Chapter 4
Deputy Miller was coming up the mountain.
I had ten minutes. Maybe eight.
I gripped the heavy canvas bundle, my chemical-burned hands screaming with fire, and dragged it toward the back door. My eyes flicked one last time to the open hatch in the pantry floor, where the dark square hole seemed to gaze back at me like an empty eye socket.
The subfloor was silent now. Completely still.
I stepped out into the freezing gray fog, the heavy canvas bundle dragging behind me through the dead grass, heading for the shed to begin the dissolution before the law arrived at my gate.
The frost bit into my bare heels as I hit the gravel behind the house.
My breath exploded in sharp, ragged bursts, tearing at my throat. The canvas drop cloth dragged against the frozen ground, heavy as lead, snagging on the dead brambles that choked the path to the tool shed. Inside the bundled fabric, the stainless-steel kitchen shears clinked against the severed vinyl tubing with a dull, muffled rattle.
*Clink. Clank.*
Every sound felt amplified tenfold in the freezing air, vibrating against the wall of hemlocks bordering the property.
Far below, where Ridge Road twisted through the rocky gulley, the low whine of a V8 engine downshifted against the grade. Deputy Miller was hitting the third switchback. In five minutes, his cruiser’s headlights would sweep across my lower pasture.
I shoved open the corrugated iron door of the shed. The hinges screamed—a rusty, high-pitched screech that echoed toward the woods.
“Shut up,” I hissed under my breath, slamming the door shut behind me and sliding the barrel bolt into place.
The shed was pitch-black, smelling of old motor oil, dry rot, and mice. I didn't dare flick on the overhead fluorescent bulb; the window facing the driveway had no curtain, and a sudden flare of light would draw Miller like a moth to a torch.
I fumbled on the workbench for the magnetic LED work light, thumbing the switch to its lowest, sickly amber setting.
The light fell on two heavy brown paper sacks slumped against the far wall beneath the workbench. Stenciled across their faces in stark black lettering was the warning: *TECHNICAL GRADE SODIUM HYDROXIDE – 99% CAUSTIC FLAKES.*
Industrial lye.
Beside them sat a blue fifty-five-gallon polyethylene barrel, half-filled with stagnant rainwater caught from the gutter run-off.
My hands were shaking so hard I could barely untie the knotted corners of the canvas drop cloth. When the fabric finally fell away, the contents spilled across the dirt floor: the stiffened bath towels, saturated with drying, blackened crust; the mangled strips of Marcus’s blue flannel; the hacked lengths of clear tubing; and something else.
Tangled in the shredded hem of the flannel shirt was Marcus’s phone.
A heavy, military-grade field smartphone with a rubberized bumper, built to withstand dropping from tree stands. The screen was shattered into an opaque spiderweb, smeared with greasy soot and a crescent of dried red froth.
A cold current ran through my gut.
Phones had GPS. Phones pinged the cell towers the second power flickered back online. Even out here, where the storm had battered the repeater on the ridge, an emergency ping could betray every foot of ground this phone had crossed.
If Miller’s cruiser had a portable scanner, or if Clara called the carrier—
I couldn't put the phone in the lye. The lithium-ion battery would react violently with the caustic alkaline solution, maybe trigger an explosion that would blow the shed apart and burn the yard to ash before Miller even cleared the driveway.
In the corner of the shed stood an old cast-iron potbelly stove, used for heating the workspace during winter sawings.
I crossed the shed in three strides, yanked the iron door open, and threw Marcus’s phone straight onto the bed of cold charcoal. I grabbed a rusted tin of kerosene from the shelf, tipped the spout, and poured half a pint over the glass and metal.
I struck a match. The kerosene caught with a soft, hollow *whump*, blue and orange flames licking up the chimney pipe.
Through the mica window in the stove door, I watched the plastic bumper swell, blister, and blacken. The phone’s shattered screen popped—a sharp, muffled snap like a green twig in a campfire—releasing a thin, acrid ribbon of chemical smoke that was sucked instantly up the flue into the morning mist.
Gone. Burned to a cinder block of fused circuitry and melted glass.
Now the rest.
I dragged the fifty-pound bag of lye over to the blue polyethylene drum. My chemical-burned hands stung with such blinding agony that tears blurred my vision, but the sheer, primitive dread of a prison cell overrode the nerve endings.
I slashed the top of the paper sack with an old utility knife. The white, granular flakes poured into the barrel like dry snow.
*Hssssssss.*
The moment the sodium hydroxide hit the stagnant rainwater, the reaction began. The water didn't just warm; it instantly roiled, throwing up a dense, choking vapor that smelled of scorched minerals and bleach. The sides of the plastic drum turned warm, then hot to the touch.
I snatched Marcus’s torn flannel shirt. The fabric was stiff as cardboard, frozen in the shape of the violence that had destroyed it.
I shoved the strips into the bubbling, caustic soup.
Using an old axe handle, I plunged the blue plaid down into the heat. The lye went to work with terrifying speed. The blue dye bled out in dark, purplish swirls; the heavy wool fibers frayed, disintegrated, and turned into a thick, foul-smelling gray sludge.
Next came the towels. Then the kitchen shears—I let them drop to the bottom of the drum, where the high alkalinity would strip every molecule of human protein, skin, and marrow from the stainless steel hinge within minutes.
Lastly, the lengths of clear tubing.
As I lifted the hacked vinyl hose, my flashlight beam caught something strange inside the plastic channel. It wasn't just blood. Trapped in the lumen was a tiny, molded plastic valve—a one-way check valve, the kind used in medical aspirators or high-pressure bypass lines—clogged with a thick plug of yellowish, mucus-like foam.
Why had Marcus had tubing like that? Had he tried to rig a siphon to steal fuel from my tractor before he attacked me? Had he come with tools to sabotage my property?
*It doesn’t matter,* the panic screamed. *Drown it.*
I jammed the tubing beneath the surface of the lye. The clear plastic softened almost instantly in the chemical heat, curling like a dying eel, sinking into the murky gray foam.
I slammed the drum’s heavy lid shut, tightened the steel retaining ring, and threw an armload of dry pine firewood over the top to conceal the blue plastic.
Outside, gravel crunched.
Twin cones of yellow halogen light swept through the frost on the shed’s window, painting long, sliding bars of shadow across the wall.
The cruiser had arrived.
I blew out the LED lantern, plunged the shed into darkness, and stood frozen against the corrugated steel, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Through the crack in the siding, I watched Deputy Miller’s white Ford Expedition roll to a halt behind Marcus’s idling F-150. The county seal on the door was spattered with gray mountain mud. The emergency lights were off, but the amber utility bar on the roof pulsed in slow, rhythmic amber flashes through the fog.
