Page 79 of We Already Dug the Grave

“The media loves Burt’s family too,” she said.

“Yeah, but they love a story more. And this will be the story. A son from Alabama’s favorite family turns out to be a murderer? The next political dynasty toppled by one bad seed? They’ll be frothing at the mouth for this.” I hoped I was right.

Girls went missing all the time. Sometimes they were even found. Most vanished into obscurity, but this girl was young, pretty, and upper middle class. She was found in a wealthy rural area with no crime rate to speak of. If she was linked to one of the state’s golden boys, news stations across the country would salivate to run the story, never mind all the true crime armchair experts across social media.

All we had to do was call it into the tip line set up by one of the local news channels and let the ensuing frenzy do the rest.

“Come on. Let’s get this over with.” Without waiting for an answer, I pushed open my door and stepped into the pouring rain. Once Frances was next to me, we made our way down the embankment toward the creek. We moved slowly, careful not to slip on the wet ground.

Frances was quiet as we stepped. The ground was soft, but grassy. I looked back to see if we were leaving footprints, but in the dark, rainy night, I couldn’t tell.

When we got to the bottom, right before the earth grew sandy, I turned to my sister. “I think right here is good. Not too close to the water, in case it rises.”

My sister wiped the watch down with the tail of her blouse. I’d pieced the plan together, but somehow forgot we’d need gloves, so Frances used her shirtsleeves to cover her hands as she pressed it into the ground. She did the same with the driver’s licenses.

Maybe putting my faith in a couple of well-placed tokens wasn’t the best plan, but here’s the thing I couldn’t tell my sister. When I thought of Burt and everything he’d done, I wanted to kill him. And if I hadn’t killed before, perhaps I’d have been easily persuaded, maybe even excited to dig a grave and be done with it.

I wasn’t talking nonsense when I told Frances I couldn’t go down that road again. Sometimes I felt as if my humanity was hanging on by a thread. If I killed again, it would be like taking a pair of scissors and snipping it loose. This plan had to work.

“Come on.” I grabbed her hand, and we made our way back to our vehicle.

A car whizzed by, traveling in our same direction.

“Fuck!” Frances yelled over the weather. “Was that a cop car?”

I squinted through the rain. “No. No way.” I had no idea. The car had been moving fast, and the night was dark. “Let’s get out of here.”

We slid into our seats and slammed the doors, both drenched to the bone, our hair plastered to our heads.

I cranked it and slammed the gas. My tires slid against the wet ground as I steered onto the road, where they found purchase on the asphalt, and we lurched forward and took off.

“Should I make the call now?” Frances turned around, leaned into the back seat, and rifled through her bag for her phone.

Originally, I’d thought we would go to the Walmart in the next town and purchase a burner phone, but my sister assured me she knew how to block her number and said there were apps she could download to change her voice to not be recognized. After she made the calls, we’d factory reset her phone and toss it into the next body of water we passed.

Before I could answer, blue lights flashed from the roadside. I ordered my racing heart to calm down.

Frances sat back in her seat and clicked her seatbelt as the cop car flashed its siren in a quick blip blip and pulled onto the road behind us, following close.

“I knew that was a cop,” she said. “I freaking knew.”

“What do I do?” I asked. The cop had only flashed their siren once before pulling from the roadside and following on our bumper. It followed us, but with its siren and police lights off. “What’s he doing?”

Frances sat deathly still next to me. “This is bad,” she whispered. “This is so bad.”

“Frances?”

My gaze bounced from the black pavement ahead of us, to the rearview mirror, to my sister next to me. She shook her head slightly.

“He…he can’t see me in here. He’ll tell Burt…” Her voice trailed away. “God. I knew we should’ve just figured out how to kill him. Milly. I can’t go back. I can’t.”

“You won’t have to.” I resisted the impulse to punch the gas. “He’ll stop. We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

I stayed five under the speed limit. The cop remained on my tail.

“If he pulls us over, lay against the window and pretend you’re asleep. We’re on a road trip—that’s all. I got a little turned around and am looking for the interstate.”

“Do you think that cop saw what we were doing?”