard of What Three Words?”

Jack doesn’t answer. This won’t do.

I heave a heavy sigh and roll my eyes. “Come on, don’t crap out on me now.”

“No,” Jack replies, his voice deep and stern.

I reward him with a bright grin which does nothing to dim the moonlit malice glittering in his eyes. “It’s a geocoding system. Every three meter section of the globe is assigned its own unique, three-word code. This,” I say, sweeping my hand toward my feet, “is split sobered barons.”

Jack’s head tilts. His eyes narrow.

I work my hand free of my glove and retrieve my burner phone from my pocket, entering the passcode to open the home screen and bring up the app. I press the dot of my current location and face the screen toward him. “See? Right here. Split sobered barons. Unleashing disappeared toast is the location of the body you disposed of back in March. Missing credited koala is where the man Mason thought he knew was buried in Field Three. There are the others too, all saved away right up here, thanks to Mason’s fastidious data entry skills,” I say, tapping my temple with my free hand as I lock the screen and pocket the phone.

The space between us seems to crackle like static. The air is still and cold. Silver fog escapes my parted lips in the starlight but I can’t see Jack’s exhalations. Maybe he’s holding his breath or maybe he’s born of the night and the cold. Either could be true.

We hold one another in a locked stare until I smile and pull my glove back on, twinkling my fingers toward him as I do. “And before you slither any closer, you should know that if anything happens to me, anything, you will be the first person they come for. Every location. Every body. Every photograph. Every little scrap of evidence I’ve secured. It will all go straight to the FBI. My well-being is truly in your very best interests.”

I can almost hear Jack’s muscles tensing, his sinew scraping. Bone bracing. I’m sure he’s ready to throw caution into the creek and attack. But he doesn’t. He stays planted in a sliver of moonlight, his eyes holding mine as though fused.

“Who’s in the bag, Kyrie?” Jack asks, his voice a threat wrapped in velvet.

I resist the urge to clap my hands and squeak, driving the shovel into the silt instead. I’ve loosened a deep and wide enough area now that I can move to the next step in the process, so I lumber out of the suctioning mud and head to the backpack.

“You know, Jack, this is probably the most interaction we’ve had all month and I have to tell you, I’m having a great time, for once,” I say as I release the first clip from the top of the bag with unnecessary slowness, keeping my eyes on Dr. Sorensen as I do. Even though I’ve both piqued his curiosity and threatened him with his most feared consequences, I don’t trust the fucker. Not one bit.

“Who is in the bag,” he repeats. There might be a tiny twinge of desperation hidden in the depths of his words.

“Are you worried I took someone important to you?” I pout as my fingers stall on the second clasp.

“Kyrie—”

“You have no sense of fun, Jack,” I lament with a dramatic shake of my head. I release the clip and the drawstring holding the top of the bag closed, peeling back layers of plastic. The twist of hair rustles against my gloves and my fingers clutch around it, and then I tug, withdrawing the severed head. A lifeless face and half-lidded, glassy eyes swivel between us. “Mason Dumont.”

To his credit, Jack does a pretty good job pretending he’s not surprised. But he is. And he’s pissed, too. I hear it in the way his leather gloves creak as his hands fold into tight fists.

“You killed Mason Dumont,” he says slowly, not a question, but a confirmation.

“No. You killed Mason Dumont.” I walk back to the water and lower Mason’s head into the silt, those gelatinous blue eyes staring at the stars. I raise one foot to squish against his face and push his head deep into the mud. “Your boots are a bit large for me. I had to wear, like, six pairs of socks and they’re still too big.”

Jack’s eyes dart down to his waders before he pins me with a feral glare. I smile and flutter back the edges of the jacket I stole from his lab two years ago to rest my fists on my hips, revealing a weighted vest and belt.

“You’ve gotta be what…one hundred and ninety pounds? That was my guess,” I say as I walk back to the bag and pull out Mason’s disarticulated arms, shreds of his torn shirt fluttering as I give Jack a little wave with both of the limp hands as I take them back to the creek and drop them in the silt. “Don’t worry, I made sure to strut here all ‘Important Serial Killer Man’ style so that the diligent detectives of Westview will know it was you if you decide to do anything stupid. I’m so important I can’t say fucking thank you to the one person who’s given me everything I could ever want, like research money and facilities and this big-ass farm for dead bodies galore. No, no, no. Now watch out, forest creatures, Important Serial Killer man coming through.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Kyrie,” he hisses. “This is all because I didn’t kiss your ass in gratitude?”

I don’t answer as I head back to the bag with long strides and grab a severed thigh, tossing it into the water with a splash. When I pull the other free of the bag, I give the dark and empty interior of the backpack a thoughtful frown. “You seem to have forgotten some important pieces, Jack,” I say as I rise. For the first time since the gala, my glare is just as lethal as his.

There’s a long silence as I take the last severed hunk of flesh to its watery grave, blood tapping across the damp grass as I go. When I drop it in, I walk atop the limbs, working them deeper into the silt, knowing the tread of Jack’s boots will leave marks in the cooling flesh. “Pigeage, Jack. I’ve always wanted to try that in Les Pastras. Stomping some grapes in Provence in August? Please. Sign me the fuck up. I need a holiday after trying to provide for your ungrateful ass for the last three years.”

“So, that’s really what this is all about. When I didn’t fall at your feet like everyone else, you decided to frame me.” Jack pauses as though he expects me to reply. When I don’t, he lets out a dark and mirthless chuckle. “Die Rache einer Frau kennt keine Grenzen. I didn’t think you were quite that much of a cliché, Dr. Roth.”