He screamed, only for his mouth to fill with dirty water. Desperately, he tried to move, but nothing would work. He was stuck, as rigid and lifeless as a corpse.
The fear was so intense that it ripped through every shred and fibre of his being, the adrenaline dulling the pain from the leaking stab wound in his spine. Jared’s head spun as he sucked in more filthy rainwater and battled with the harrowing realisation that he was about to die.
All of a sudden, his scalp screamed in protest as his head was plucked from the puddle by tufts of his hair. The amber light from his torch was shone in his face, and he blinked his stinging eyes to see Samantha’s piercing blue gaze staring excitedly down at him.
“P-p-please, S-s-s-Samantha…” whimpered Jared, tears pouring down his dirty cheeks.
“Please, please, please….” the girl mimicked. “Honey, you ain’t fucking going anywhere.”
Jared sobbed.
“And my name isn’t Samantha- it’s Stella,” she told him with an evil grin that turned her beautiful face monstrous in the torchlight. “You were really going to reject me?”
“No…” he cried, vigorously shaking his head. “No… I…”
“So you were going to cheat on your wife?” Stella demanded, mouth agape in feigned horror. “You nasty bastard. With a sixteen-year-old as well…” she shook her head and tutted. “Disgusting.”
“What did I do to you?” Jared asked, fixing her with his watery eyes. “I was just trying to help you.”
Stella smiled, “oh, you’re going to help us lots and lots, Jared…” she looked up then. Jared noticed the glint of the knife she twirled around in her dirty, blood-stained fingers. “Ah, there’s my dad.” She dropped his head again, this time, so his nose collided with something hard beneath the water.
This time, she didn’t lift his head up, and he remained under until his lungs filled with lead and felt as though they were about to burst.
Jared was thankful to finally pass out.
Chapter Thirteen
Summer, 1999
It had not turned out to be the wonderful, romantic evening that Ronnie had planned.
Exhausted, every inch of his body aching and every muscle strained hard, he sat on the ground with his knees up, his filthy, blood-stained hands clasped together. Beside him, head nestled into his shoulder, Minnie wept quietly.
In front of the young, besotted couple was the fiesta. In the driver’s seat and the passenger’s seat, the two men sat. The guy with the knife was leaned up over the steering wheel, his bulging eyeballs still open and staring, even in death. The blood from his head wound saturated one side of his clothes.
Perhaps an even scarier sight was the other man in the passenger seat, who Ronnie had feared would literally fall apart as he and Minnie had dragged him into the car.
All around them, staining the forest floor, were dark smudges of blood and patches of mud and soil saturated with dark, crimson pools.
Ronnie’s hands shook as he glanced down at the packet of matches he held.
In the aftermath of the evening’s events, the two teenagers had devised a plan. Set the car on fire, so it looked as though they had been attacked, mugged, and had the car stolen. Then go to the police station and act none the wiser.
But, as the sky started to lighten behind the towering trees, Ronnie had an awful, unrelenting feeling that they were about to make the worst mistake of their lives.
Minnie seemed to sense his uncertainty.
“I’m going to prison, aren’t I?” she cried softly so that her voice was barely audible over the squawks of birds up ahead. “My life is ruined.” She imagined how worried her parents would be that she had not arrived home at ten as promised. They’d be out searching, and if the two of them did not make a choice soon, they’d find them like this. About to burn the two men that they had just murdered.
Ronnie swallowed and turned to her. “Shut up,” he hissed, his brow furrowing.
He took a deep breath and tried to relax. In times of stress, Ronnie could not control his temper. He didn’t want to lose it at Minnie, to make their situation one hundred times worse.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered, staring hopelessly at the mutilated corpses sitting in the romantically decorated fiesta.
“Maybe we should just say the truth,” said Ronnie, chewing his lip. “We acted in self-defence.”
Minnie stared doubtfully at the gruesome scene in front of them. As much as she knew in her heart that it was true, that she had never even said a nasty or callous word to anyone in her entire life, the men in the car certainly didn’t look like they’d been killed in self-defence.
Rabid scraps of memory flashed in front of her eyes every time she blinked.
She’d stabbed him so many times.
Long after he had died, she had plunged the knife into his flesh over and over until every inch of her skin was drenched in his fluid.
Ronnie seemed to sense her despair and let out a long sigh. If they told the truth, he knew that it would be Minnie who risked getting in trouble more than him.
He’d hit the sicko trying to rape his girlfriend over the head and killed him with a freak head injury.
Minnie had turned the other guy into a human pin cushion until he was barely even recognisable.
Without a word, Ronnie knew what needed to be done.
He stood up, took out a match, dragged it across the side of the box, and tossed it into the car. As an orange flame caught on one of the dead man’s clothes, he grabbed Minnie’s hand and gritted his teeth.
“We need to move.
