her skin. Those burned.
Something was missing. Lost. Gone.
Me. I’m gone. I’m lost.
Tires squealed, and the car slowed. She tried to sit up, but Grandma pushed her down again.
“Stay down, honey. Here, I’m going to cover you up, okay? You just stay down and keep breathing.”
Something—a blanket—was pulled over her. Dana huddled under it, crouched on the floor of the back seat. Crumbs and gravel dug into her knees and shins and palms. Every bump rattled her teeth. Her chin banged against the wheel well, and she bit her tongue. More blood. She smelled gasoline and mildew and old coffee and maybe piss.
She couldn’t stop shaking. She’d never stop shaking.
It was too much. She couldn’t stand it. She wanted it to all go away. It had to go away. It couldn’t be real. It had to be gone.
And for a while, it was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Beth was out of the town car before it stopped moving.
The ride had been a nightmare. The college-kid driver had done everything he could—run every stop sign and light. Clipped fenders. Took corners like a lunatic. And it still took too long. She was still sick and filled with stark, blazing panic.
Get inside. She stumbled across the parking lot. Find the lobby, find the desk. Tell them…tell them…
But movement caught her eye. One of the ground-level rooms had its glass door wide open. Curtains flapped in the breeze.
Shit! Beth bolted past the pool enclosure and straight for the open door.
She shoved her way through the stiff fabric and into the room.
A thick cloud of stink rose up around her. She recognized it instantly. Iron. Copper. Fear. The smell jammed itself into her throat and tore open the membrane between her and all her nightmares. Beth’s hands curled and released reflexively, dropping the gun she’d dropped years ago. Her ears rang from the shot. Her shoulder hurt from the kick of the gun. The blood stung her eyes and her skin.
Robert MacNamera Early lay in the kitchenette, a limp and untidy bundle like a broken doll all covered in fresh red paint.
Except it wasn’t Bob Early on the floor this time. It was Doug.
People said the dead look surprised. They were wrong. With their open eyes and slack jaws, the dead look terrified and confused. Doug looked like he wanted so desperately to ask why all this had happened. Because whatever it was, it was not his fault.
This life. This death. This hotel room, this bed, this floor, and all this blood. There was blood on the cabinets and the fridge too, and on the door to the hallway. It oozed black and putrid from the tear in his shirt and pooled red in the gaping slash across his throat.
Dana was not here. Not now. But she had been. She’d been brought here or sent here or coaxed here.
To watch her father die.
Outside, an engine gunned, tires squealed. Beth tried to move, but she stumbled, and by the time she got to the window, all she saw were taillights. The town car was gone. She was on her own.
She stood there, fists curling and releasing, dropping that shotgun in that other room. Dropping it, and dropping it again, and again.
Stop it! Stop it! You are not there! You are here! You are here and now, and where’s Dana?!
Where is your daughter?!
Beth forced herself to turn back toward the room and the stench. Now she saw a flash of white in the blood beside his head.
Knife?
No. A nail file. A glass nail file. Dana had told her Chelsea carried a nail file like that. It had a wicked-sharp tip and could get past metal detectors, Chelsea said. You could sharpen the edge too, she said, if you had the time.
There was a phone on the floor with the nail file. A small, thick iPhone, several generations old, probably reconditioned. Its screen was smashed, like somebody had stomped on it.
The backup phone. Chelsea said Dana kept a backup phone. Because sometimes she didn’t want Beth to be able to track her.
Sirens cut the air—high, painful wails and sharp air-horn bursts. Through the flapping curtains, she saw lights flash red and blue. Police. At least two carloads of them roared into the parking lot.
Beth grabbed the phone and the nail file. She ran to the bathroom and dropped them both into the toilet.
Doors slammed. Voices bellowed.
She flushed, but the trash didn’t go down. She flushed again.
There was the static of radios and more shouting, and she was here, trying to flush away