Page 3 of We Already Dug the Grave

Huddle Hut stank of grease and desperation.

I wasn’t judging. How could I, when desperation gnawed at my gut like a hunger? Desperation for secrets to stay buried. To rot like bones, decaying until there was nothing left of them.

Too bad secrets didn’t work that way.

As for the smell of grease? Well. Huddle Hut was a diner, after all. A run-down diner in a run-down beach town, where bacon popped and sizzled and seafood—shipped frozen on trucks despite the Gulf being across the street—was battered and deep-fried.

The thing about Persimmon Key was that it collected misfits. The small town wasn’t an actual key at all, but a shoddy line of Alabama coast that, thanks to a chain of barrier islands, has muddy brown waters and no industry or tourist season to speak of, dooming it to be a liminal layover space where people came to lay low or hide out. But, like the diner, I couldn’t judge Persimmon Key too harshly. I mean, I’d landed here nearly a decade ago, hadn’t I?

No, any judgment I held was reserved for bad tippers and men who hung metal testicles from the rear of their trucks.

And also, I realized, peering down at the couple in front of me, people who played grab-ass instead of giving me their order. The man and woman in the booth were a tangle of sunburned arms and legs, chapped lips suctioned together, and crispy his-and-hers bleach jobs. They devoured each other, and I can say with full certainty that absolutely nothing about the Huddle Hut inspired that level of horniness.

I breathed in, pushing my annoyance down deep—a talent, really—so it wouldn’t show on my face. Not that I was letting them off the hook: They were definitely getting the asshole tax (a 25 percent gratuity added to their check).

Assuming they separated long enough to order.

“What can I get for y’all?” I asked a second time, tapping my foot loudly and out of rhythm with the yacht rock that played over the speakers. It was only three in the afternoon, much too early in the day for this.

This was night-shift bullshit.

“Excuse me.” I tried a different approach, letting my East Tennessee drawl slip over my words. “Y’all ready to order?”

Neither answered, but the man slid his palm over the woman’s thin purple tank top and cupped her breast. Dirt was caked beneath his nails, and when he lifted his other arm to grab the back of the booth, pit hair bristled from beneath his own tank top, complete with pilled clumps of deodorant, which was more of an attempt at hygiene than I expected from someone whose shirt read AMATEUR GYNECOLOGIST.

“Mmm,” the woman moaned quietly.

My nose wrinkled at the display, and I was glad I’d worked through lunch and had nothing in my stomach to come back up.

I snapped my order pad closed. “Right.” I looked around the mostly empty restaurant. “I’ll check back in a minute, then.”

Larry would have my back if I kicked them out—rounding second base in a restaurant had to be breaking at least a few health codes—but there was only an hour left in my shift, and I didn’t feel up to the drama of dealing with them.

Never mind the twisting in my stomach warning me these weren’t good people. It was the kind of feeling most would ignore, but for me, the intuition had always proven right. Growing up, Aunt Ruth had sometimes called it my knowing, and whether it was somehow tied to our family’s gifts or not, well, neither she nor Aunt Hattie-May could say for certain.

Didn’t really matter, though. Whether the customers were assholes or saints, my job was to smile and take orders.

I sashayed across the restaurant, grabbing the coffeepot to top off my only other customer. Billy was a regular, and as always, was parked at a table reading a newspaper as if he were the father from a classic TV show instead of a six-and-a-half-foot bachelor stuffed into a Black Sabbath T-shirt, leather vest, and snakeskin boots.

“Thanks, Milly girl.” He set the paper aside, nodding toward the couple across the diner. “They ain’t stopped since they got here.”

“Might as well let them finish,” I joked, because it sounded better than telling him I didn’t get paid enough to deal with this shit.

“Hm.” Billy pulled his steaming mug closer to him. “I wouldn’t want to wipe down that booth.” Billy sipped his coffee, then patted the newspaper. “Hey, you been keeping up with that story out of Mobile? About the missing college kids?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

Mobile, Alabama, was only an hour and some change north, and when two students from the University of South Alabama were reported missing a few weeks ago, it had been a big story.

“They found one of ’em.”

“I’m guessing he wasn’t off living his best life in a commune somewhere?”

“No.” Billy frowned. “And not he. She. They found the girl… Well, they found her body.”

“Shit. Where at?”

“Up in Moss Grove—”