Elena dropped her shovel. The metallic clang echoed through the damp night as she stumbled backward over her heavy burlap bundle. Yards away, a sweating man stood over a half dug trench with pale legs protruding from the earth. Panic seized Elena. She had come to these isolated woods to erase her own mistake, never imagining she would step into someone else’s nightmare. Elena dropped to her knees, hands raised in a desperate plea.
"Please, I saw nothing!"
She sobbed, backing away from his advancing shadow.
“I swear, I didn’t see a thing!"
She gestured frantically toward her own bundle, hoping their shared criminality would prove she was no threat. Her plea had the opposite effect. To the paranoid man, the word saw confirmed his ruin. He did not see a terrified girl hiding a body; he saw a lying witness who would run to the police. Her frantic movements looked like a distraction for an ambush.
He lunged forward, using the flat edge of his iron spade to silence her forever. As silence settled back over the woods, the man stood panting in the dark. He remained entirely unaware that the girl he killed was not an informant, but a fellow criminal burying her own secrets.