She steered Darcy's car onto the paved roadway at the bottom of the hill, relieved to see the pickup driving off in the opposite direction.
As she watched the road through the slap-slap-slap of the windshield wipers, Lyla thought about the complicated logistics of laying Keenan Ames to rest in his family's burial ground. First, somehow, she and Jack would need to locate the body. She remembered peeking over the ridge as Keenan's corpse thrashed down the steep rock face through the dark thicket and stopped abruptly, lodged in a crevasse. But how would they find that crevasse? And even if they managed to locate the body and drag it out of that crevasse, they'd need to haul it up a long, steep climb to the road and that would complete only the first part of the mission.
They would then need to drive all the way back out to the remote burial site, transport the body to the hilltop, and then bury Keenan somewhere amongst all those graves, all without being detected. It seemed impossible, but so far as she could determine, there was no other option.
She checked the time.
Crap!
Her road trip had taken longer than she'd anticipated. Lyla's ringtone startled her. Expecting a call from Darcy, she answered the phone.
"Hey."
She heard a muffled voice. Perhaps the caller had butt-dialed. She ended the call. The ringtone blared again.
UNKNOWN CALLER.
This time she detected labored breathing.
"Hello?!" She huffed.
And then she heard it. A distinct, familiar, tormenting sound, the sound of a zipper being jerked up and down, up and down.
The phone dropped from her hand onto her lap and rang again. "Baby you light up my world like nobody else...," One Direction sang.
Text tone: What are you? Like 12?
Lyla turned off her phone and tossed it onto the console. Her hands trembled, her mouth went dry. Now, the only sounds she heard were the tires rolling over the wet pavement, the rain hitting the metal roof, and the slap-slap-slap of the windshield wipers. She exhaled a deep calming breath.
The ringtone blasted. She jumped.
What the hell?! The phone's off!
The sweet harmonies of One Direction made for a creepy soundtrack to Keenan's harassing calls. She leaned across the seat, opened the glove box, and tossed the phone inside.
The blare of a car horn got her attention. She had drifted across the yellow line into the other lane. She whipped the steering wheel. The car swerved but she regained control, barely catching her breath. The muffled ringtone tormented her as it continued to call out from the depths of the glove compartment.