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Billie, on the other hand, was fueled by the drink she polished off from her water bottle. Wasn’t much of it left after cleaning up the blood on the road and all, but she made sure to get every last drop out from the bottle on the ride over.
The others hung back by the bloody station wagon as Cletus bossed Billie and Kate around the pit.
‘Hold the trash bag there.’
‘Grab those rags over there.’
‘Get me that machete.’
By the chopping block, slick with gator flesh and blood, they hacked up the body…
No emotion dared cross Kate’s stony face, a complexion made darker under the night sky, shrouded in the shadows, but the whites of her eyes gleaming.
Billie couldn’t look.
Her eyes creased shut with each whack of the machete, crunch of blood, sputter of blood. She turned her cheek to the dismemberment, face twisted, and forced her mind to focus only on the burn of fresh liquor down her throat all the way to her writhing gut.
“Pack it up.” Cletus gruffed his words before he threw down the machete and, turning his back on the chopping block, stomped his way over to the open door of his trailer.
Kate’s stern gaze bore a hole right into Billie’s turned cheek. “Help me, B.”
An order.
One she obeyed.
Pulling at her now-crimson hair that had dreadlocked and clumped together, Billie tugged at the elastic around her wrist to pull it around and make a limp bun that sagged to the side. Then she lifted her bloodshot gaze to Kate’s and, after a moment, reached out her blood-slicked hand.
Kate shoved a black plastic bag into her grip.
Their fingers touched—and their eyes remained locked.
Billie saw the refined determination in her friend’s familiar brown eyes with just a sprinkle of amber flecks. And she knew that, for Kate looking into her crystal blue eyes, she would see determination too, but it wouldn’t be refined—it would be desperate and raw.
Billie’s hair was red with blood; Kate’s shoulder-length dark wig only wore a few specks of crimson here and there. It was their hands that unified them in this: Billie’s (pale, freckled and coated red) touching Kate’s (a dark, flawless complexion on slender hands, hidden by the layers of blood).
They were in this together. Getting their hands dirty together.
And Billie found comfort in that.
Their hands parted as their gazes tugged away.
And they got to work.
In silence, they both picked up the chunks of Henry Maxwell’s body and stuffed them into the trash bags.
Cletus came back with a jingle of keys in his gloved hand. “You lot,” he barked over at the station wagon, to the three who didn’t leave the side of the car. “Better do your part now. You need an alibi. Fresh clothes you’ll find in them boxes over there—” He pointed to obviously stolen stacks of cases next to his homebrew moonshine. “—and you ain’t gettin’ my help for nothin’. Think up a good payment.”
Kate tied up the last trash bag. “How much?”
Cletus turned to her, his yellow smile sending a shiver down Billie’s spine. “You ain’t got enough cash between all of ya to pay for this. But I like twins.” He looked over at Tonya and Gigi as they recoiled in closer together. And he shot them a wink.
Billie’s eyes widened with the wave of sick that rolled through her gut. She glanced at Kate’s hard face, but she recognized the worry-tell she had with her grip tightening on the trash bag enough to pierce the plastic.
No one said anything.
Because Cletus hoisted up some limb-filled bags from the dirt, then led the way over to the narrow, muddy path—to the dock. To his boat.
Kate and Billie were the only ones to join him. They loaded all the bags into the swamp boat and, together, rode out to gator-infested waters. One by one, they ripped open the bags and tipped the limbs into the muddy waters.
