Dante punched Snake’s arm. “Get hold of yourself. There’s nothing we can do about it now. She figured out we’d given her my girl-juice, she was about to scream and give us away. Don’t tell me you would have preferred she bring us down? I had to hit her to shut her up. We were lucky to get her out of there without anyone noticing, not that most of those drunk young morons would have paid attention, even if we fired off a shotgun.”

“Your fire in the kitchen was crazy risky, but I’ve got to say, it gave us cover. Still—”

Dante shrugged. “Nothing else to do and it got everybody panicked and running, not paying attention to anything else. So maybe it was overkill, but who cares? We’re here and we’re safe.”

Snake shook his head. “I still can’t believe she just died, right there in the car.”

“So now we have to make her disappear, forever. They’ll start looking for her soon enough, but they won’t have a clue. We can’t be here all night though, so keep shoveling. It’s time you thought about yourself, Snake.”

But Snake looked down at his blistering hands, his gloves forgotten back at the frat house. “This shovel we stole is crap, it’s got no heft, even for cutting into this soft earth.”

“Look, we lucked out even to find shovels and a tarp in that barn without any lights coming on in the house. If you break that crap shovel, Snake, you’ll have to use your hands. I’m not doing this all by myself. We’re in this together. Don’t you ever forget that.”

They dug in silence again, shoveling up dirt, throwing it over the side of the grave. Snake stopped. “I think after she’d given us all the sex we wanted and we cut her loose, I would have called her later, gotten together with her, maybe, gamed with her. Who knows? Fact is, you screwed up, let her see you putting something in her drink and you had to kill her.”