Hearts and Aces (Kelsey's Burden Series Book 7) by Kaylie Hunter (great books for teens txt) 📗

“Nope. Belongs to my uncle.”

“And where’s your uncle?”

“About twelve feet under that old refrigerator,” Goat answered, pointing to a refrigerator about forty feet away.

I raised an eyebrow at Goat. “I’m guessing the State of Michigan doesn’t know he’s deceased?”

“Miraculously, his taxes are paid by money order every year.” Goat steered me toward the back of the truck. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

“What if someone sees us?”

“There’s not another neighbor for almost a mile, but I leave this place looking like a horror movie to keep snoops away.” He opened the back of the freight truck and motioned for me to climb up as he pulled the ramps out.

It didn’t take me long to realize that Goat was a little too experienced at getting rid of bodies. He drove a front-end loader out of a rickety looking barn. After a closer look, I saw the inside of the barn had another support structure built to protect and hide the front-end loader. Goat drove behind the barn and dug a large, deep hole before returning and moving the bucket to the back of the freight truck. We emptied four bodies into the bucket before he drove them behind the barn. He returned a few minutes later, and we dumped the last three bodies into the bucket. While he drove off, I took the bottle of bleach from the back of the truck and started wiping everything clean.

Goat returned and motioned for me to follow him. He grabbed two white buckets and nodded to a third. I picked it up, grunting at its weight, carrying it barely two inches from the ground as I tried to keep up.

“Glad you still got your gloves on,” Goat said, stopping at the edge of the hole.

“Why’s that?”

“We need the plastic off them,” he said, nodding at the bodies in the bottom.

“You want me to climb down there?”

“Is that a problem?”

I ground my teeth together to keep from saying any of the four-letter words rambling around in my head. Sitting on the ground next to the hole, I slid off the edge, trying to control the descent as much as possible. Once at the bottom, I took a moment to find solid footing before I started unrolling the guy on top. I was making progress until the body became wedged between the dirt wall and another body. Goat laughed as he watched me struggle.

“If you think you can do better, come on down!”

“If I come down, who’s going to pull us back out of the hole?”

I looked up, then around the sides. “I can’t believe I didn’t figure that out.”

“You’re tired. Which is why you haven’t realized yet that if you use the knife in your boot to cut the plastic off, it would be a lot easier. We just need enough plastic peeled away to expose them to the chemicals.”

“Shit. Why didn’t you say something?”

“It was too funny watching you try to unroll the fat bastard.”

I flipped Goat off after I removed my gloves. It took some wiggling to retrieve the knife from inside my coveralls, but I managed eventually. Once I had my gloves back on, I found it much faster to cut the plastic off each man, tugging what I could away from them and leaving the rest.

I looked up at Goat a few minutes later. “Good?”

“Yup. Hang on. I’ll lower the bucket down to pick you up.”

I briefly thought about the bodies having been carried in the bucket, but then looked down at myself. I was covered in dirt and other bodily substances that I didn’t want to dwell on. When the bucket of the front-end loader reached me, I didn’t hesitate to step in and sit down. Goat ran the controls above, lifting me out and onto the ground. I climbed out and walked over to help him pour the chemicals into the hole.

“Go get the water hose by the cabin. It should reach this far, but you’ll need to make sure you don’t drag it across anything sharp.”

“Sounds challenging,” I muttered as I went to get the hose.

I managed to drag the hose over the top of two refrigerators, using their height to keep it from snagging on most of the yard ornaments. From there, I stretched the remaining hose to where Goat waited behind the barn. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn it on so I had to run back to the shack. By the time I returned to the hole, white fumes clouded the air above where Goat sprayed the water.

“Don’t breathe this shit,” Goat said as he covered his face with his arm and kept his head turned away.

“I’ll just stay back here.”

“You’re learning.”

Ten minutes later, curiosity got the best of me and I inched toward the hole and peeked in. It wasn’t pretty. My stomach lurched, and I hurried back to the truck to breathe in fresh air. I heard Goat laughing as I ran.

I spotted a jug of lighter fluid in the barn and carried it out to an old burn barrel. Stripping off my coveralls and gloves, I tossed them in the barrel and covered them with fluid. I heard the front-end loader start up and what sounded like Goat moving the dirt back into the hole. I walked over to the truck, climbing up to pull Goat’s cigarettes and lighter.

I was standing beside the burn barrel smoking my third cigarette when Goat returned. He tossed his coveralls and gloves into the flaming barrel.

“I hate this place,” he said, looking around. “Only happy memory I have out here was the day my uncle died. Until today that is.”

“Today was a happy day?”

Goat chuckled. “Watching you roll a fat naked guy without touching his private bits was funny