“You can’t be serious,” Lilia rasped.
“We have no choice,” Willow whispered.
The others stared at her in horror, but the cold, hard truth of her words sank in quickly. They had no choice. They couldn’t undo what had been done, but they could try to cover it up.
They worked quickly, their movements mechanical and driven by fear. They found a secluded spot off the road, digging into the dirt with their bare hands and anything they could find. The soil was cold and unyielding, and their fingersscraped and bleeding, numb by the time they had a shallow grave.
They moved Jacob’s body, their faces contorted with the strain and horror of what they were doing. They laid him in the grave, covering him with the earth they had displaced. Each handful of dirt felt like a betrayal, but they couldn’t stop. They couldn’t let anyone find out.
When they were done, they stood around the makeshift grave. Their faces were pale and their bodies shaking. The reality of what they had done settled over them like a suffocating blanket, the weight of their actions pressing down on them.
“We can’t speak of this,” Willow said, her voice hoarse. “Not to anyone. We take this to our graves.”
They nodded, their faces haunted. The night seemed to swallow them, the stars above cold and distant, as if mocking their feeble attempts to hide their sin. They returned to the car, their footsteps heavy, and drove away from the scene of the crime, leaving Jacob Finley behind, buried in darkness.
“Maybe he’s right, maybe we do deserve it,” Eleanor murmured. “Maybe we’re being punished for what we did that night—maybe that’s what happened to Willow.”
“Stop,” Lilia whispered, “What happened to Willow has nothing to do with that night. We covered our tracks. No one can trace us back to the accident.”
“How do you know that—it very well could,” Eleanor pointed out.
“What if they can trace it back to us?” Delilah pressed.
“They won’t,” Augustus spoke firmly.
“We should go,” Lilia interjected. “The longer we stay here, the more we risk being overheard.”
They paid their bill and left the diner, stepping back into the cold night. The air felt even colder now, the chill seeping intotheir bones as they walked away from the warmth and relative safety of Ellie’s Diner.
As they moved outside, Augustus frowned. “What are you still doing here?” he asked, spotting Sebastian.
“Whisper, whisper, how well can you tell lies from six feet under?” Sebastian flashed his phone. “Seems like our cryptic friend decided to pick another recipient.”
There was an embedded image attached.
“What is that?” Augustus peered over his shoulder.
“It’s a casket. That’s a casket, isn’t it?” Lilia pulled the phone closer.
“Why the hell would someone send you a picture of a casket?” Delilah moved closer to see.
In the distance, the loud wail of sirens could be heard. Augustus swallowed thickly, turning to glance down the road.
The group exchanged grim looks, each of them knowing that their past sins were catching up with them. They were liars, in their own right—bound by their tethered sins to one another for the rest of their lives. It was only a matter of time before someone snuffed them out.
Chapter Four
“Augustus, wait!” Lilia yelled after him.
The sirens grew louder as Augustus sprinted down the street, the cold night air biting at his lungs. His breath came out in ragged bursts as he pushed past his friends, whose footsteps echoed in the distance behind him. The urgency driving him was a primal fear—a need to see with his own eyes what was happening. He reached the cemetery’s wrought-iron gates just as the first police car skidded into view, its headlights slicing through the darkness. Augustus ducked behind a cluster of trees, his heart pounding as he peered through the branches. The cemetery was alive with activity: flashlights bobbed in the darkness, officers barked orders, and the heavy thud of shovels against dirt resonated through the air.
Through the narrow spaces between the trees, Augustus spotted the crime scene. The freshly turned earth was a glaring, unnatural scar against the otherwise serene cemetery. A small group of officers huddled near the open grave, their faces illuminated by the harsh beams of their flashlights. Augustus’ eyes were drawn to the casket—the empty, stark white inside causing his breath to catch.
The horror and panic that gripped him were suffocating. His mind raced as he tried to make sense of what he was witnessing. Willow’s grave had been disturbed.
The casket was empty.
Augustus crouched lower, trying to avoid detection, when he felt a presence behind him. He spun around to see Lilia, Delilah, Eleanor, and Sebastian emerging from the shadows. Their faces were pale and drawn, mirroring his disbelief.
