I have seen enough bodies to know it.
And it scares the hell out of me.
I’m not supposed to care this much. Travis isn’t some deadweight rookie. He’s family now, the real kind, the kind you bleed for without thinking. The idea of losing him feels devastating.
“Grant’s not gonna last much longer,” I tell her. “A few more hours, maybe. If we do anything else, he’ll bleed out. Even cauterized.”
Brooke doesn’t flinch.
She looks at me and says, “Then let’s not kill him like that…Let’s bury him alive.”
That pulls a grin out of me. I kiss her once. This version of her, the one who can calmly sentence a man to hell, is the one I always knew existed. The one who matches me bone for bone.
“I’ll get the shovel.”
We load him into the back. Duct tape around the wrists, just in case. I secure the restraints tighter. His fingers are already gone. His toes too. He won’t crawl far. But I’m not leaving anything to chance.
He’s barely awake. Slack-jawed, wheezing, eyes glassed over.
There was a heavy, reinforced wooden crate in the basement. It’s been sitting down there. Built for exactly this. The wood is scarred, the metal bands dulled with age and use. The hinges creak when we drag it free. Beau built things like this for men who thought they were untouchable. Men like Grant.
We haul him through the tree line, boots sinking into damp earth. The forest is cold and dark and quiet. Grant is quieter at first. Breathing wrong. Short pulls of air through busted ribs. His jaw is swollen and crooked, blood dried dark against his chin and throat. He watches the hole as we dig it, eyes tracking every movement, every shovel of dirt, every widening inch. He studies it like he’s trying to memorize the shape of what’s about to erase him. Then he finds his voice again.
“You think you can kill me?” he spits, blood spraying with the words. “The things I’ve done, the people I’ve killed. I’ll be remembered forever.”
Brooke doesn’t look at him. She keeps digging. Her shoulders rise and fall with effort. Dirt streaks her arms. Her jaw is set. She doesn’t give him even a glance. That denial hits him harder than anything else we’ve done so far.
Grant laughs, harsh and wet, coughing halfway through it. “You’re a fucking bitch, Brooke,” his eyes locked on her. “Just like your whore of a mother. I’ll make sure someone finishes what we started. I’ll make sure they kill you right in front of him.”
That’s when I stop digging. The shovel drops into the dirt.
I cross the distance in two steps and drive my boot into his jaw hard. The impact lands clean. His mouth snaps sideways. Teeth clack together. The scream that tears out of him afterward is broken, garbled, barely recognizable as human.
He collapses back against the restraints, choking on blood and spit, jaw hanging wrong, eyes wild.
“I’m tired of hearing you fucking talk,” I snarl.
We lower the crate into the hole. The wood scrapes against dirt as it settles. The fit is tight. Grant thrashes when he sees it, panic finally punching through whatever bravado he had left. His breath turns fast and shallow. His chest heaves. He tries to say something else, but it comes out as a slurred whine, jaw useless now, words dissolving into noise.
We don’t rush. We secure him inside, cinch the straps. Weight pressing in from every side.
I look down at him. “Any last words?”
Grant opens his mouth to say something.
I shovel dirt straight into his face. It cakes his eyes. His nose. His mouth.
I slam the lid down on him.
The first scream hits the wood hard enough to make it shake. The sound vibrates up through the ground, into my boots, into my bones. Something slams against the inside again and again.
I pause with the shovel in my hands.
I think about my mother. About my father turning men like Grant loose on the world. About Brooke dragged through hell because men like him needed to feel powerful. About Travis bleeding out on the ground while Grant watched and smiled.
Out of everything I’ve done, I know this is one of the worst ways to die. And Grant deserved all of that.
I shovel dirt onto the crate. The screams turn muffled and desperate. Then rhythmic and uneven. Then panicked breathing beating against wood, slower each time.
