would be a severe blow. Although he supposed they could tell themselves they would earn it back later. And more.
But still, a blow. Were there alternatives? Suddenly he thought so. Suddenly he thought, why rebuild at all? The motel was a dump. It was nothing to him. It was a junk part of some weird old title passed down from a dead guy he never knew. He didn’t care about the motel. Then and there he decided to leave it in ruins. It would be much cheaper to convert a single room in the main house. It would be much cheaper to change the signs from MOTEL to B&B. Six new plastic letters, a little gold paint. A different kind of invitation. Should work fine. They didn’t need more than two guests at a time anyway. The customers could sleep in tents. Part of the whole rugged experience.
But dead people were a whole different category. Mark prided himself on being realistic. He felt he wasn’t blinded by emotion or ruled by sentiment or misled by cognitive bias. He felt he made purely dispassionate judgments. He felt he was good at foreseeing consequences. Like speed chess in his mind. He felt he knew what would happen next. If this, then that, then the other thing. And right then he foresaw a whole lot of dominoes about to fall. The dead people would be missed, questions would be asked, data would be traced. If Robert could find people, so could the government. Probably faster.
He thought, time for plan B.
Unsentimental.
He walked back to his bike and rode it slowly to the house. The motel had burned to the ground. Only the metal cage around room ten was still standing. It was glowing cherry red. The heat was fierce. He could feel it all the way across the lot. The embers rippled in the ghostly nighttime breeze, red and white and shimmering.
He rode past the barn and made it to the house. He gunned the bike up the steps and parked it on the porch. He went in the front. Straight to the parlor. Steven said hello before he stepped in the door. Without looking up. He was watching the GPS. He knew Mark was in the house.
Mark looked over Steven’s shoulder. At the GPS screen. Only one flashlight was showing. Peter and Robert were still static on the flanks.
Steven said, “Four of the heart monitors failed.”
“Four now?” Mark said.
Steven switched screens and showed him the data. It was laid out as four separate graphs. Heart rate versus time. Each graph looked like a pencil sketch of mountainous terrain. All of them showed basically the same thing. First elevated and consistent excitement, then a brief plateau of extreme stress, then nothing.
“Might be an equipment fault,” Steven said.
“No,” Mark said. “I saw two of them dead already.”
“What?”
“Their heads were bashed in. By Patty and Shorty, I guess. Who are clearly better than we thought.”
“Where was this?”
“South of the track.”
“What happened to the other two?”
“I don’t know,” Mark said.
Steven switched back to the GPS screen. The surviving flashlight was moving down the track, in the trees, close to the edge. Peter and Robert were still stationary. In a separate window the two surviving customers were showing elevated but consistent heartbeats. Excited. The thrill of the chase. But no sudden spikes. No contact yet.
“Which ones are they?” Mark asked.
“Karel and the Wall Street guy.”
“Can we tell where they are?”
“We know where their bikes are. They seem to have taken up a middle position.”
“With the front two and the back two already gone. It’s up to them now.”
“Who got the back two?”
“I don’t know,” Mark said again.
“This changes everything, you know. It’s not the same now.”
“I agree.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Plan B,” Mark said. “Watch carefully where the flashlight goes.”
Steven kept his eyes on the screen.
Mark pulled a boxy black handgun up and out from under his jacket. His elbow went high, because the gun was long, because it had a suppressor attached. He shot Steven in the back of the head. And again, when the body came to rest. To be sure and certain. Plan B required a lot of both.
He took the bags of cash from the closet, and set them down on the hallway floor. He opened the closet’s back wall and took out his escape kit. Cash, cards, a driver’s license, a passport, and a burner phone. A whole new person, zipped in a plastic bag.
He threw Peter’s and Steven’s