Page 29 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer
“I don’t know if I have the emotional bandwidth for someone else’s corpse right now,” I say honestly, because truly, this night has been a lot.
Amy starts pacing in frantic little circles. “We were about to launch Doug off a cliff. In this truck. With a second body already in it. Like some kind of low-budget mob movie!”
“That would’ve been so messy.”
She stops. “No! That would’ve been perfect!” She throws her hands in the air. “Like a murder-suicide double feature. He could’ve been a serial killer! This might’ve been his mobile murder office!”
“Amy…”
“No, really! What if Doug was planning to kill Celeste next? What if you stopped him before he could strike again? What if you’re, like, a hero?” She claps her hands together like she’s just solved a true crime podcast.
“Okay, okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I mutter, stepping back. I slam the bedcover shut, before the headless wonder inside can impregnate himself further in my brain. “I can’t look at that anymore. I’m good. I’ve reached my quota.”
Amy’s still pacing. “What if Doug didn’t scam you randomly? What if all of this is connected? Like, there’s some secret underground kill club and we just pulled the curtain back on it?”
I blink at her. “Like a murder ring?”
“Yes! A pyramid scheme but with corpses! It has that kind of energy.”
I let out a choked laugh. “You think Doug was involved in a murder ring?”
“I think we might be involved now. By default. You killed a guy who might’ve been a serial killer. That puts us, like, halfway up the murder pyramid.”
“Okay, well, great. I didn’t mean to join anything. And now I’ve got two dead bodies on my hands.”
“Not necessarily,” Amy says, her voice suddenly calm in that dangerous, 'I have a terrible idea' way she gets. “Who knows we were here?”
I scan the quiet, empty street. The houses are dark, the only sign of life the occasional flicker of a security light triggered by a rogue cat. “No one. I guess.”
“Exactly. So, we leave it that way.”
“I’m not following.”
“We go. Now. Pretend this never happened. We were never here. We saw nothing.”
“You want to just leave the body?” She gives me a flat look. “What’s your alternative? Shove Doug into a truck that already contains a decapitated John Doe and then drive the whole murder combo off a cliff?”
I look at her. Then the truck. Then the sky, which is now a pale blue smear on the horizon. The sun is rising fast, and we are running out of time and excuses.
This is insane. This is criminal. This is... my life now?
“I can live with that,” I say.
sixteen
. . .
Noah
I runbecause it clears my head.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as I pound the pavement in near ninety-degree heat, sweating through a pair of shorts that lost their dignity—and waistband elasticity—two summers ago. No music, no podcast—just me, my breath, and the dull thud of my feet on concrete. A rhythm I can control. A rhythm that keeps me from overthinking.
Mostly.
My phone is strapped in my armband, vibrating like it wants to argue. It’s not even technically work hours, but apparently homicide waits for no man—and definitely not for one who’s trying to sweat his way through some emotional baggage.
Still, I don’t slow down.
