Scythe & Sparrow: Chapter 8

Rose

Eric screeches an octave higher than I thought possible, his eyes wide as they connect with mine in the rearview mirror. The truck careens off the road and into a field, and before he can figure out what to tackle first, I take my chance. I punch the point of my blade into the side of his neck and push. The sharpened steel slides into his flesh to the sound of his startled, liquid cry, and then I whip it back out in a rush of blood.

A garbled, choking cough fills the truck as blood sprays from the wound in pulsing bursts, coating everything. The windows. The seats. The hand he holds to the gaping wound. Me.

My stomach heaves and I puke on the smelly old blanket.

“Holy shit, that is so fucking gross,” I hiss as I shove the blanket aside. Eric is squirming in his seat but growing weaker with every moment that passes, his gurgling breaths shallow and labored. The truck rolls on through the field but it’s slowing down, bumping along through the prairie grass at a pace that’s not much faster than a walk. Eric is still gulping for air as I look through the blood-spattered windshield to get my bearings.

In the distance, there are more fields of long grasses, their tips bleached by the summer sun. Just beyond the front bumper is a shallow, washed-out thread of dry sand that must form a little creek in heavy rains. And in between?

A steep drop into a river.

Fuck.

“Gotta run,” I say as I sheathe my blade and open the rear driver’s side door, tossing one of my crutches into the grass. Eric gurgles and I struggle to swallow another wave of nausea when our eyes meet in the rearview. His face is smeared with blood, his skin pale. His half-lidded eyes are pleading. “Don’t look at me like that,” I snarl. “You know you’re a piece of shit.”

Eric slumps forward against the steering wheel and the truck keeps bumbling along. I toss my knife and my other crutch out the door, pocket my now silent phone, and jump out, landing in the grass with an aching thud. I roll over to watch as the truck nears the drop-off, veering into the sandy trail of the dried creek bed.

The vehicle slows. And it slows some more. No no no, get in the river. But the front wheels slide to the side, mere feet from the drop-off. The truck sinks into the sand. And then stops moving forward altogether.

The engine still runs and country music drones from the open door, the man in the driver’s seat motionless.

“Fuck.”

I grab my knife first, because one can never be too careful, of course, and more important, I just paid a shit ton of money for this thing and it’s already proved itself worth every penny. It takes a minute to figure out the position of the straps, but I manage to harness it against my back. Then I gather my crutches and hobble to the truck to figure out what to do.

When I open the door, the scent of hot blood and piss and shit smacks me in the face. I undo Eric’s seat belt and shove him toward the center console until his bloodied torso and floppy arms drop toward the passenger seat.

“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” I admit as I haul myself onto the rail and use my crutch to press down on the accelerator. The wheels spin and drop deeper into the sand. I try shifting the truck into reverse, but that doesn’t get me anywhere either. My phone rings on my seventh attempt to free the vehicle, when the realization has crept in that I am well and truly fucked. I cut the engine and brace myself in the hope that my gut feeling is right about the good doctor being not-so-good, even though I have nothing to go on lately that my instincts are in any way reliable. “Hi, Dr. Kane.”

A warm chuckle flows through the line. “You’ve been living at my house for a week. Fionn is fine.”

“Right. Fionn …”

“What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

I squint out across the ravine that’s just a few short feet away, yet feels unreachable. “I’m in a bit of a quandary. I got the jump on a fleabag townie and it kind of … backfired.”

There’s a pause. “You … what …?”

“Got the jump. On a townie. He was a fleabag.”

“What do you mean by ‘got the jump’ on him?”

I cast a frown at the cooling body. Well, here goes. “Maybe you should just come and take a look. I could use a hand. Or two. I’ll drop you a pin. It’s probably best to keep it to yourself.”

Fionn takes a sharp breath to ask a question, but I hang up with a cringe and quickly drop him a pin before I pocket my phone.

“Well,” I say as I pat Eric’s lifeless arm. “This whole experience could have gone better, probably. But I didn’t pass out, so I’ll take that as a win. And you brought celebratory beer.”

Before the nausea creeps in once more, I gather my crutches and slam the doors shut before I limp my way to the back of the truck. I pop the tailgate down and grab a can of Coors Light from the cooler. Fionn blows up my phone with calls I don’t answer and texts I mostly ignore. There’s only one response I can give to his barrage of questions: You’ll see what I mean when you get here.

