Page 67 of Bird on a Blade

“Yeah, I get that.” She shakes her head. “I just want you to be safe. I get why you don’t want to go to the police. I do. But I just think—maybe it’s worth trying?”

My stomach twists into knots. “Nothing will come of it,” I say, and that actuallyistrue, even if I can’t go to the police now for other reasons. “They might try to help at first. But he’ll pay them off to get what he wants.” Especially since what he wants is to killme. He’ll do whatever he can to protect himself. But I can’t tell Charlotte any of that, because then I’ll have to explain that I’m safe because Sawyer Caldwell is alive and well and promised to protect me.

Charlottes sighs, brushes her hand through her hair. On my phone screen, it nearly looks white. “Yeah, I know. Just—be careful, okay? He’s got to get bored of this eventually, right?”

“Yeah.” I force myself to smile. To sound hopeful as I lie to my best friend. “He just doesn’t want the embarrassment of a divorce. He needs to meet some hot model. Then he won’t give a shit anymore.”

Charlotte’s tinny laughter floods through the clearing. I wish it were true. Maybe it was, a few months ago. But now he’s got the idea of my death planted in his head. He’s got plenty of money, but if we divorce, he’ll lose some of it, even with the prenup. This way, he gets richer: The life insurance payout. The inheritance that’ll go straight to him because when I signed that prenup I was so dazzled that a man like him would want a woman like me.

Back then, I thought I’d overcome the worst thing that could happen to me. What a story it was, too: the fat survivor of the Fat Camp Killer who glimpsed death and lost weight for it, who turned her life around after a madman tried to slice it out of her. And then I reaped the rewards of that weight loss, too, with a handsome, rich husband and a glass house by the Pacific Ocean.

It was the story glossy profiles in high-profile magazines are made of. And it was all made of rot.

“—the hell is that?” Charlotte’s voice drags me out of my past.

“What?”

“That thing behind you.” She squints into the camera, brow wrinkled. “Is it street art or something?”

I realize with a cold, sick shudder that she’s talking about the sigil that Sawyer’s friend painted on the church wall. I’d wandered over to it without thinking.

“Oh. Um—” I fumble around for an explanation. “Yeah. Street art.”

“Let me see it,” she says. “I want to take a screenshot.”

I want to tell her no, but I can’t think of a single reason that doesn’t involve telling her my “friend” is Sawyer Caldwell and that sigil was painted by another murderer. So I hold up my phone to the wall, the wind cold against my skin.

“Got it!” she chirps out. I pull the phone back around. “Do you know who the artist is?”

“No clue,” I say. “It’s not signed.”

“Too bad.” Charlotte swipes her hand through her hair. “Look, thanks for checking in. You’re eating okay and everything?”

I breathe out, relieved I don’t have to lie aboutthat,at least. “Yeah. My friend’s a great cook, actually.”

Charlotte grins. “Look at you. Once you can shake off Scott, you’ll be all set.”

I roll my eyes. Ignore the sick coil of dread in my stomach. I want so badly to tell her. But she wouldn’t understand all that’s happened with Sawyer, and I can’t blame her. So it’s better to just say nothing.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be all set.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

EDIE

Sawyer takes me for a walk after a dinner I make for him, the least I could do since he bleached the entire church spotless: an autumn salad with beets and rutabagas he picked up at my request in Altarida a few days ago, goat cheese I keep in a plastic baggie in the ice chest with his beer, a healthy sprinkling of mystery nuts he gathered from somewhere in the woods. Plus bread and butter. I ate two slices without even thinking about it.

It’s dark out by the time we finish eating, but Sawyer lights our path with a hurricane lamp, the little gas flame casting a wide circle of yellow light. It shines through the pale, wispy fog curling through the mountains, making all the shadows long and crawling. With the constant rustle of dead leaves, it feels like Halloween’s tonight, not a week away.

“I like walking at night,” Sawyer tells me. “And today was, ah, a long day.”

“That’s one way of putting it.” I bump up against him as we pick our way through the dark, and he reacts immediately, snaking his arm down to grab my hand and braid our fingers together. Iglance over at him, touched by his sweetness, but he’s just looking straight ahead, brow heavy.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

My chest tightens up. “I really don’t need to see?—”

He barks out a laugh. “Jesus Christ, Edie, I ain’t gonna show the body.” He squeezes my hand. “I wanted to show you the old pier. It’s my favorite place out here.”

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