Soph and I climb up into the Humvee, and she doesn’t mention it but she must know I have Dela Vega’s body in the back, out of sight. I drive thirty minutes south, heading in the opposite direction from the spot where we buried Bron yesterday. Lowell hasn’t paid us a visit yet but there’s every chance she’s having the compound watched, so I don’t turn on the car’s headlights. I just drive in a straight line, my eyes accustomed to the dark, and Sophia stares out of the window, her thoughts clearly weighing heavily on her mind.

When we stop and get out of the car, the night air smells weirdly like eucalyptus and something else. Something sweet that I can’t put my finger on. The dark shadow of Sophia’s form moves quietly around the car, where she opens the rear passenger door and takes out the two heavy shovels I put there before we set off.

“How many times have you done this?” she asks me. Her eyes shine brightly, full of pain and sadness, but they’re dry. I get the feeling I won’t see her crying over Raphael Dela Vega again; the firm set of her jaw and her ramrod straight posture speak volumes.

I want to lie to her and tell her I’m new to this. That I haven’t been burying people out here in the desert for years now. But I can’t. What would be the point in deceiving her? She’s a smart girl—maybe too smart for her own good—and she must already know the truth. I want her to know me, dark, evil things included, and telling her otherwise would only be misleading her. “Too many times to count, beautiful girl.”

“Were they…were they all men like Raphael?”

Nodding, I drive the point of my shovel into the ground. “And worse. Far, far worse.”

She seems to think about this for a long moment, the sweet smelling breeze lifting tendrils of her dark hair about her face, and then she nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes. If they were worse than Raphael, then they deserve to be here. I get it.”

I’m not prepared for her acceptance of this knowledge, so I don’t have anything to say at first.

The two of us start digging; it’s not long before Sophia sheds her sweater, stripping down to the thin t-shirt I gave her to wear, and I’m naked from the waist up.  We’re both sweating and breathing heavily by the time the hole is deep enough to dispose of Raphael’s body.

I purposefully haven’t covered him up. He’s all blood and horror and loose-limbed madness as I heave him out of the back of the Humvee and drag him under his arms to the grave we’ve prepared for him. His skin a strange mottled purple color, apart from where he’s covered in his own dried blood, which has turned the color of rust and dirt.

“Are…are his eyes meant to look like that?” Sophia asks softly. She’s glancing at Raphael’s already decaying body out of the corner of her eye, as though, if she only manages to glimpse him in small snapshots, she’ll be spared the true horror of what she’s done. That won’t do her any good, though. That’s why I left him uncovered. She needs to see him. She needs to come to terms with the fact that she killed him.

“Yeah.” I drop Raphael on the ground, and then go to stand beside her. Taking her hand, I draw her to my side, trying to stem the body-wide shivering that seems to be taking her over. “That always happens.”

Her fingers feel icy and cold in mine. “Do you know why?” she asks.

“It’s the potassium breaking down in his red blood cells. Makes the eyes go cloudy.”

“He looks…looks like he has cataracts. He doesn’t look real anymore.” Taking a deep breath, she finally looks at him properly. “I get why you’re making me do this,” she whispers.

“Tell me.”

“Because you want me to have closure. You want me to be the one who buries him. You want me to be the one who shovels dirt onto his body and sends him away forever. You want me to understand he’s never coming back, and he’s never going to hurt me again. That’s why.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t need to. She’s hit the nail on the head; without this sort of closure, she’ll only ever remember him with his hands on her, trying to force himself on her. He would always seem stronger than her in her mind. More dangerous. He would forever haunt her. Now, like this, broken, just a slowly degrading husk, he has no power. Yes, he looks terrifying, covered in all that blood, staring up at the star speckled night sky with his mouth yawning open in surprise, but he also looks small. Weak. Incapable of causing her any more pain.

I nuzzle my face into her hair, breathing her in, trying to transfer some of my strength to her. She’s already so damn strong, but that’s irrelevant. If I could carry this burden for her, I would. If I could have been the one to kill him, I would have. I should have. I don’t ever want her to hurt or suffer any more than she has to. “Do you want me to help you?” I whisper.

She squeezes her hand in mine, taking a deep breath. “No. No, it’s all right. I can do this.”

She gets to work. Even after she’s pulled on the gloves I gave to her at the clubhouse, I can tell she doesn’t want to touch Raphael. She has to in order to get his body into the hole, though, so she steels herself and then grabs him under the arms, the same way I did when I dragged him from the car.

Raphael was a big guy, and Soph is nowhere near as strong as me, so it’s not as easy for her to maneuver him to the side of the grave. She doesn’t give up, though. She positions his body directly beside the gaping hole in the ground and then she straightens, staring down at the man who’s plagued her dreams since that night back in Seattle.

“You were a vile piece of shit in life, Raphael. And you’re a vile piece of shit now. Fuck you.” She trembles as she spits on his body. Trembles as she uses her foot to shove him roughly into his final resting place. He lands face down, which feels highly appropriate. A strange sense of pride washes over me as my girl tosses the first shovel-load of dirt into the hole.

“My father would have a fit if he knew I was doing this,” she says.

“Burying the man who assaulted you?”

“Burying him like this, face down, with no blessing and no prayer for his soul.”

“Your father’s religious?”

She remains quiet for a second. I know it’s hard for her—she still hasn’t given me her real name, and I haven’t pushed for it. I know her last name is Romera, or at least her father’s last name is, but even that wasn’t information she volunteered. I heard him say it when she called him on that payphone back in Alabama. She still feels conflicted about parting with information that might endanger her family, and I get that… But she has to get that I am not a danger to her family. She must know that. The main threat to her family is now being covered with the dirt she’s letting fall from her shovel.

I don’t think she’s going to answer me, but then she speaks after all, talking in muted, quiet tones. “Yeah. He’s a preacher for all intents and purposes. My family are pretty devout Christians.”

I had no idea about this, but it fits. When I first met her, she had that uptight air about her that spoke of a sheltered, strict upbringing. That’s gone now, lost to the four winds. Now, she seems like an entirely different person.

I sit on the ground by the graveside and watch as she labors to fill it in. The work is backbreaking but she doesn’t complain and she doesn’t ask me to do it for her. With every load of dirt she piles on top of Raphael Dela Vega’s body, she seems to become more and more confident, her back straightening, her eyes flashing with determination. When it’s done, Sophia drops the shovel to the ground, rips off the gloves I gave her, and sinks to the ground beside me. My arm finds its way around her shoulders instinctively, and she folds into me, resting her head on my shoulder.

“About what you said before,” she says.