I don’t need to torch the motel, it’s already a fucking decay.
It’s staged, the body on the bed, already mutilated in a way that implies a struggle. Blood sprayed on the walls, drag marks from the bathroom to the bed. A shattered phone near the window, fingernails under the sill, the smell of copper and gasoline thick in the air.
It fits, he was a mad man once we found him.
I light the fire and walk away with no hesitation.
It burns fast. The motel is old, built in the 60s, insulation like dry hay. It goes up like it wants to be erased. It will catch their attention to this forsaken old place.
The Devil died in a blaze of his own rebellion. That’s the story they’ll tell.
I push through the clinic doors just as the first light of dawn breaks the horizon. The sky outside is that cold kind of blue, the kind that makes your bones ache.
Smoke still clings to me. Not just in my clothes, it’s in myskin, my throat, buried somewhere between my ribs. Even after two showers and three changes of clothes, it follows me like a shadow.
Inside, the clinic is quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that builds in places where hope runs thin.
Fluorescent lights hum faintly above me. They always hum here. They don’t let you forget you’re in a place that keeps people on the edge of dying.
I move down the hallway, boots dragging a little more than usual. It’s been two days since I left. Two days of no updates. Two days of silence.
I had to do it in secrecy, no one could disrupt me.
I reach the common room near the nurses’ station. Isabella is there—exactly where I expected her to be.
She’s hunched over the counter, pouring herself a cup of coffee like it’s the only thing anchoring her to this world. Her hand trembles just enough to spill a drop. It hits the tile like a gunshot.
No one else is in sight, and I wonder where the rest might be.
She looks like she’s been hollowed out. Same clothes as before. Her hair is tied up in a messy knot that’s slipped halfway down her neck. Deep shadows cling beneath her eyes, turning her face into a haunted version of itself.
She doesn’t notice me at first. She’s staring into the cup like she’s trying to divine something from it.
When she finally senses me behind her, she turns fast. Sharp. Her eyes are wild for a second, like she doesn’t know whether she’s about to scream or cry.
“Where the hell have you been?” Her voice cracks mid-sentence, rough from exhaustion, sharper from fear.
I don’t answer—not out loud. I never do.
Instead, I let my eyes drift down the hallway, toward the isolation room.
Then I bring my hand to my throat and drag my finger acrossit in one smooth, clean line.
Dead.
Her brow furrows, confusion folding into anxiety. “What do you mean—” she starts, but I’m already pulling out my phone.
I tap out the words slowly in notes.
‘‘I staged his death for his captors. They can’t hunt what’s dead.’’
I hold the screen up for her. Let her read it.
She stares at the message, lips parting like she might say something, then just—
breathes.
A shaky, uneven exhale, like she’s been holding it for forty-eight hours straight.
