Chapter 4: Bury It Deep
“Cover him!” I yelled, throwing myself over Jude’s body.
Ethan grabbed a shovel and slammed it into the dirt, throwing heavy clumps straight onto the coffin lid. The gravediggers hesitated for half a second—then picked up their tools and helped.
The men stormed toward us, boots pounding over grass and mud. “Stop! Open that casket immediately!”
“Keep going!” Jude shouted, pulling me behind a tall marble headstone. “They won’t shoot here—not with witnesses. Not yet.”
The lead man stopped ten feet away, face hard as flint. “Hand over the man you’re hiding. And no one else gets hurt.”
“He’s my husband!” I screamed back.
“He’s a dead man who owes us ten million dollars,” the man snapped. “And every single one of you is an accessory if you protect him.”
Ethan stopped shoveling just long enough to look up at him, dirt smudged on his cheek. “You don’t get to take him. You don’t get to take anything else from us.”
The man raised his hand to signal—then froze as police sirens blared loud enough to drown out every other sound.
“This isn’t over,” he spat. And his men melted back into the trees before the first patrol car even pulled up.
