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Too dark to see much, but the splashings of water and occasional snaps were enough to let them know, the gators were feeding on the body parts.
Henry Maxwell wouldn’t be found.
And, since the girls cleaned up the hit-scene, there would be no crime scene.
Henry Maxwell… simply vanished that night.
And all traces of him, too.
At the pit, when Cletus brought Billie and Kate back from the swamp, and Gigi was downing the homebrew moonshine in the shadows, everyone else followed Mr. Fix It’s orders. Strip the car down, all the fabric to be ripped clean out, as he scavenged from under the hood whatever he wanted.
Kate chiseled off the VIN. Carmine carried everything with even a whiff of blood on it to the fire that Billie built in the middle of the pit.
And Tonya got the hose, the soap and the fresh stack of stolen clothes.
Cletus went off for a shower in the trailer as the girls hosed off and stripped down to nothing. Not even their underwear. Everything went into the flames that devoured their sin.
But Cletus didn’t leave them out there for privacy. No, he went to clean himself up—
For Tonya and Gigi.
Billie didn’t think Gigi would do it. She expected her to throw a fit and run. Wouldn’t blame her for it, either.
But she did.
She threw back the last of the moonshine in her jar, then tossed it aside. Lifting her chin, she marched for the trailer, eyes wet but staring straight ahead as though staring at nothing at all.
Tonya followed.
And the others waited outside.
If Billie had to pinpoint the absolute worst part of that wretched night, it wouldn’t be the prostitution of the twins, the murder of Henry Maxwell, the butchering of his corpse, or how dirty she had to get her hands.
The worst part of that night—according to Billie—was what came after they left the pit. They walked through the woods, followed the path until they got to the far end of the harbor’s beach.
And, one by one, blended in with the knitted groups of people from all over town.
The worst part of that night was what they had to do for the sake of an alibi. Each one of the five girls had to smile, cheer, laugh.
They partied until dawn.
6
NOW
No matter how many times Billie stays at Preston’s monstrously sized ‘home’, it’s something of a shock to her system. Even when it’s just the two of them, that doesn’t change… each room in this mansion is larger than her entire trailer, and the space… the sheer amount of space is sometimes overwhelming.
Years of visiting a labyrinth of spiraling hallways and rooms and staircases and bathrooms, and it’s just as much of a maze to her as it was the first time. An abyss, even. A black hole where the outside world just ceases to exist.
But—
It's at its absolute worst this evening.
In the past, Billie has been something of a ninja when it comes to dodging the many parties the Prestons hold here at Monster Manor (her own little term for the disgustingly grand home). Whether she took a double shift at the bar, Jim’s Joint, had to bail one of the twins out of trouble, actually bail her mom outta jail, or land in the drunk tank herself, or… the extreme ninja move when there’s no other way out of these parties, break up with Preston in one hell of a tornado of a fight.
Those strategies got her by well enough. Hell, she ain’t been to one of these parties before, so she’d say they worked a treat.
But this one…
