“Why are you giving me those?” she asks.
“Because digging’s hard work. I doubt your hands are already covered in calluses, sugar.” She doesn’t ask me why she’s going to be digging. She gives me what can only be described as a baleful look, but then takes the gloves and gets dressed in the jeans and sweater I brought down from the cabin for her.
Outside in the courtyard, a huge bonfire is blazing, cracking, spitting, sending burning hot red and orange embers spinning upward into the black night. Cade took a chainsaw to the hanging tree. I couldn’t do it, so he stepped up and got it done. A small crowd of Widow Makers, Brassic included, stand around the fire with beers in their hands. They watch with silent respect as Sophia and I walk by. When she first came here, the guys were dubious of her. New people, especially pretty young women, are always cause for suspicion around these parts. But now she’s not the girl who lead Ramirez back to New Mexico, to our doorstep; she’s the girl who killed Raphael Dela Vega. That will forever earn her kudos with my guys. Even Shay nods her head as we pass. There’s no anger in her eyes tonight. She just looks weary, and I kind of get it. Being as angry and as confrontational as Shay is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, must be exhausting.
Soph and I climb up into the Humvee, and she doesn’t mention it but she must know I have Dela Vega’s body in the back, out of sight. I drive thirty minutes south, heading in the opposite direction from the spot where we buried Bron yesterday. Lowell hasn’t paid us a visit yet but there’s every chance she’s having the compound watched, so I don’t turn on the car’s headlights. I just drive in a straight line, my eyes accustomed to the dark, and Sophia stares out of the window, her thoughts clearly weighing heavily on her mind.
When we stop and get out of the car, the night air smells weirdly like eucalyptus and something else. Something sweet that I can’t put my finger on. The dark shadow of Sophia’s form moves quietly around the car, where she opens the rear passenger door and takes out the two heavy shovels I put there before we set off.
“How many times have you done this?” she asks me. Her eyes shine brightly, full of pain and sadness, but they’re dry. I get the feeling I won’t see her crying over Raphael Dela Vega again; the firm set of her jaw and her ramrod straight posture speak volumes.
I want to lie to her and tell her I’m new to this. That I haven’t been burying people out here in the desert for years now. But I can’t. What would be the point in deceiving her? She’s a smart girl—maybe too smart for her own good—and she must already know the truth. I want her to know me, dark, evil things included, and telling her otherwise would only be misleading her. “Too many times to count, beautiful girl.”
“Were they…were they all men like Raphael?”
Nodding, I drive the point of my shovel into the ground. “And worse. Far, far worse.”
She seems to think about this for a long moment, the sweet smelling breeze lifting tendrils of her dark hair about her face, and then she nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. If they were worse than Raphael, then they deserve to be here. I get it.”
I’m not prepared for her acceptance of this knowledge, so I don’t have anything to say at first.
The two of us start digging; it’s not long before Sophia sheds her sweater, stripping down to the thin t-shirt I gave her to wear, and I’m naked from the waist up. We’re both sweating and breathing heavily by the time the hole is deep enough to dispose of Raphael’s body.
I purposefully haven’t covered him up. He’s all blood and horror and loose-limbed madness as I heave him out of the back of the Humvee and drag him under his arms to the grave we’ve prepared for him. His skin a strange mottled purple color, apart from where he’s covered in his own dried blood, which has turned the color of rust and dirt.
“Are…are his eyes meant to look like that?” Sophia asks softly. She’s glancing at Raphael’s already decaying body out of the corner of her eye, as though, if she only manages to glimpse him in small snapshots, she’ll be spared the true horror of what she’s done. That won’t do her any good, though. That’s why I left him uncovered. She needs to see him. She needs to come to terms with the fact that she killed him.
“Yeah.” I drop Raphael on the ground, and then go to stand beside her. Taking her hand, I draw her to my side, trying to stem the body-wide shivering that seems to be taking her over. “That always happens.”
Her fingers feel icy and cold in mine. “Do you know why?” she asks.
“It’s the potassium breaking down in his red blood cells. Makes the eyes go cloudy.”
“He looks…looks like he has cataracts. He doesn’t look real anymore.” Taking a deep breath, she finally looks at him properly. “I get why you’re making me do this,” she whispers.