Glitch typed for two minutes without speaking. Found the drive. Found the date. Found the feed.
He pressed play.
The timestamp said 10:47 PM. Bea’s face on the screen — slipping out of my room, pulling the door closed softly behind her. She bent down and picked up a trash bag from beside thedoor — my clothes, I realized. The bloody ones from the run. She’d put them outside while I was in the shower. Handful was at the end of the hall, back against the wall. She walked to him and held out the bag. He stood and took it without a word. Then she headed down the corridor toward the main room.
12:03 AM. Handful came back down the corridor. He opened my door — just cracked it, leaned in, looked. Checking. He pulled back but didn’t pull the door all the way closed. It stayed open an inch, maybe two.
I watched his retreating back on the screen and thought about lying in the dark hearing the door.Did someone open it?I’d thought, in the fog.Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
1:47 AM. A man came down the corridor. Tall, sandy-haired, moving with the loose confidence of someone well past sober. A woman behind him — dark hair, laughing quietly, her hand on his arm. They passed the doors, and the man pushed at mine — the one Handful had left unlatched. It swung open. They went inside. The door closed behind them.
The woman was Joanne. Even on the grainy feed, it was obvious.
2:14 AM. Joanne came out. She adjusted her jacket, looked both ways, walked toward the main room.
2:31 AM. The man came out. He stood in the corridor for a moment, looked around. Then he turned and went to the door next to mine and slipped inside.
7:27 AM. I came out. Disheveled.
Glitch stopped the playback. Nobody spoke for a long moment.
“What the fuck,” Colt said. He wasn’t quiet about it. “Why is there a man and a woman in your room? How did they even get in there?”
“Handful left the door unlatched,” Glitch said, rewinding to the 12:03 timestamp. “See? He checked on Holden, didn’t pull it shut all the way. They found it two hours later.”
“I don’t remember any of it,” I said. My voice sounded far away. “I was blackout drunk, Colt. I don’t remember anything after Bea left. I woke up and the sheets were wrong and there was a condom wrapper on the table and I assumed—” I stopped. “I assumed it was me.”
Colt stared at me. “You assumed you slept with a stranger and you just — what?”
“Yeah.”
Colt sat back, shaking his head.
Glitch tapped the screen where the man’s frame was frozen in the corridor. “The hallway feed caught her leaving at 2:14. That’s the footage you saw before — when you went looking. But you stopped there. He walked out seventeen minutes later. It was right there, Holden.”
I stared at the screen. He was right. I’d been looking for a woman. I’d found her at 2:14. I’d watched it three times. That was enough. I had my answer. I hadn’t been looking for anything else.
A man walking out of my room seventeen minutes later. Right there on the feed, and I’d scrolled past it because it didn’t fit the story I was already telling myself.
Glitch was already pulling up another screen — the check-in logs, the guest records. He scrolled, clicked, scrolled again.
“Weekend rider,” he said. “Checked in that afternoon. Assigned the room next to yours.” He turned the screen so we could see the name, the date, the charter. “Went into the wrong room because they were drunk and the door was open.”
Colt stood. “Glitch, get a still of his face. Best frame you can pull.” He looked at me. “Come on.”
We walked back out into the main room. Every head turned. Joanne was where we’d left her — sitting at a table with the prospect, a glass of water in front of her, untouched. The room was quiet in the way it gets when everyone’s been talking about you and just stopped.
Glitch came out a minute later with his laptop. He turned the screen toward Joanne — the clearest frame, the man frozen in the corridor, the hawk tattoo just visible on his forearm.
“That’s him,” she said. No hesitation.
Colt nodded. “We know who he is. We’ll pass on your details. He’ll get in touch.” His voice was steady, the way it got when he was in charge. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Joanne blinked. She’d walked in here braced for a fight — for denial, for getting laughed out, for the VP to point at the door and tell her she was on her own. Instead she’d found a man who stood up and claimed a baby that wasn’t his, and a room full of bikers pulling camera footage to find the one who was. No doubt she’d expected Colt to throw her out. Instead he’d promised to deliver the father himself.
She pushed herself up from the chair slowly. “Thank you,” she said, and her voice cracked on it. She looked at Colt. At Glitch. At me — longer, like she still didn’t quite know what to make of what I’d done.
The prospect walked her out. The room stayed quiet until the front door closed behind her.
