The police and hospital had done an excellent job trying to protect the name of Brad’s latest victim, but I’d managed to find Macy Harold, a twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher who’d been in Chicago the night of the attack to celebrate a college friend’s bachelorette party. From what I’d pieced together, they’d run into Brad and his friends during their bar crawl, and at some point during the night, he’d honed in on Macy, buying her and her friends rounds of drinks even after they tried to decline them politely. One of the last things Macy remembered was finally accepting a shot because she didn’t want to seem rude, and less than an hour later, someone heard Brad assaulting her in a bathroom stall and kicked the door open.

Macy and her husband lived in a small cottage adjacent to her parents' house on a hundred-acre farm. The brother who had already gone after Brad lived in a similar place nearby. I hoped that even if Macy’s dad and husband failed to hurt Brad, her brother would step in and get the job done.

I relayed all this still using my regular voice, wondering if she recognized it. My time for hiding from her was drawing to an end, and I had a feeling that if we managed to pull this stunt off, one of the first discussions we’d have when we got back to her house would revolve around confirming my identity and digging into why I’d avoided admitting who I was for so long.

I was dreading that conversation. Aly had already forgiven me for so much, put up with so much. How could I possibly ask her to continue trusting me after she found out who my dad was and started questioning why the son of a notorious serial killer would cover himself in blood and film knife-wielding thirst traps? She’d probably assume I idolized him when nothing could be further from the truth.

I cut the car lights and turned down a dirt road that bisected two corn fields, driving until I reached a narrow band of trees that sprung up around a small brook. The satellite images I’d poured over online showed a narrow footpath leading through them to the main house. I’d hacked into Macy’s parents’ Wi-Fi and couldn’t find any evidence of security cameras, but even so, Aly would stay in the car while I dragged Brad onto their back porch, ready to gun it out of there if shit went sideways and I came sprinting back.

“Are you ready?” I asked, putting the car in park and turning toward Aly.

Her expression was troubled. “Yes?”

“Would it make you feel better if I told you that I’m so scared I feel like I might puke?”

She released a shaky breath. “Oh, good. I’ve been fighting the urge to hurl this entire drive.”

“We’ll have to hold it in,” I told her. “Wouldn’t want to leave behind gross little piles of DNA for someone to find.”

She huffed a laugh. “Let’s do it then.”

I popped the trunk, and we got out of the car.

Aly unzipped her snowboard bag but stopped after exposing Brad’s face, her eyes wide. Had she finally hit her limit? Did it just now occur to her how fucked up this all was, and she was having second thoughts?

We’d come too far to turn back now, so I reached forward and was about to finish unzipping the bag when she grabbed my arm.

“Don’t,” she said.

I turned toward her, frowning. “I can do it without you if you want to wait in the car.”

She shook her head and released my arm. “We’re going to have to go with my backup plan.”

“Backup plan?” I said, starting to get confused. She hadn’t mentioned a backup plan.

She nodded and leaned forward, placing her gloved fingers on Brad’s neck. It looked like she was checking his pulse.

Wait. Why the fuck was she checking his pulse?

She turned toward me, sympathy written across her face. “You put the duct tape over both his mouth and nose. He’s dead.”

I snapped my focus to Brad, and, oh, fuck, she was right. His eyes were wide and unblinking, and his skin already had a pale sheen that seemed unnaturally bloodless in the moonlight.

My guts heaved.

I ripped the balaclava off and ran to the nearby bushes, dropping to my hands and knees as my stomach tried to expel everything I’d ever eaten. So much for not leaving piles of DNA behind.

Aly squatted next to me, rubbing my back and making soothing noises as I retched. “This is probably a bad time to gloat over the fact that I was right about your identity, isn’t it?”

Reader, I puke-laughed.

And, no. I do not recommend it.

I’d just killed a man, and my unhinged partner in crime was cracking jokes. “Fuck me,” I muttered.

“Kind of a weird time to offer,” Aly said without missing a beat. “Can I take a raincheck until after we’ve disposed of the body and you get a chance to brush your teeth?”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 17Aly

If someone had told me two weeks ago that I would end up driving a car with a body in the trunk, I would have…I don’t know. Laughed? Told them they had lost it? And yet, here I was, driving back toward the city with a queasy killer and the corpse he’d created.

I glanced at Josh, slumped sideways in his seat with his forehead resting against the window. “You doing okay?”

He craned his head sideways, slowly, like he couldn’t believe I was even asking him that because he was obviously not okay. “I’m great. Definitely not in the middle of an existential crisis. You?”

“Disappointed.”

He sat up a little, frowning. “What?”

I shrugged and refocused on the road. It was pitch black outside, and with the night I was having, it would have been just my luck that a deer would jump in front of us. “Brad’s death was too anticlimactic.”

“Anticlimactic,” Josh repeated.

“Yeah. I mean, a piece of shit like him? His demise should have been more violent and, ideally, included getting lit on fire at the end.”

That surprised a snort out of him. “Bonfire o’ Brad.”

“Barbecue o’ Bluhm,” I said, grinning.

Josh groaned. “We’re going straight to hell.”

“Good. Maybe we can get another shot at him down there.” I glanced over my shoulder toward the trunk. “I’m lowkey considering pulling over so I can stab him a few times and make myself feel better.”

“Haha,” Josh said humorlessly.

I gave him a blank look.

His eyes flashed wide. “Jesus Christ, Aly.”

I winked to let him know I was kidding – kind of – and faced the road again.

He shifted beside me, sitting fully upright in his seat. “I can’t believe I just murdered someone.”

I held up a finger. “Technically, I think what you did classifies as involuntary manslaughter.”

“Oh, good. That makes me feel much better.”

“It should,” I said.

“Why’s that?”

I shot him a wink. “Less jail time.”

“How are you so calm about all this?” he asked.

“Because death is nothing new to me,” I said. “I see it on a weekly basis. Mostly, it’s good people who pass way before their time due to illness or injury. So much of the loss I witness is senseless and tragic, leaving far too many heartbroken family members in its wake. It’s nice to see someone like Brad get what they deserve for once. I doubt even his parents will mourn him.”

Josh was quiet in response, and I glanced over to see him staring out at the passing snowscape as he processed my words.

God, the man was beautiful. His profile in the dashboard light was a thing to behold. It made me wonder why he’d ever want to cover his face with a mask.

I’d seen shitty people in his comments say things about how men like him were all butterfaces, and that’s why they wore masks, but that wasn’t true of Josh, and I’d watched enough face-reveal videos from other creators to know those commenters were wrong. So what drove the masktokers to it? Was it the anonymity? The opportunity to don an alter-ego like a second skin and become someone else entirely?

That felt oddly fitting for Josh. He was like a soft dom – sweet in the streets and mean in the sheets. But, like, mean in the best way. Bossy and demanding and relentless, and oh, no, I was getting turned on within five feet of a fresh corpse.