Despite our standoff, Emery followed my directions to a tee, allowing me to wheel the laundry cart into the elevators without anyone noticing. I hid the cart in the bushes before walking to Johnny’s truck and driving back to the hotel. The plan was simple, the best ones usually were. My emergency lights on, my truck idled on the vacant street behind the hotel. Packing the bodies in myself, I shut the truck bed cover, drove to the street over and parked, waiting for her. Missing them all day while cooped up in a non-smoking suite, I lit a cigarette. I spotted Emery in my mirror and was relieved. She could have run.
“So, do I win the Oscar?” She joked when she climbed into the truck.
“You’re a pretty good actress,” I remarked, thinking of how easily she convinced the front desk clerk a maid had stolen something from her room. I’d told her she didn’t need to say what, which room or her name, just make enough of a fuss to get everyone’s attention and then storm off. Emery pulled it off. Her hysterics won them over, just as they’d fooled me for the last couple of days.
Emery stretched down the barely there skirt but it still rode up to her naked crotch. “So where to? I’ve never buried a body.”
I blew out smoke. “Oh, I didn’t tell you? You’re paying me first. We are picking up the fifty thousand dollars you owe me before I bury the woman you killed.”
“Okay, you don’t trust me anymore, I get that.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, I’ve never trusted you. You should know, I didn’t kill either of the fuckers in the back, and I have your prints on the gun to prove it. We’ll bury the bodies after you pay me for killing you. So you can start with directions.”
“You don’t get it do you. I don’t fucking care, I want to die. I don’t care if you trust me or not. I’ll play whore. I’ll even pretend to like it. I’ll save your fucking life. Just keep up your end of the deal, quick, painless and sudden.”
“Don’t worry sweet thing, once I get my money, it’s a done deal. You won’t see it coming neither. I’m a professional.”
We didn’t talk the rest of the way to her remote cabin, where she claimed to have the money in cash, well that was besides Emery giving horrible directions. I’ve been to the middle of nowhere, fuck, I like it there, but as we passed a wooden sign I could have sworn said, bubblefucked, I knew we could find a good place to dispose of Amun and his whore, no shovel required.
When she squealed, “Stop we’re here,” the headlights lit up an overgrown shack of a cabin.
“What the fuck are you doing with such a cozy hideout?”
“It’s not mine. It was Don’s, my husband’s place.”
Was, I thought, but didn’t say it. I holstered my loaded gun, and followed Emery through the dark to the front door. Feeling a few raindrops, I was glad I planned to dump rather than dig. Emery reached up to the doorframe for the key, and I rolled my eyes. It’s the first place I would’ve looked. I’d be lucky if the money was still here. Stepping in, she switched on the lights, blinding us both. Inside, looked nothing like the dingy outside. Just as I thought, the place screamed “hideout” with its modern décor and rich furnishings. No hunting or fishing had been going on here. “I’ve got to ask, what does your husband do for a living?”
Emery headed straight to the wine cabinet and poured herself a glass. “He sold insurance.”
There she was speaking in the past tense again. I expected to turn the corner and see Mr. Jenkins’s skeleton shackled to the wall. I imagined Emery laughing as she chained me up beside him. I shook the silly scene out of my head. “So where’s the money.”
She downed the glass in one gulp before leading the way, and I wondered if she was a lightweight drinker at all. There was something she wasn’t telling me. Emery walking in front of me, dressed in Kym’s whore ensemble, I just wanted to fuck her, period. ATF, murderer, liar, it didn’t matter. Fuck.
Sliding off Kym’s heels, she grabbed my hand, leading me into the back. Instead of the to a safe or a drawer, like I thought the money would be in, she opened a coat closet, retrieving a set of keys and a big silver flash light. “It’s out back.” Emery opened the glass sliding doors that led to a small deck. I followed her down narrow steps to the shed at the end of the yard. Fixin’ to storm, the wind cut me like a knife; the temperature felt like it dropped ten degrees.
Unlocking the tiny building, Emery opened it and searched, waving the tiny spot of light back and forth until I heard a click. She pulled out two shovels, handing one to me.