Her Terrifying Love

Part 85

Jack stomped the accelerator, his eyes darting between the narrow, winding road ahead and his rearview mirror. The tires squealed on the tight turns. 

Lyla dug her fingernails into the seat. He was driving way too fast. "This is the wrong way," she gulped.

"No, it's not."

When they skidded through a curve, she closed her eyes and yelped, "You're gonna get us killed!" 

He eased up on the gas pedal.

A mile down the road, he backed his car into a driveway and turned off the lights. They scooted down in their seats.

"I'd love to get JoJo alone without his pet gorilla," he growled, checking the mirror. Both his cheek and his ego were bruised.

Lyla brought the Red Bull to her lips. She looked down at the floor where Jack's empty can floated in a shallow puddle of sticky liquid surrounding her feet. She offered her Red Bull to him. "You wanna drink?"

"I'm good," he replied. "Here they come."

Taj's rumbling truck shook the ground as it roared past blasting death metal music. The singer shrieked, "We want blood!"  

Having avoided detection, she heaved a shaky sigh of relief. She looked at Jack wondering why he was just sitting there and not driving away.

"Maybe we pushed this as far as we could," he sighed.

"I don't know what that means."

"We caught some lucky breaks. Maybe we should--"

"Lucky breaks?!" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "In what world is any of this lucky?!"

"If that cop had seen the body..."

"But he didn't," Lyla replied.

Jack rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

"So what are you saying?" she pressed.

"I'm saying what if that cop's hiding back there waiting for us? Huh?"

She chewed her lower lip.

"He knew something was up," he added.

"So you wanna just go home and leave the body down there?"

He shrugged.

"They're gonna find him," she said. "And when they do, that cop is gonna say he saw us there tonight. And we both stunk like a rotten corpse."

He squeezed his eyes shut.

"He knows your name, Jack. He knows your car."

He had no answer.

"The next time those detectives show up at my house and yours," Lyla said. "It's gonna be to take us to jail."

"Fuck!" Jack pounded the steering wheel with his fist. He knew she was right.

"You said it yourself," she said. "We already did the hard part, right?"

He exhaled a long, heavy breath.

"We need to bury him. We kinda earned it."

He gritted his teeth, steered out of the driveway, and drove off in the opposite direction from the pickup truck.

They traveled for miles without seeing another vehicle on the road. Not another word was spoken. Their nerves were frayed searching for the cop car hiding in the shadows. Jack checked his odometer. 

"It's coming up in about a quarter-mile. I think," he said.

Nothing looked familiar, no recognizable landmarks. In the headlights, they saw trees, a winding two-lane road, a mountain, and darkness. Endless darkness. Jack steered onto the shoulder of the road and turned on his emergency lights. The orange lights pulsed.

"If that damn cop comes back we're screwed," he said as he pushed open the car door.

"We'll do this fast." She got out of the car and followed him along the gravelly edge of the road. Using their phones as flashlights, they examined the ground.

"There." She pointed to a spot a short distance away. "Tire tracks. Wide tires, like the ones on that police car." She scurried to the edge of the road. "I think we're close."

"Hurry!" he said, eyes scanning the surroundings for a cop car.

By the lights of their cellphones, they scaled down the steep embankment into the cool breath of the forest. It had been hours since Lyla had eaten, maybe days. Depleted of calories, her exhausted body incapable of producing heat, she shivered as they continued their descent in search of Keenan's corpse.

"Where the hell is he?" She swept the ground with her light, panic building.

Jack descended further down the hill. "He was definitely right around here," he said. 

A rustling in the underbrush a few yards away turned their heads. It sounded like someone breaking twigs underfoot. She couldn't breathe.

Both she and Jack directed their phones in the direction of the approaching footsteps. For a brief moment, she could swear that she saw Keenan standing in the thicket, a devious grin on his sunken face. In unison, both phones went dark. She heard Keenan angrily tugging at the zipper on his jacket. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down.

And then in the darkness, the world fell silent.