Thirty minutes later, I spot his truck barreling down the deserted road, a cloud of dust billowing in his wake. He slows when he nears the location of the dropped pin, but it takes him a moment to spot me waving from the bed of the truck, the vehicle clearly not where anyone would expect it to be. Fionn stops and cuts the engine, then marches in my direction, steps that slow and nearly halt as he takes in the state of my clothes. And then he’s running straight for me.

“Jesus, Rose,” he says, his Irish accent breaking free as panic etches lines in his face. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” Though I give him a reassuring smile, it does nothing to untangle the knot of anxiety that twists my guts. Fionn’s eyes travel over every inch of me, searching for injuries that he won’t find. “I had a slight incident.”

“Slight incident,” he echoes, though it seems to take a second for the words to click together in his thoughts, his focus still consumed by hunting for the source of the blood. “What do you mean, ‘slight incident’?”

“There was this guy—” is all I manage to get out before Fionn’s gripped my shoulders, his eyes molten as they pierce right into me.

“Some guy did this to you?”

“No. Not exactly.” I look away to the tinted rear windows of the truck, but when I turn back, Fionn’s still watching me with an intensity that scorches the chambers of my heart. “This guy was really a piece of shit. I was in a shop and he was threatening a woman over the phone, and then he tried to come on to me with some lame-ass line about a fishing hole or some shit, I dunno, I don’t know shit about fish—”

“The point, Rose.”

“The point is, I …” I look to the grass. The sky. The ravine. The truck, though it seems to mock me. I shrug, trying to shrink from the weight of Fionn’s gaze that still burns a hole into my face. When I finally meet his eyes once more, I cringe. “I started it.”

“You started it …”

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say he started it?”

“Probably. Maybe he did start it with the whole dickhead-phone-call-fish-loser thing. So, more accurately, I guess I finished it …?”

Fionn lets go of my arms. He takes a step back and runs a hand through his hair, his expression slack as though the blossoming epiphany has wiped it clean of emotion. He walks to the front of the vehicle and opens the driver’s side door, and I hear the sharp intake of breath, the curses on the next exhale. The truck jostles as he steps up on the driver’s side and checks for signs of life. I already know there’s nothing to find.

There’s a long, terrifying, heavy silence. A redtail hawk cries in the sky above, the only sound on the windswept plains.

I try to look as nonthreatening as possible as Fionn slowly returns to the tailgate. I hold out a sweaty can of beer as an offering. “Would you like one?” Fionn stares at the dried blood streaked across my skin, though the condensation has rehydrated some of it. The aluminum is smeared with crimson streaks. He watches as I hastily wipe the can and my palm on my jean shorts and offer it to him again. “He won’t miss it,” I suggest. “Might as well.”

“What … the fuck … is happening?” he asks. I want to remind him that he’s a smart guy, he can probably figure it out. But I chew my lip and just wait for him to voice a few conclusions. “Did you … kill him?”

“Umm, yes. But he’s not a good guy.”

“And you called me to help you to what … get rid of him?”

I shrug. “I got a little stuck. And you specifically said, ‘Any trouble whatsoever, call me.’ This is ‘trouble whatsoever.’”

“I didn’t mean killing someone and disposing of their body.”

“I did the killing part. I just need a little help with the disposal.”

Fionn lets out an exasperated sigh. “‘Body disposal’ was not on my list of trouble.”

“You should have clarified that from the beginning.” I push the beer in his direction. Fionn drags his hands down his face and looks toward the sky as though angels might swoop down and save him. But the more I watch him and try to decode the series of cogs and wheels that must be turning in the confines of his skull, the more I realize a critical detail. “You’re not freaking out.”

Fionn turns his gaze to me, his eyes narrowing. “I am on the inside.”

“Not that much. And you said ‘killing,’ not ‘murdering.’”

“Same thing.”

“Not really.”

He folds his arms across his chest and squares off in front of me. “Explain.”

“Killing is like, ‘Someone is dead because of me, but maybe it’s an oops—’”

Fionn snorts. “I highly doubt this is an ‘oops.’”

“—But murder is like, ‘I totally meant to do that.’”

“Did you mean to do it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s not?” he asks. I lift a shoulder, and Fionn’s head tilts. “Then what could possibly be the point if it’s not you fucking killed someone?”

