6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Clara

I was in deep reindeer shit. The initial shock that rendered my system numb was wearing off. I’d killed someone. This went way beyond naughty list territory. I was going to prison if I didn’t figure out how to cover up Hogan’s murder.

Luckily, we were out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody was going to just happen across this, at least not tonight. I had time to clean up the crime scene. Though, after I’d bleached the shit out of the garage door and scrubbed away every last fleck of blood and gob of flesh, I was faced with the most difficult task of the coverup: hiding the body.

Hogan’s crumpled form was still in my driveway, and I hadn’t the slightest clue what I could do with it to ensure no one would ever find him again.

How was I supposed to get away with literal murder? Who the fuck did I think I was? One of the heroines in my books? If only . My mind went to one of my favorite heroines in a dark romance I’d read a while back. She had a stalker, and when she found out who it was, she fed his body to the hogs at a hog farm.

I gasped, realization piercing through me like an electric jolt.

They fed his body to the hogs.

That was it! Hogs ate everything, even bones. Hogan's body could disappear without a trace, and even if people suspected the hogs ate him, it would probably be written off as an accident. He wouldn’t be the first farmer to pass out in a pen filled with hungry pigs.

It was a perfect plan. Or, it would have been, if I had the strength to move his body. Being hit by a car about ten times didn’t seem to take any of the weight off. He was still heavy as fuck. There was no way I was dragging him to the barn.

I could get some chain and drag him with the car, but that would create a mess I’d never be able to clean.

I was trying to fend off crushing feelings of hopelessness when the crunch of heavy boots in snow cut through the silence. Heart in my throat, I whirled around to see my Christmas tree vendor in the driveway with a candy cane clutched in his hand, his lips pursed around the sharpened point. “Need a hand?”

My soul just about left my body seeing Bastion standing there, grinning as I stood over Hogan’s corpse.

A hundred questions flayed my mind as we stood there in complete silence for what felt like forever. Why was he here? Was he stalking me? How much had he seen? Was he going to call the cops? And why was he fucking smiling? Did he find this funny?

With every passing second, I was convinced this was all just a nightmare. This wasn’t happening.

“No,” I shook my head, trying in vain to swallow the lump in my throat. “You’re not real. You’re not here.”

Bastion’s bright blue eyes gleamed with amusement. “Aren’t I?”

“No. This has to be a dream. I didn’t kill my fiancé.” My eyes stung with tears. For so long, I’d never allowed myself to cry around Hogan. But now that Bastion was here, they streamed freely down my cheeks.

“Well, if that’s true, you have some pretty fucked dreams, Clara. But hey, I’m here for it.”

“See, this has to be a dream. If this was real, you’d be calling the cops right now.”

He canted his head, his dark hair falling over his ice-blue eyes in pieces. “Would I?”

“Yes, you would. Because if I get caught and you didn’t report it, you’d be in a shit ton of trouble too.”

“Well then…” He shrugged a shoulder and gave a tantalizing swirl of his tongue around the candy cane. “Don’t get caught.”

I blinked at him. Was he being for real right now? Was any of this for real?

My line of sight trailed back to Hogan’s desecrated corpse. His blood had soaked into the ice and snow around him, creating a macabre snow angel that was all too real to be a figment of my imagination. And the relief that he was gone, combined with the adrenaline coursing through my system, was far too palpable to be a part of a dream.

No, this was really happening.

I had killed my fiancé and Bastion had seen me do it.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, apprehension prickling over my skin like needles.

“Going for a nice little walk, seeing all the Christmas lights.”

What a fucking liar. We were miles away from town, let alone any other neighbors. He’d followed me here. I didn’t ask him why. There was a more important question at hand. “Are you going to call the cops?”

“I’m a lot of things, Clara, but I’m no rat.” Bastion muttered, his eyes darkening as they settled on the corpse at my feet. The disdain carved into the lines of his handsome face had me seeing this man I’d known since we were little kids in a whole new light. “Not for Hogan fucking Humphries, anyway. If he pushed you to do this, the bastard had it coming. But this is serious shit. We have to get this cleaned up. Now .”

We?

“Y–you’re going to help me?”

He sucked on his candy cane for a contemplative beat before answering, “I’ll help you, but I need you to answer something for me. You have to tell the truth. If I sense for even a moment that you’re lying, I walk away and you have to clean up this mess on your own.”

My anxiety lurched into overdrive and I tensed. I didn’t like people knowing anything about my life these days, but the reason for that was dead on the ground. The beans were spilled—the beans being Hogan’s mutilated body.

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

Bastion’s face hardened into a cold expression that turned my blood to ice. He’d never given me reason to fear him, other than worrying that Hogan would catch him hanging around at the shop but somewhere deep in my animal brain, a little voice told me he was a predator.

Which was ridiculous. This was my Christmas tree guy.

Bastion strode toward me and nudged Hogan’s smashed-skull with a non-too-gentle prod of his steel toed boot. “How long has this trash been hurting you, Clara?”