“Not so clever now, are you?”

Michael ignored Brad’s taunts, delivered with a sneer as they were, and kept his eyes on the road. He knew where to go, even as they went off the paved roads into the dirt tracks into the woods, and off the tracks into a route that only existed in the form of faintly crushed branches and pushed-aside leaves.

Sarah was silent in the backseat, watching Brad swing the razor around with bated breath. She hadn’t said a word the entire time, barely even moving in her seat. She could tell that Brad was paying attention to her but she couldn’t tell how much he was actually glancing back to ensure that she wouldn’t try anything. Not that she could do anything. Not with him holding them both hostage against the other.

“Was your whole plan to get me to chase you guys?” Brad scoffed. “Seriously? I could fight my way past the cops if I wanted to. They’re not shit. You’re not shit. You’re actually fucking stupid for that.”

The police had almost stopped them earlier, two suspicious looking cars driving away from where an alarm had been triggered. Their cars had slowed as they had approached and then driven on by, sirens still blaring. They hadn’t even noticed. It could have been anything to give them away or bring in some attention, but the police hadn’t noticed.

They certainly wouldn’t notice now, not unless Jane spoiled the car that they’d come in. Mentions of somebody having died would help, too. It would get the police hunting for them.

They would just need to survive to do it.

“Pull over here,” Brad said, pointing to a small clearing bounded by the trees. Michael obliged and shifted the car into park, switching it off and slowly handing the keys back over to Brad. He snatched it out of his hands and poked the blunt tip of the razor into Michael’s cheek, pushing him out of the car. He watched him as he exited the car, glancing over the entire time to see Sarah slowly pulling herself out of the backseat, wincing at every small movement pulling at the cuts on her arms and along her neck. The SUV came to a stop several feet away from them, and Brad slowly walked toward it without looking away from them, waiting for somebody to exit the car. Taylor exited from the driver’s side and walked to the trunk, while Alex exited and immediately began trying to drag Louis’s body back out of the backseat.

No Aaron or Kelly, he noticed. They must not have been high enough in social status to have their bodies recovered. That was unfortunate. But their bodies would certainly speed up the police, and if they got there faster, then the odds would be much better for their survival. All it would take from there is to somehow get away.

Sarah was trying to keep her breaths calm. Michael gave her an almost unnoticeable nod, a signal to stay calm. She screwed her eyes shut and then opened them again, blinking away the spots. She seemed to get the message.

Brad tossed a shovel at Michael’s feet, and Taylor dropped a body bag on the ground behind him.

“Start digging.” He pointed at a spot near the SUV. “And be fuckin fast about it. If the cops show then you should at least have a hole you’re not sticking out of.”

Michael looked at him, flat and glaring, before bending down to pick up the shovel and beginning to dig. The ground was soft and cleared of debris, with barely any resistance from the roots of the grass. The dirt gave way beneath the shovel like all the dirt in the woods did, metal softly ringing as he dug the hole out. It was the only sound in the woods then. No chatter from his watchers or skittering through the branches and leaves on the forest floor. Sarah’s breaths were tight in her chest, and even as Alex and Taylor moved Louis’s body onto the ground besides the bag, they didn’t say a word. No birds cawed, no bugs chirped. The woods were still and the air was dead. The only sound was gravedigging, cutting through the black of night.

Brad coughed. “How’d you know to go here?” He asked.

“You bury your bodies near Ken’s,” Michael replied. “You don’t use the exact same spot, but it’s very similar. The only difference is that Ken’s is further back and you have to walk there. The trees are too tight to drive.”

“You fuckin’ know your shit, huh, man?” Brad snorted. “God, this is, uh, this is why I didn’t wanna kill you. You know your shit, and you know where your shit goes, y’know? You know where the bodies go and what you gotta do. Uh, makes me sad.”

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“And yet you want to kill Sarah for whatever your plan is instead of me,” Michael drawled. “That seems more sad than the alternative.”

“Come on, dude, I know you’re not this stupid. You know what’s up here, uh, you, you know how this works.”

“There’s nothing ‘up in here,’” he said, “Not like you seem to think there is. You’re chasing ghosts, Brad. There’s nothing there.”