“You said ‘killed,’ and ‘killed’ is nicer.” I slosh the beer side to side in a last-chance gesture, but when he doesn’t take it, I stuff it in the front pocket of my plaid shirt. “Your loss. Follow me, Doc,” I say, positioning my crutches so I can safely hop down from the tailgate. Fionn moves closer as though he can’t stop the urge to offer his help, but he does stop himself, in the end. He halts just shy of taking my arm and then stands back to watch as I swing my way to the driver’s door. When I pull it open, he’s still standing where I left him. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanna show you something.”

Fionn looks toward his vehicle parked on the dirt road. I’m sure the pull is strong to get away from here, to go back to life the way it was before I appeared like some kind of fever dream. Part of him probably wants to crawl back into the shadows and imagine this is all just a strange nightmare that might cling to his consciousness for a few days before it fades from memory. I know what it’s like to hide, and I know what it’s like to be found. It can be exhilarating to be seen. And it can be terrifying to be exposed.

“I guarantee I don’t enjoy this as much as you’d think,” I say, pulling the beer from my pocket and cracking it open. I take a long swig in an effort to swallow the churning unease that creeps up my throat. With a deep sigh, Fionn turns toward me and stops at my side.

“That’s reassuring.”

I give him a tentative smile that isn’t returned, and then take a deep breath and hold it, setting my beer down on the dash. I turn toward Eric’s body to start patting him down for his phone. When I tug his torso into place to sit upright on the driver’s seat, I find it in his front pocket. As with pretty much everything in the truck, it’s covered with blood, so I wipe it off on my shorts.

“That’s good. Make sure you get the evidence really embedded in the fibers,” Fionn says.

“In for a penny, in for a pound.” I turn back to the corpse and hover the screen in front of his face but it doesn’t unlock. When I use the edge of his shirt to wipe the blood from his skin, that doesn’t work either.

“His eyes need to be open for the face ID to work,” Fionn says flatly.

“How about now?” I pull his eyelids open and try again, but still nothing. “Bear with me a minute, Doc.” Leaving my crutches to rest against the open door, I hop off the rail and over to the rear of the cab, climbing onto the back seat to rummage through the box of tools. With a squeak of triumph, I find the perfect tool to help.

“Sweet Jesus. Rose—”

“Call it circus ingenuity,” I say as I hop back to the front of the vehicle with my prize in my hand. I climb onto the rail and hold open one of Eric’s eyelids with one hand, lining up the staple gun with his lash line. “Last time I used one of these, I stapled a curtain to my hand, so let’s hope for the best.”

Fionn’s whispered curses fall into the backdrop as I press the handle down, pop a staple into his eyelid to attach it to the flesh below his brow, and then turn to retch. “You might want to find another hobby,” he offers.

I cough. Retch again. Take a few deep breaths and a swig of the beer sitting on the dash. “I’m good.”

“Have you had this reaction to blood and gore before?”

“Not really … though maybe now that you mention it, I did pass out during the curtain incident. Woke up to Jim flapping my arm around like a wing.”

“What about when I found you passed out on the floor in my exam room?”

“Well, I thought that one didn’t count, all things considered.”

“I think it still counts.”

With a fleeting smile and shrug, I turn back to my task and repeat the process with Eric’s other eyelid. Pop. Staple. Retch. Blood seeps over the surface of his eyes, so when I’ve managed to subdue the urge to vomit, I take my can of beer from the dash and pour a line of liquid across his brow to wash it away.

“Dear God,” Fionn says, and it comes out more like a resigned groan than any true shock. “This is a fucking travesty.”

“I know, right? What a waste of good beer on this asshole.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.”

Though I toss him a grin as I dab Eric’s eyeballs and face dry, Fionn only frowns, a deep sigh lifting his chest and his muscled shoulders. “Okay,” I say, then prod one side of Eric’s lips to make a lopsided smile that falls as soon as I let go. I hold the device up to his face and this time, it finally unlocks the home screen. “Success.”

I slide off the rail and open his text messages. Half the snippets displayed only confirm what I already know, that he was cheating on Naomi with multiple women. Hey baby! What are you doing tonight? Want to come over? I miss you …

And then I open his text exchange with Naomi.

The rage I feel as I skim the conversation has me wishing I could do it all over again. Make him suffer. Bleed longer. Staple his eyes open and let him fall over that cliff while he was still alive, so he could feel concentrated fear, distilled to its purest form. Naomi must have lived in fear every day. Fear of being with him. Of being without him. Fear of leaving only to face his retribution. Any doubts I might have had about what I’ve done are erased when I read his threats and insults, his backhanded, controlling compliments and his unhinged, narcissistic outbursts.

