“I have no doubt, kiddo,” Maurice said. “You are a talent. We’ve got to get the show on the road, though. Cops will be coming soon.”
“You called them?” Sky asked.
“Sunny did, back in the MINI,” he said. “She told her dad to call them. She didn’t have time to implicate us, though.”
Sky helped Dylan to his feet. He was frighteningly compliant. She moved him to the dresser and leaned him up against it, Maurice holding the gun on me the entire time. “Hey, Sky?” Maurice said.
“Yeah?”
“No more murders after this, okay?” he said. “I mean…I do have a family to think of.”
She gave him a long, probing look. “As long as I haveeverything I want, Daddy,” she said, “you’ve got nothing to worry about.” She glanced at me. “You know, if you hadn’t texted me to say you were coming by the hospital, Maurice wouldn’t have known to head over there so he could run into you. You’d still be alive.”
“What’s your point?” I said.
She shrugged. “I dunno. Transparency is overrated?”
I glared at her. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Sky started to untie Dylan’s right arm. “You ready?”
“Bella’s gone,” Dylan said quietly, his whole body lax and useless. “I killed her. I may as well kill someone else. And I don’t give a shit whether I live or die.”
Maurice placed the gun in Dylan’s hand. “You try anything,” he said, “she’ll cut you.”
Dylan seemed to barely notice it. He was focused on Sky. “You were the one who sent me those texts,” he said. “ ‘Murderer.’ Because you knew that’s what I was.”
Sky backed away from Dylan, Maurice holding his free arm, aiming the gun at my head.
“You’ve never been a very good person, Dylan,” she said. “Even before you overdosed Bella.”
His head lolled to one side, greasy hair flopping in his eyes, Maurice posing him like a mannequin.
I waved my arms at Dylan, trying to wake him up.
“People need you!” I shouted.
“No, they don’t,” he said.
“Your parents need you. Your mother needs you. Please don’tdo this to Lydia.She’sa good person. And you’re her entire world.”
For a moment, I thought I saw a spark in Dylan’s eyes—as though a tiny part of him was coming to life.
Maurice wrapped both of his hands around Dylan’s right one. He pulled back the trigger. I closed my eyes. I heard a loudcrack—the bullet hitting the ceiling. And then I opened my eyes to see Dylan, his arm in the air, Maurice grappling with him, Dylan thrashing. I jumped at Sky, wrestled her to the floor, and sat on her. It was easy, what with that bad arm of hers. She cried out, “You’re hurting me!”
“To be fully transparent,” I said, “I don’t give a damn.”
The hunting knife was on the floor next to the bed. I grabbed it fast. Dylan freed himself of Maurice and shot the lamp. It exploded, bits of plaster flying everywhere.
“I’ve got your daughter, Maurice!” I called out. “I’ve got the hunting knife. Let go of Dylan’s arm or I write a new fucking narrative.”
Maurice jumped back, leaving Dylan with the gun. “You’re a shitty person just like me,” Dylan said to Sky, who whimpered beneath me like a child. “And just like me, you get to live with yourself for fifty, sixty, seventy more years. It will be just like living in this disgusting room. You’ll never be able to escape.”
Dylan shot through the windows, the bed, the cheap linoleum floor. Icy winds pushed into the room, sleet seeping through holes in the walls, everything cold and wet and brutal.
And Dylan kept firing, again and again. He shot the bathroom door, the mirror, the toilet. He kept shooting, the rest of us ducking, our heads down, our eyes shut tight. He murdered the motel room—a place he hated as much as himself—until he ran out of bullets and in the near distance, through the wind and rain, we finally heard the sirens.
Epilogue