Brad opened his mouth to say something, but Sarah cut him off with a shout. “What’s so special about me, Brad? Why are you so focused? If you like the rules so much, why don’t you actually stick to them.”

He lunged for her, grabbing the top of her head and pressing the razor to her throat. “Shut the fuck up you stupid bitch. You don’t know a fucking thing about anything. That level of fucking stupid bullshit is exactly why we’re killing you.”

The sound of digging stopped, and he spun to see Michael standing still with the shovel. “Get back to it,” he barked. “We’ve still got you both hostage, so keep digging.”

“You said that you’re not going to kill him yet, and you can’t kill me without letting him kill all of you.” Sarah hissed the words out, trying to avoid cutting herself on the razor. “You’ve got nothing to lose.” Her voice pitched up, terror sinking in that sounded genuine. “And if I’m going to die, I’d–I’d like to know why-y-y.”

Brad glared at her. “It’s because you’re fucking stupid,” he spat. “Your stupid ass wants to, oooh, leave and shit and be all fancy. It’s cause you think you’re hot shit for wanting to leave, and, newsflash, that ain’t the rules.”

“Wouldn’t that make me less valuable?” She muttered to herself.

Taylor groaned somewhere behind Brad, but he let go of Sarah to shush her. “Shut it. And, uh, nah it doesn’t. Cause if you’re against the rules, that’s bad. So we’re gonna kill you, tell Peel that we killed somebody going against the rules, and then he’s gonna reward us for keeping it all intact.”

Sarah blinked at him, confused, and there was a moment of silence before Michael sighed.

“That’s not going to happen, Brad.”

Brad released the razor from her neck and stomped up to Michael. “What? You gonna try and fuckin protect her? Really, is that your plan? Either the cops bust you, or I kill ya. Shit ends here, Mikey Jay. Your shit ends here, and now we all get double credit.”

“Not in that sense, Brad.” Michael’s voice was dripping with sarcasm and annoyance, as if he were constantly missing the point. “I can’t predict the future. But I do know how Ravenville works. And I can tell you that Peel is never going to give you what you want.”

“Uh, why’s that?”

Michael’s shoulders fell.

“He can’t.”

The absolute certainty in his tone silenced the clearing, until Brad let out a shaky laugh. “Hah, yeah, sure Mikey. Sure he can’t. Maybe he’s gotta call the school board first yeah. God, how’d, uh, how’d you get so big by being so wrong? Of course Peel can give us shit. He’s the fuckin superintended. He can endorse my transcripts, get us all straight to manager spots somewhere in town. What does a security manager even do, anyway? In this town? Nobody’s gonna fire me. If I drop a bag with her body in it on Peel’s doorstep and add a note about who did it? I’m gonna be his favorite person in the fuckin’ world.”

Sarah’s eyes were fixed on Brad, absorbing the scope of his plans. The shovel was still in Michael’s hands, sitting slack in his arms. Taylor and Alex were shifting around by the car, Alex poking at Louis’s body with his foot while Taylor craned her neck towards the edge of the woods. The police had to be coming soon, and she was clearly nervous about it. Brad was standing there with his arms spread wide, the razor tilted in its loose grasp, as if he had forgotten that maintaining a hostage situation required effort.

“It can’t happen,” Michael half-whispered. “It just can’t, Brad. Killing her won’t do anything but kill her. Peel can’t grease the wheels for you. Not with blood. Not with anything. He’s just a normal man. He can’t give anything to you.”

“Pfft, you sure about that?”

Taylor whipped around at some noise that nobody else heard, except for Michael. He didn’t know if it was wind whipping in branches or sirens whooping in the distance. It didn’t really matter. Brad glanced at her for a second before looking back to Michael, and he sighed again.

“Yes, Brad. I’m very sure.”

He swung the shovel before anybody could process, the flat head slamming directly into Brad’s knee. Bone crunched and Brad yelled, falling to the ground, as Michael looked to Sarah. “Go!” He yelled before swinging the shovel again, and Sarah turned and didn’t look back as she ran into the woods, away from the edge, Alex and Taylor confused behind her as they waited for a command from Brad or a clue as to what to do.

She just ran into the dark.