Page 344 of End Game

I dislike that conclusion.

Mostly because I know exactly what Dex would do with it if I said it aloud.

So I don't.

Micah apparently has less self-preservation.

“This house is fucking weird without him,” he says from the passenger seat as I merge onto the interstate.

Cami looks up from her phone in the back. “Thank you.”

I glance at Micah. “You could have allowed me to continue pretending I hadn't noticed.”

He laughs. “You noticed?”

“Yes.”

“Me too,” Cami says. “But if either of you tell him that, I'll deny it.”

Her phone buzzes.

She immediately looks down.

Micah turns enough to see her.

“Dex?”

“Yes.”

He smiles.

I return my attention to the road.

Dex has been in Chicago for two days.

He has already sent forty-three messages to the group chat, six photographs of his hotel room, one video of the studio, and a picture of a sandwich with no explanation.

He is not suffering, and neither are we, but we are adjusting.

Fortunately, today my brain has something considerably more useful to occupy it.

Rope.

Or, more accurately, discovering how little I know about it.

The studio is in a converted warehouse outside Loveland, tucked between a climbing gym and a business that appears to manufacture industrial shelving.

I expected something darker and possibly more dramatic.

Instead, it looks like a movement studio with unusually interesting ceiling hardware.

There’s polished concrete in the lobby with hardwood beyond it.

I take in the mats stacked neatly along one wall, and the steel rigging points overhead.

There are framed photographs that are artistic enough I have to look twice before realizing several of the people in them are suspended.

Cami stops beside me. “Oh.”