cover your tracks

cover (one's) tracks (up)

1. Literally, to conceal one's footprints, typically to avoid being followed. Those hounds can track us across rivers, so covering our tracks won't do any good.
2. To conceal the evidence of one's (usually nefarious) actions. We need to cover our tracks before someone traces the bank robbery back to us. I destroyed those incriminating documents to cover my tracks up.
See also: cover, track
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

cover your tracks

COMMON If someone covers their tracks, they hide or destroy evidence of what they have done or where they have been. He was a very clever man who never took a chance, a man who totally covered his tracks. The killer may have returned to the scene of the crime to cover his tracks. Note: Tracks here are footprints.
See also: cover, track
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.

cover your tracks

conceal evidence of what you have done.
See also: cover, track
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

cover your ˈtracks

be careful not to leave any signs of something secret or illegal that you have been doing: He didn’t want his wife to know he’d met an old girlfriend so he invented a story to cover his tracks.
See also: cover, track
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • cover (one's) tracks (up)
  • cover one's tracks
  • cover tracks
  • track up
  • make tracks
  • make tracks, to
  • smokescreen
  • a smokescreen
  • wrong scent, to be on the
  • literally
References in periodicals archive
If you've been using Photoshop, meanwhile, you need to click File then Open Recent then Clear Recent File List to cover your tracks.
Using A Borrowed Laptop? Here Is How To Leave No Traces
The experience, however, is addictively complex, as you balance the strict demands of a daily prison routine with the need to acquire contraband equipment, identify escape routes and cover your tracks before making a successful exit.
The Escapists 2: Pocket Breakout iPad/iPhone HHHH H
Sentencing him, judge Lord Hardie said: "You attempted to cover your tracks by washing the knife and perhaps also attempting to clean blood from your trainers and jeans.
Knife row killer is caged
But yesterday, under cross examination, Mr Latham said: "The purpose, you told us, to change those tyres was to cover your tracks, literally, wasn't it?" Huntley replied: "Yes."
Prosecution say stories invented to `fit the facts'
But yesterday Mr Latham said: 'The purpose, you told us, to change those tyres was to cover your tracks, literally, wasn't it?' Huntley replied: 'Yes.'
You are making it up as you go along, accuses QC
COVER YOUR TRACKS WINDOWS 98 provides easy access to recently used files, through Start Menu>Documents.
BYTES & PCs
"You falsified not only accounting records but you created documents to cover your tracks as that seemed to you to be appropriate."
Jailed lawyer struck off