The Dirty Ones

“But you’re OK now,” she adds. And it’s not a question. I’m OK now, is what she’s saying.

I want to protest and say, No. I’m abso-fucking-lutely not OK.

But I am OK. I’m alive. My shoulder is healing. I’ve even stopped taking the painkillers to get through the night.

“So listen,” Louise says, walking around the couch to take a seat in the chair off to the right of Hayes. “And don’t ask a lot of questions because we don’t have much time.”

“What are you talking about?” Hayes asks.

“I know it’s hard for you to take orders, Hayes. But we really don’t have time. There is a man in the bottom floor of the tower and we need to take care of him.”

“What?” I ask, standing up and looking at the doorway that leads downstairs. “Where? I didn’t see anyone down there.”

“Please,” Louise says. “There is no time for a Q and A, Kiera. He’s in the basement and in about five minutes he’s going to leave. So we need to catch him on his way out.” She pulls a pair of tennis shoes out of her purse, toes off her heels, and slips her feet into them. “I hope the woods aren’t too muddy.”

It occurs to me then, looking down at my own filthy shoes, then at Hayes’… she didn’t get here through the woods.

Her new footwear now adjusted, she stands and sighs. “If you want any chance of escape, you’ll just do what I say. Because I’m warning you now, if we take a stand they will ruin our lives. All of us. Camille, Bennett, Connor, Sofia. Us.” Hayes opens his mouth but Louise puts up a hand. “Later, Hayes. I promise I’ll tell you what I can once it’s done.”

“Once what’s done?”

“Once we kill him.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Connor growls.

“We killed him,” I say. “We followed her downstairs to the first floor and she… opened this little hatch in the floor. And then we went down to the basement and there was a fight. He had a gun. But he wasn’t ready for us. So we fought him,” I say. “And killed him.”

Camille laughs. She needs to stop drinking.

Bennett stands up, walks over to Hayes, and says, “Give me some cash. Now.”

Apparently this makes perfect sense to Hayes, because he takes out his wallet, looks through it for a second, then places a hundred-dollar bill on the dining room table. “Sorry,” Hayes says. “I know it’s supposed to be a symbolic dollar, but I only have hundreds.”

“Everyone, give me some cash. Right now,” Bennett says. “Then I’m your lawyer and I can’t legally say anything about what I hear next.”

We just stare at each other like a bunch of dumbstruck idiots.

“Here,” Hayes says, pulling out four more hundred-dollar bills. “This should cover everyone.”

Bennett picks up the cash, pockets it, and then returns to the table, this time taking the empty seat next to Camille. He reaches for his wine glass, gulps it down and sighs, “OK, keep going.”

Servers appear with our next course, but Hayes waves them away with one hand. “Later,” he says. “Leave and don’t come back.”

And then, before I realize what I’m doing, I resume the story.

“What will we do with the body?” I ask Louise.

“Bury it, of course. We certainly can’t leave it here. That will definitely send the wrong message.”

“What the fuck—”

But Hayes interrupts me. “Kiera,” he says. “Just… go along.”

“Is this normal to you two? Because killing someone and burying a body isn’t my typical Saturday night.”

“No,” Louise says. “Your typical Saturday night is coercing people into sexual acts and then writing them down in a book for some unseen group of people to take possession of.”

“Fuck. You,” I say. “You have no idea what’s been going on this past month.”

“Quite the contrary, Kiera. I’m the only who knows what’s going on here. Unless you count Emily, but I don’t. Since she’s locked up in a mental hospital for shooting you. Which, I should not need to remind you, but will anyway, she was ordered to do by the people running this little scheme. So shut up and grab his feet. Hayes, you get the arms. I’ll get the door.”

And then she doesn’t go to the door we came through, but another one on the far side of the room. Almost hidden behind a rack of gowns, of all things.

“There was a tunnel,” Hayes says in the here and now. “Right, Kiera?”

I just stare at him for a second, trying to recall the details. This part seems very fuzzy in my head, but… “Yes,” I say. “I remember it now. There was a tunnel.”

“So we took him out the tunnel and came up in a cemetery,” Hayes says.

“Very convenient,” Camille chortles.

“Wasn’t it?” Hayes says, smiling. “Almost like it was planned that way.”