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‘Ana,’ Dornan said beside me. I tore my eyes from the sight in front of me to look at him in horror.
‘What are they digging up?’
He didn’t reply, instead pointing to his rifle. ‘I’m looking through the scope to get a better visual,’ he warned me, bringing the gun up to his shoulder. ‘I’m not going to shoot.’
My mouth opened and a strangled cry came out. Tears burned at my eyes.
‘Okay?’ Dornan demanded. I nodded.
‘Don’t lose your shit yet,’ he said, peering through his scope. ‘This is for your own good.’
I didn’t see how that could be possible, but there was nothing I could do anyway, so I returned to my binoculars.
A hand. There was a hand sticking out of the dirt. As my brother shifted, I saw a foot, and then a flash of black material clinging to dull bronze thighs.
I choked, looking to Dornan for answers. ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Please don’t tell me that’s my sister. Please.’
I was sobbing now, racking sobs that carried through my chest. Had I done something wrong? Was this my punishment?
Dornan lowered the rifle, letting it fall around his shoulder by the strap, and circled his arms around my waist. He leaned down, tucking his face into the hollow space between my cheek and shoulder.
‘It’s not your sister,’ he said, and that was the moment I knew. I lowered the binoculars, staring at my bare hand. My black onyx ring, the one I’d been wearing when I was taken, had been removed the night Murphy readied me for the auction.
I cried harder as Dornan confirmed my suspicions.
‘It’s you,’ he whispered, holding me so tightly, I could barely breathe.
My father screamed then, so loud that I heard it clearly despite the considerable distance between us.
‘But it’s not me,’ I said desperately, through the tears. ‘They’ll see my face!’
Dornan gripped me harder as I began to struggle in earnest against his burly arms.
‘Look again.’
He gripped my hands, bringing the binoculars back up to my eyes.
‘Wait,’ I said, wiping my eyes against my shoulder, getting rid of the tears.
I swallowed, steeled myself, and peered into the binoculars once more.
They wouldn’t know that the body wasn’t me.
It didn’t have a head.
I froze, unable to tear my eyes away from the headless corpse they’d dragged from her shallow grave. She wore my black dress and my grandmother’s black onyx ring, but she wasn’t me. I wondered whether she was already dead when Dornan found her, if he’d simply taken advantage of the situation, or if she had died purely for this grotesque little freak show Dornan had staged.
I drew in a sharp breath as my brother knotted a handkerchief around his nose and mouth before taking a large hunting knife in his hand.
The microchip. Of course.
He started to cut into the unyielding flesh of the corpse. It looked slippery, tough, and I winced as he had to stop several times to collect himself.
He did it, though. He sliced into that rotting skin and pressed his fingers into the flesh. The dead corpse didn’t bleed like a live person would.
My brother pulled something out and handed it to my father. It was the microchip. My father wailed and dropped to his knees.
‘They think you’re dead,’ Dornan breathed in my ear.
