Page 79 of Lights Out

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?”

Chapter 17

Aly

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.”

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