"It is a bad thing. You better have gotten it out of your system this time, because you're done! It's over. Where are the bodies?"

"In the trunk of my car."

"How'd you get them in there by yourself?"

"I made them easier to carry."

"Jesus."

"There were tools in the garage."

"And where exactly did you plan to get rid of them?" Ken asked.

"I don't know. You're the one with corpses in cages. Where did you plan to get rid of yours?"

"I was going to bury them in the forest."

"Good. That's what we'll do with mine."

Ken was feeling a bit dizzy. "I need to sit down," he said, plopping down on the couch.

Vivian scooted closer to him. "Maybe this gives us a reason to get out of here. Leave and start over. You hate your job. We've got some savings."

"What about Jared's school?"

"So he does his senior year at a new school. It's not like he's leaving behind many friends. It might be better for him to be someplace where nobody knows about the cat."

"I'm sure nobody remembers the cat."

"Would you forget if it was one of your classmates? He's lucky they thought it only happened once. What I'm saying is that he'll be fine. We could move him to the North Pole and he wouldn't care as long as he had his video games."

"We can't just—"

"I know what you're going to say," said Vivian. "Obviously we aren't going to pack up and leave right after these people have gone missing. We'll wait it out a little bit. But not too long. Go somewhere with a really cheap cost of living."

"You mean where life is cheap?"

Vivian shrugged. "Maybe."

"I don't kill crack whores or homeless people."

"That's not what I was saying at all. You need to chill out."

"Chill out? After what you did?"

"We'd already agreed that I got to do it."

"No!" Ken vigorously shook his head. "We absolutely did not agree on that. You said you got to kill somebody, but we did not come to any kind of decision. I never would have allowed that. Never."

"My mistake."

"It's great that you can be oh-so-very casual about this. Sorry if I'm not feeling quite as safe."

Vivian got up off the couch. "What you did is worse. Despite that, we're going to call it even. Starting right now, what you did doesn't matter and what I did doesn't matter."

"Of course it fucking matters!"

"I meant in terms of our relationship. Yes, we have work to do, but you got your women in cages, I got my victim and the collateral damage, and we're done fighting about it."

"I don't know that I am."

"I'll give you another one. The other girl. Charlene."

"What the hell are you saying? She's here?"

"No, no, no. Nothing like that. I'm just giving you permission to go after her."

"For real?"