My nose stings when I think of the suffering Naomi must have endured every day when she woke to this reality, her chest tightening as consciousness took hold, her stomach hollow. I remember that feeling. How worry and hopelessness can carve out your center, leaving you scraped clean. How every waking moment becomes corrupted by the kind of dread that pulses just beneath your skin, a second heartbeat humming in the dark.

I clear my throat, but it does nothing to dislodge the knot that pulls tighter around my every breath. “He’s been abusing Naomi Whittaker, the nurse at the hospital,” I whisper, offering the phone to Fionn. “Threats. Intimidation. He struck her recently. She told me while I was there.”

The shock in Fionn’s face is replaced with the slow dawn of epiphany. “You mean, just like Matthew Cranwell has been abusing Lucy,” he says, and it’s not a question but a carefully delivered statement of fact.

“Something like that.”

“Did you start that fight too?”

I shrug. “I guess it depends on how you look at it, Doc.”

He watches me for a moment, a crease between his brows. With a tentative hand, he takes the mobile, but he seems reluctant to remove his gaze from mine. Maybe it’s the glassy sheen he sees in my eyes. The way tears gather on my lash line. I nod to the phone and force a smile. “Go ahead, before it locks and I have to rinse his eyeballs with beer again.”

Fionn’s brows pull tighter. And then he looks down at the phone.

I see every minute change. The flush of crimson that dusts his cheeks. The way his pulse quickens on the side of his neck. The parting of his lips, the subtle shake of his head. He scrolls through the messages, once. Twice. Three times, and he’s probably read more now than I have. He sees something that makes his fingers tense around the phone before he locks it and slides it into his pocket as though he can’t stand to look at it another moment longer.

He unbuttons the cuff of one of his sleeves, rolling the pressed gray fabric up his forearm, his muscles tense. “Keep watch on the road,” he says as he repeats the motion with his other sleeve, his voice gruff, his eyes never straying from mine. “If you see a cloud of dust in either direction, tell me.”

I nod once and he takes a step closer, our connection unbroken as he reaches for the half-full can of beer to take a long sip. And then he turns and stalks away. He pulls a small knife from his pocket, unfolding it as he bends to unscrew the cap on the tire valve. He presses the tip of the blade to the core and air hisses from the tire. When Fionn has finished airing down each one, he returns to my side, repocketing the blade. “Start it up, wheels to the left, put it in four-wheel drive. When I tell you, give it just a little gas.”

“Okay.”

He heads to the back of the truck and prepares to push as I press the brake with my crutch. I start the engine, shifting it into drive. When he’s ready, he gives me the signal, and with the slow, steady crawl of the deflated tires and his rhythmic pushing, the truck finally glides free of the sand. I stay on the rail until we near the edge, and then I take my crutch off the accelerator and let it crawl forward.

“Eyes on the prize, dickhead,” I say, and with a final salute to Eric’s dead body, I hop down from the vehicle, taking Fionn’s waiting hand as he slams the door shut with the other. The truck rolls to the cliff edge and we follow to watch it tumble down the steep embankment, gathering momentum. It hits a boulder and flips, then cartwheels end over end until it smacks the surface of the slow gray current to sink into the silty gloom.

“Investigators are really going to have questions if the body turns up with his eyes stapled open,” Fionn says as the last tire disappears from view. Bubbles pop in the swirling eddies and we watch in silence until the last one dies, and the water resumes its slow procession. He turns to face me then, and I’m not sure how to read the mask that watches me back. There are hardly any clues to what he must be thinking, just a feathering of the muscle along his jaw. A haunted spark in his eyes, like a candle nearly burned to the end of its wick, fighting to hold off the dark. He must realize I’m trying to read him because he breaks our connection and bends to retrieve the crutch I dropped when I took his offered hand. “Let’s hope he never turns up,” he finally says.

We don’t talk. Not as he helps me into his car, even though he doesn’t need to. Not when he turns the truck around to head back to the main road. Neither one of us remarks on the thunderstorm that looms in the distance, or how its black heart bursts with bright streaks of light in the palest shade of pink. It’s beautiful, and I want to say it out loud. But I don’t.

It isn’t until we’re on the other side of Weyburn and well past the town limits that Fionn pulls Eric’s phone from his pocket. He wipes it clean. And then he veers to the center of the empty highway and tosses it out the window into the ditch on the opposite side of the road.

And he doesn’t look back.