Dare Series Collection - Shantel Tessier Page 0,8

ear, “We’re not done, sweetheart.”

“Where are we going?” she demands, and I smile against her skin. I love that she keeps fighting even though it’s not going to do her any good.

I don’t answer, and Deke doesn’t say because he doesn’t know what I have in mind.

I remove my hand from her hip but continue to hold her by her hair. I walk her over to where I know they had the body, and Deke shines his flashlight down on the now dead man. She doesn’t gasp like I expected her to, which tells me she saw quite a bit earlier. She expected him to be dead.

“Hold her,” I demand, shoving her into Deke’s arms.

“Let me go, you son of a bitch!” she screams as her chest hits his.

I hear him grunt. “Fuck,” he hisses. “She punched me.”

Ignoring them, I reach down into the black bag we brought and yank the now clean knife out of it. “Pin her to the ground. Face down.”

The darkness covers us, but I hear her grunts as she curses him while he easily tackles her to the ground.

Grabbing my flashlight out of my back pocket, I shine it down on them. He straddles her ass, his hands wrapped around her wrists, pinning them to her lower back. Her head is to the side, facing me. Those plump lips have thinned, and her green eyes simmer with rage.

I kneel beside them and yank up the right sleeve of her hoodie. “What are you doing?” she asks in a rush.

“Insurance,” I say simply, and then I drag the blade against her forearm.

She cries out in the cemetery as the skin gives and blood starts to pour from the wound. I take the knife and run it through the stream of blood. Then I turn to the body and stab him in the chest with it. “Now your DNA is in him with the murder weapon,” I say simply, and I hear Deke chuckle as he realizes what I’m doing. “You go to the cops. They dig him up and investigate his murder, and you go down with us.”

“Fucking …”

“And you called me. More proof that we were communicating the night of the murder. Around the time of death.”

Her breathing is labored, and I shine the light down on her again to see the tears rolling down her face, cutting through the blood like my knife just did her skin. But they’re not tears of sadness. They’re tears of anger. She looks so beautiful.

“Return her phone and let her go so we can bury this body,” I tell Deke.

He releases her wrists and then stands over her. She scrambles to her hands and knees and starts to crawl away. He tosses her the phone. She stands up on shaky legs as she holds her arm where I cut it. We both shine our lights on her.

“Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind,” I growl.

She turns and runs.

“We should have killed her.”

“That wasn’t part of the plan,” I argue.

He fists his hands. “I don’t fucking care about the plan. What I care about is not going to prison. We should at the very least have taken her with us.”

“Did you want to take her home?” I arch a brow. “Keep her as a pet?” I shake my head. “She won’t say anything.”

“She will …”

“She won’t. She’s Bruce Lowes’s daughter. We kill her, and they start looking for a missing girl.” I shake my head. “Then that brings questions.”

“They’d never find her body, and you know it,” he adds.

“I wasn’t worried about them finding her body.” We’re smarter than that.

“Then why not let me shoot her?” he growls. “Two birds with one stone,” he says, gesturing down at Jeff’s body.

“Not yet,” I respond.

He runs a hand through his hair. “You want to fuck with her.” It wasn’t a question. He chuckles. “This will be fun.”

I smile.

AUSTIN

I run in the darkness, almost tripping over my own feet and the tree branches. But I don’t stop. I continue down the hill toward the house.

Lights come into view, and I run through the back door and slam it shut. I make my way up the stairs and into my room. I close the door and lock it. Then I make my way into the bathroom. I rip off my hoodie, shirt, and then yank down my jeans that are still undone. Standing in front of the mirror in just my black bra and matching thong, I pull my