Fear Games

4. Another One Bites the Dust

EDEN

Standing over Jax's dead body, I felt ill to my stomach, like I was going to hurl all over the place. I couldn't believe what I'd done. How had I let this get so out of hand? Sure, Jax pretty much admitted that he killed my husband, but that didn't mean I had to kill him. I thought back to just a little while ago when we were fighting—was it necessary to kill him? Was there something else I could have done instead? Restrained him somehow? It was as if my brain wasn't even working. I must have blacked out during the assault because all I knew was that Jax was a murderer, and now so was I. Again.

This wasn't the first time that I had killed someone that I thought was a murderer—except this time he actually confessed, so that had to mean something, right? I thought back to when I was a teenager and I shot Haven, my old friend, thinking that she was evil and working with the killers. There was still so much regret with that decision. And to this day I still couldn't believe I got away with it.

A knock on the door jolted me out of my thoughts and I slowly stepped away from Jax's body, all the way to the front door of the cabin. When I answered, Rachel stood on the other side with a bag of cleaning supplies.

"Where is he?" she asked coldly. I couldn't tell if she was angry with me, or just frustrated at the situation in general. I hoped it was the latter.

I pointed behind me. "In the kitchen. It's bad, Rachel."

"We'll get rid of him," my best friend said as she stepped into the cabin, and I closed the door behind her. "So, what exactly happened? Tell me every detail."

So I relayed all of the two hours' events to Rachel, making it very clear that Jax admitted he killed my husband and then attacked me, leaving me no choice but to defend myself. Even though I wasn't even sure I had to kill him, I hoped that Rachel wouldn't look at me in a negative light because I did.

But just like usual, Rachel was more than understanding. She said, "I get it. You did what you had to do."

"You're not mad?"

Rachel shook her head. "This is our lives, Eden. We've dealt with this since we were teenagers. Why would I be angry about something that just...is? There's nothing either of us could do. Jax made his own decisions, and he suffered the consequences." As she looked over his dead body, she added, "I always thought he was fishy, anyway." She reached into her bag and pulled out a huge bottle of bleach. "I'll take care of the body. You clean up the space and make it look spotless, okay? Do not let even a single spot of blood remain. We have to make it look like he was never here."

"Do you really think the police will even check this place out?" I asked.

"They will once they find out you're alive and I've been hiding you here," Rachel said. "So, start cleaning."

We spent the next hour and a half cleaning up the mess that I left behind, and Rachel wrapped up Jax's body in a large black trash bag. She needed help carrying him out to the trunk of her car, and in that moment I was thankful that there weren't neighbors close in sight. After locking Jax's body in the car, Rachel followed me back inside to finish cleaning what was left of the blood. When we finished, Rachel sighed and leaned against the kitchen island.

"That should do it," she said, ripping off her blue plastic gloves. "As long as I can get rid of the body, no one will ever know what happened here today."

"But people will wonder," I said. "Right?"

Rachel shrugged. "Maybe. It didn't seem like Jax had many friends, and your husband was the only true family he had. We should be in the clear, as long as my son doesn't ask any questions."