Page 76 of Oddly Fine

“Seriously. If you slow down, then you reduce the amount of dirt that falls back in the hole. The job will get done a lot faster,” Hayes replied, ignoring his partner’s wisecrack.

“How do you know so much about digging graves?” Beckett stopped digging and whirled around with a suspicious look on his face.

“Not my first one,” Hayes replied with a quick shrug.

“I know I’m just a measly grunt, but I’m pretty sure gravedigging is not in the SEAL curriculum!”

“My uncle lived off the grid. He was a hunter. Easiest way to dispose of big carcases was to bury them,” Hayes said, resuming his shoveling.

“And he made you dig the graves?” Beckett asked with a small shiver of disgust.

“Sure.” Hayes wondered why Beckett was making such a big deal of it. “Came in handy when I had to clean up the CIA job.” Hayes was reminding Beckett of the CIA job that had blown up in their faces so spectacularly when they’d gone to New York to help Chase.

“Maybe you should’ve dug a bit deeper—fucking Campbell found your clean up job way too easily,” Beckett muttered.

“Says the man who’s been digging the same two feet for the past hour,” Hayes replied, giving as good as he got. Clearly, Beckett’s smartassery skills were starting to rub off on Hayes.

“Hey! I’m grieving! You’re supposed to be nice to me!”

“You’re digging up your brother—grieving isn’t the word I’d use.”

While most people in his situation would have been offended by Hayes’ remark, Beckett just snorted and kept digging.

Hayes slacked up a little, turning to watch his boyfriend’s shoulders move in the faint light of the moon. Even though Beckett had bitched about it, he ended up taking Hayes’ advice and had slowed down. He was working quietly, and Hayes wondered what might happen to his boyfriend’s calm demeanor if they found his dead brother buried here after all. Beckett had seen more than his fair share of dead bodies. But there was a world of difference between seeing a dead G.I. in a war zone and coming face-to-face with your older brother’s corpse in a graveyard.

“Did you—have you considered what you’ll do if—” Hayes faltered, striving to choose the right words.

“If I’ve really lost my fucking mind and Franklin is actually lying in this coffin?” Beckett read Hayes’ mind perfectly. With a sigh, he stopped digging and planted the shovel in the dirt to lean against it. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he appeared a great deal more vulnerable here in the dim glow of their flashlights than he had earlier at the funeral.

“I don’t know—” he admitted, sounding defeated. “I honestly—” his voice broke, and it was so uncharacteristic of Beckett that Hayes felt the sudden urge to reach for him. He didn’t—Beckett would reach for Hayes if he needed him. “I think I need to see it to believe it,” he said, as if trying to convince himself as well as Hayes.

“Okay,” Hayes said with an understanding nod.

In perfect accord, they resumed digging in silence.

Grave digging was never easy. The soil was often unstable and uneven, which made it difficult to keep your stance to dig effectively. Then, as the hole got deeper, more strength was required to toss out the dirt. By the time they’d reached a depth of four feet, Hayes could barely hear Beckett’s heavy breathing over the hammering of his own heartbeat. Then, he heard a sound like twigs or branches breaking. Hayes stopped moving and waved a hand rapidly to get Beckett’s attention, then raised a closed fist to indicate he should stop moving.

Grave robbing was illegal as hell. Despite Gill’s ready access to resources to get them out of trouble, Hayes did not want to have to call him to be bailed out of jail—again. Especially on a charge of grave robbing.

Beckett’s brows furrowed in concentration as he listened closely for any odd sounds.

“Probably just a ghost,” Beckett whispered.

“No such thing as ghosts,” Hayes whispered back with an eye roll.

“Sure—invalidate their experiences while standing in their home! Smart move, Daisy-doo!” Beckett chastised, returning to a normal tone of voice when he didn’t hear anything suspicious.

“Invalidate their experiences? You have absolutely got to stop reading self-help books,” Hayes advised with a quick laugh, despite knowing that the only books filling Beckett’s Kindle these days were paranormal and fantasy romances. Most of them were gay and steamy, which Hayes found increasingly amusing. Especially when Beckett got a little flustered and decided to try out something from a book in the middle of the goddamned afternoon. Not that Hayes would ever complain about that. All that Hayes could say was that those authors were remarkably creative when it came to coming up with new, wildly different positions.

“Don’t be jealous because your vocabulary isn’t nearly as extensive as mine, Haysie,” Beckett replied between tossing shovelfuls of dirt.

“You forgot the name of the torque wrench the other day, so you called it the Twisty Mcfucking thing.”

“So, what? You knew exactly what I was talking about,” Beckett pointed out, self-assured as ever. Even while sweating bullets and digging up his dead brother, he came up with great comebacks each and every time.

Just as Hayes was about to reply, his shovel struck a hard surface. The sharp, metallic clang echoed sharply across the cemetery, and Beckett froze. He turned to Hayes, eyes as big as saucers. His easygoing mood vanished, instantly replaced by uneasy awareness of what the next step had to be. They’d gone too far to stop now.

“You don’t have to look. I can open the casket and tell you what I find inside,” Hayes stated calmly and reassuringly, wishing with every fiber of his being that Beckett would accept his offer. He didn’t want his partner to be burdened with that image for the rest of his life. Losing his brother was bad enough.