I shook my head, trying to taper my anger while I walked over to where I felt like the tree should have been and stood there like an idiot looking at a cluster of young, small trees.
Frowning, I walked back and forth along the trail. I didn’t expect the tree to suddenly appear or anything, but I was hoping to find its stump or a hole in the ground or a fallen log or something to show me exactly where Hunter and I had hid the money.
Eventually I gave up on spotting it and decided to just venture out into the woods in the general direction I felt like the box would be in. This was turning out to be a lot damn harder than I expected it to be.
The problem was that Hunter and I almost never came from this direction. We’d always walked out here to tend to our stash—it was more direct, and it was easier to tell if someone was following us. No one ever was, but that paranoid seed stayed active in my head. Turns out I wasn’t far off with my suspicions. Obviously someone had followed Hunter, or he’d still be here to tell me I was being an idiot.
I almost didn’t see the tree. I was so focused on figuring out why Hunter had gone the way he did that night that my feet were dodging things on their own. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had to step up on the tree to get over it, I wouldn’t have seen it at all, especially not in the deepening dark.
“There you are, you beautiful bitch,” I said.
I walked along the top of it until I found the root and reoriented myself from there. It was a good thing I did—I’d been about twelve feet off from the target and walking diagonally. I never would have found the damn thing.
It only took me five minutes to find the hollow after that. The sun’s light had faded entirely, and the moon was slow to rise, leaving me with only the stars and my phone’s weak flashlight to illuminate the spot.
We’d set the thing exactly eight inches down. Accounting for six years of mulch, I dug twelve inches—give or take—and found… nothing. Frowning, I dug deeper still. Nothing.
I was in up to my elbows in the exact center of the hollow, right where we always put our stash. Nobody would have found it if they didn’t know exactly where to look, which is why we had sworn an oath not to tell anybody about it. Not even Daisy.
But it wasn’t there. Maybe I was a little bit off, it had happened before. Widening the circle with my hands, I focused my whole attention on the textures, willing the earth to give up the fucking container. I focused on it so hard that I could see it perfectly clearly—that baby-pink lid with the chip on one corner, the dent in the bottom where heat and wear had warped it. The metal safe inside, carving scratches into the plastic like random little runes.
“Damn it, where are you?” I growled.
Frustrated, I picked up my phone and shone the light around, looking for—well, anything, really. There was nothing, just dirt and plants.
Leaves taunted me with their dull reflections, glinting like plastic and metal under my phone’s cold light. One glinted a little brighter than the rest. I almost bypassed it, thinking it was just more of the same, until I saw the shape. I crawled closer and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
A goddamn zippo. Not just any zippo, either. This one was etched with a dolphin who wore a tiny emerald fleck in one eye—a gift from Hunter. Bejeweled dolphins were his signature gift, always had been. Hell, I had a jacket somewhere with a dolphin on the back. Our “gang” tattoos, if you could call them that, were dolphins. He loved the damn things and claimed his inner circle with them.
There was only one person he’d ever loved who would carry a zippo. Only one person he had this zippo designed for. I remember it like it was yesterday, how excited he was when he wrapped it. I even remember the wrapping paper and the cheesy blue bow he tied on top. The truth hit me like a freight train and I had to bury my hands in the earth to keep them from throwing the goddamn thing as far as I could. It was the evidence I needed. I still didn’t know if the cops would buy it, but I didn’t care. I knew the truth. Heart jumping in my chest, I leapt to my feet and picked the zippo up in the hem of my shirt, careful not to touch it. An even worse realization had occurred to me.
David was with the killer, and he was pissed.
I barely remember the drive back to her place. Panic, fury, and adrenaline filled my being, narrowing my focus to two points: keep the Zippo safe, and get back to Daisy.
I tossed the lighter in the glovebox and slammed on the gas as soon as I crossed that cattle grate.
I wouldn’t be too late.
I wouldn’t.
But if I was, I would kill him with my bare hands.
Dust flew around me as I screeched
