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What a mistake I made letting this man go.
“Thank you,” I manage to say, proud of myself for keeping my emotions underwrap.
“Don’t mention it,” he repeats the phrase, downplaying his thoughtful nature, as usual. “Okay, I’ve got some heavy duty giant trash bags on a shelf on the wall over there. Why don’t you grab me a few and we’ll get this cleaning process done as quickly as possible so we can head over to his house with the car.”
“Right. I can do that,” I agree quickly. My body feels all trembly inside. We’re really doing this. Staging a murder. This is definitely not how I saw my night going.
“Thanks,” Jack says as he pulls the driver’s side door open with his sleeve and slides inside. A second later I hear him curse loudly and hop back out.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Jack’s face is pale. “It’s gone.”
“What?” I say, certain I’ve heard him wrong. “What’s gone?”
Jack draws in a long breath. “Ian’s body,” he says. “It’s gone.”
Chapter 6
Jack
“WHAT?” NORA CRIES, squeezing past me to see for herself. She peeks her head in the car then whips it back out. “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh,” she whimpers. “He is gone! How can he be gone? Dead bodies don’t just get up and walk away!”
She’s not wrong about that.
“Somebody must’ve moved him,” I reply, doing my level best not to give away how bad this is. But Nora isn’t stupid, she gets there all on her own.
“Moved him? Someone moved him? Somebody broke into your garage and moved him! Crap, this is so bad! This is so, so bad!” She starts pacing across my garage, her ponytail whipping violently around behind her. “That means someone knows he’s dead. Maybe even knows I killed him! Oh my gosh. I killed someone!” Abruptly she whirls around to face me and the anguish on her face is like a punch to my stomach. “I keep trying to forget that it happened, but I can’t. I’m a murderer, Jack! How am I ever going to recover from that?” Her voice cracks and tears start to trail down her cheeks.
I don't think about what I do next; it just happens. I walk over to her and pull her into my arms, letting her sob into my shoulder.
There are things we should be doing right now. Trying to figure out who the heck took Ian’s body, wiping Nora’s prints off his steering wheel and keys, getting his freaking car out of my dang garage.
But instead I hold Nora, letting precious seconds of time dwindle away.
Eventually she stops crying, her body slumping against mine in defeat.
“Nora,” I say softly, “I know that this is hard. You’ve been through something unimaginably horrible. But as someone who deals with murder on a daily basis, the only thing I can recommend to you right now is that you try and compartmentalize. At some point you’ll need to process the ordeal you’ve been through, but right now–if we’re going to get you out of this mess–you have to find a way to put what happened with Ian into a separate mental box. That way we can focus on what needs to be done. I know that sounds callous and insensitive, but, Nora, if we want to keep you out of prison, it’s imperative that we get ahead of the police on this investigation.”
Nora nods. Her face, always so animated and expressive, goes blank before my eyes, stripping itself bare of her emotional turmoil.
“Okay.” She takes a shuddery breath. “So what do we do now?”
She’s looking up at me with such complete trust, as if she fully expects me to have a plan to get her out of this.
Too bad I don’t.
At least not one she’s going to like.
I’ll just have to ease her into it.
“Well, we still need to get this car back to Ian’s place. We can’t just leave it here to be found.” “Why not put it somewhere random?” she asks. “Like a grocery store parking lot? Or the side of the road?”
“We don’t know where his body ended up,” I explain. “The way I see it, whoever took it is going to do one of two things.” I count off one finger. “They might hide it, in which case it would be better for his car to be at home rather than somewhere it can be found abandoned. If they don’t find his body, we may be able to hide that a murder happened for a few days, but if the police find his abandoned car in addition to Ian missing, they’ll be more convinced of foul play.”
“Okay, sure. That makes sense.” Nora nods. “But what’s the other thing whoever took the body might do?”
“Well,” I sigh, trying to say this next bit in the least alarming way, “I guess there’s a chance they might know you did it—”
