Asher Moss was probably the one who gifted me a dead opossum. Sounds like someone’s trying to warn you to back off, don’t it?

He was the one who wanted me to back off.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” she said, lifting her hip off the trunk, and letting it fall again. “Seriously. I don’t feel violence in me, but it’s like, whatever, people die. I didn’t want to hurt you, but this situation is fucked, you know? I mean, I don’t want my dad to go to prison and you’re digging things up and the Paulsons want you gone. So, I don’t know.”

I kicked the sides of the trunk as hard as I could until my breathing grew shallow and my vision dimmed. Footsteps approached quickly. “Shut the fuck up in there,” Pierce said, and he popped the trunk. The sunshine was blinding, silhouetting their figures in bright white halos, shading their faces. “If you thrash, I’ll throw you down, punch your other kidney.”

He hauled me over his back, his shoulder cutting into my diaphragm, making it impossible to breathe again, especially with the sock in my mouth.

*  *  *

Just as dizziness took my vision away, I felt cool inside air. He tossed me onto a couch on my back. With my arms behind my back, muscles stretched and snapped. The pain near knocked me out.

“I need her arms,” another female voice said.

Alice Paulson.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Pierce said, tipping me on my side and walking out of my field of vision. In front of me, a pretty glass table. A vase with freshly cut yellow roses. A window with no curtains, showcasing a lush yard, the shed backing up to that knotted mulberry bush.

The Paulsons’ house.

“I got to go back and fix that fence,” Pierce said. “Did you see when we drove past, the cougars pushing where I started cutting?”

“I saw,” Desiree said, drinking something, gulping, setting the can on the counter. “Where did you say Chrissy was?”

“No clue. I told her to be gone for twenty-four hours. We can’t put her in there in broad daylight. Now that plans have changed, I got to go back and fix it.”