“Wait!” Not Gary shouts when he feels the binds rip against his body as I pull them taut. “I’m not Gary, you have the wrong guy!”
I don’t bother telling him that while I may have the wrong name, I most definitely donothave the wrong guy. I take verification of these types of crimes very seriously, and I would never accidentally kill someone who didn’t truly deserve it. Just didn’t find it prudent to remember his name, is all.
“Okay, Gar—I mean…Not Gary.” I stop sawing at the rope right before it fractures completely and drop my hands to my sides. “So, about running. Right before you woke up, I was playing the sound of a dying rabbit.” In hindsight, it’s probably what woke him. I shouldn’t have played it as loud as I did, but I’ve only done this setup one other time, and I’m kind of on a tight timeline tonight because I’m supposed to meet the girls for drinks in—I pause to wipe the mud off the face of my watch—one hour.
“You are out of your mind, you know that?”
I ignore him because we’re running out of time, and he turns his head to the side to try and get a glimpse of me as I continue talking. “The sound of that dying rabbit drew in a predator looking for dinner.” I lift my knife up the side of the tree, pointing it in the direction of the cougar prowling slowly in our direction, her golden eyes glowing in the dark, nose twitching to pick up the scent of his blood.
“Oh, fuck,” he rasps quietly at the same time I slash the final fraying branch of rope.
“Run,” I whisper around the tree. And like the dumbass he is, he does, shaking free of the rope and stumbling off in the other direction. I stay hidden behind the tree and watch the cougar, who I’ve named Venus, take off in chase immediately. I hustle off in the opposite direction toward my car. She’ll be too focused on him to worry about me, and I sense this unspoken agreement between us, between me and the universe, actually: I take the bad out of the world, doing my good deed by giving back to the earth, and they accept me as their own.
I pull out my phone and dial Maeve as I emerge from the tree cover and make it back to my car tucked off the dirt road. I reach up to pick a bundle of pine needles off the windshield, flicking it to the ground as the phone rings. Not Gary’s wails and screams sound in the distance as I circle the front of the car.
“I’m done,” I tell her when she picks up. “And I’m going to be late.” I lean against the hood, wincing when the tender spot at the base of my spine touches the vehicle. “Fuck, and my back hurts.”
I can practically hear Maeve rolling her eyes through the phone. “I’ll send Stone out. And of course you’re going to be la—holy shit, is that Garrett screaming in the background?”Garrett.Was that it? I roll the name around in my brain. Nah, I don’t think so. I glance back toward the woods I just emerged from as Gary-Garrett’s screams taper off into silence.
I hum an affirmation. “There’s rope, and tire tracks, and…oh my God—” My gaze catches on a mat of grey fur settled in a pile of pine needles off the path of my car.
“What is it? And why does your back hurt?”
I bring a hand to my back subconsciously as I walk toward the little, motionless body. “He kicked me in the back. And it’s a possum.”
“A possum,” Maeve parrots.
“A gift from the universe,” I muse, crouching to inspect the little—dead—fur ball.
“You are so goddamn woo-woo. Would you hurry up? I need a fucking drink.” She pauses before adding, “And turn your location back on.”
I tell Maeve I’ll meet them at Mickey’s before slipping my phone into the back pocket of my coveralls, making a mental note to turn my location back on when I’m far enough away from what is now a crime scene. I lift the possum out of the pile of needles that likely would have been her final resting place. I guess it’s not such a bad place to die. I personally wouldn’t want to die in a pile of pokey ass pine needles—or a mud pit, as I’ve also learned.
I tap the pads of my fingers to the drying mud painted across my cheeks that’s clumping the loose hairs together around my face. Maeve is going to kill me, because it’s going to take a lot more than a quick rinse to get this shit off.
Carrying the possum to the back of my car, I pop the truck bed down and lay her inside gently, promising that she will not be forgotten in this dark forest. She will live on forever.
In my lair.
I don’tactuallycall it that—but Maeve and Stella do, and I’ll admit sometimes it has a nice ring to it.
On the drive back to town, I pull my mother’s Suburban into the dirt lot of the abandoned warehouse off the highway, leaving the keys inside for Stone to pick up and scrub to ensure no evidence is left behind. After retrieving the possum from the back, I get behind the wheel of my Bug, pulling back onto the highway.
The drive home this time feels longer than it actually is. I lose myself in feelings of satisfaction as the dense wood lining the dark road thins, and the winding asphalt straightens out as I make my way closer to town.
The thrill of the kill always hits like a post-workout glow. My body feels strong and weightless at the same time, my heart full and hopeful. Onemore bad guy gone from the world, and he was abad one, whatever his name was.
What I do remember is his wife’s name.Lily. She is just how you’d expect a lily to be. Pale and gentle. Pure. And now that her awful husband is gone from the world, she can be reborn.
And collect on his life insurance policy.
Her and her children will be set for life. No more trips to the hospital. No more looking over their shoulders. And maybe most importantly, no more domestic violence shelters.
My mother’s experience in domestic violence shelters was much like Lily’s has been.
They felt displaced. Alone.
The location is low-key, secure, but they didn’t feelsafe. The shelter wasn’t home. Not thathomewas much better at the time. The shelters were temporary, in a world that already felt temporary enough because they were afraid for their lives. And as for my mother and Lily, they felt every painful reminder of that fact.
