Milo looks at me for one more second. Then he slowly climbs in, folding himself into the trunk.
It smells like burnt rubber and mildew. There’s grit and broken glass and what looks like an old shop rag turned black with age.
“Get comfortable,” I say as he lies down on his side in the middle of it all.
I wait until he's still, then I slam the lid shut, and I turn and look at Raff.
He's already in the forklift.
I give him the signal, pointing once toward the beater.
Raff gives me a single nod from the cab, his hands on the controls, and I step back and watch.
The forklift's arms slide under the beater with a grinding scrape of metal. The car jerks, then lifts off the ground.
I hear Milo start to scream from inside the trunk, muffled and distant, his weight making the car shift slightly to one side as Raff drives the forklift slowly across the back lot toward the mobile crusher sitting in the far corner.
I think about Elowen being forced to clean up her parent’s blood.
I think about three years of lies and isolation and deep, horrible fear.
I think about the nightmares she will probably have for the rest of her life.
Raff positions the car over the crusher's platform, then lowers it down with a heavy, resonant clang that echoes across the lot.
I wait until he backs the forklift up, then I walk over and press the button.
The mobile crusher roars to life, its hydraulic arms closing inward with a groan of machinery and pressure.
For exactly two seconds, I can hear Milo's muffled screaming over the sound of it. His voice cuts sharp, then it fades, and I smell the quick rush of blood.
Then I can't hear anything except the crusher.
That stops too.
And everything goes quiet.
I stand there for a moment in the silence, looking at what's left.
The beater is a fraction of what it was, compressed into something flat and unrecognizable, and I look at it for a long moment with my hands in my pockets and feel nothingexcept a quiet, settled certainty that this fucker will never upset our omega again.
It's done.
Raff climbs down from the forklift, hitching his jeans up as he walks. He stops beside me and looks at the crusher, then at me.
"I wish we got to beat the shit out of him first," he says.
"Yeah," I agree, then I pat his back. "Let's get those trackers."
Raff rolls his neck once, cracks his knuckles, and follows me across the lot. "You think Angelica will come looking for him?"
"I think Angelica has bigger problems than a junkie nephew," I say. "But yeah. Maybe."
Raff nods slowly. "Good."
One Month Later
Elowen
