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I hang up and type the name into the internet search bar. I remember it like it was yesterday. Holland Motel.
The address pops up.
There.
This is where I have to go.
HAZE
The establishment in front of me clashes with the faded memories I have of it. The large window by the door is shattered, and the Holland Motel sign isn’t lit up, nor is the inside of the building. What the hell happened here? The parking lot is empty, has been since I got here thirty minutes ago. There’s a sign on the door.
It reads Closed Permanently.
Tanner was right: the motel was abandoned. For good.
But why?
A few days back, when I realized I had nothing to lose anymore, I flinched and called him. Winter didn’t show up that night. She couldn’t have made herself clearer. She doesn’t want me. I decided to look into the leads Tanner has been sending me for months.
At first, it was the leaked surveillance tape. The day I went to look into it and lied to Winter about hanging out with Vic, I rolled into the parking lot only to find it completely deserted. On the front door was a sign that read Closed until further notice. It was suspicious. Almost made me wonder if they somehow knew that someone was onto them. Maybe they’d found out about Tanner’s guy hacking their system. My brother used to say that sometimes the best thing you could possibly do to save yourself is nothing.
Straight up nothing.
He said if things got too hot, it might be good to disappear for a while. Time heals almost everything, brother. Play dead. Just make them forget. They always forget.
A bit ironic that I once had to take Winter to my family’s lake house in my hometown precisely so that he would forget about wanting her head—my own brother. Yet, there I was, following a lead the very same bastard had given me. After he saved my life and got me out of a dangerous drug operation, might I add.
When Winter broke up with me, Tanner started sending me more and more tips. This wasn’t just a “senseless” revenge obsession to him anymore. It was like he knew we were actually getting somewhere this time. The day I called Winter and found out that she’d changed her number, something died in me—something broke.
And I told him to stop sending me tips.
He listened.
Until he texted me, four months later, to tell me the motel had been reopened. Whoever didn’t want that surveillance tape found thought four months was long enough for us to forget.
They were wrong.
I almost went back on my word right then. I came so close to continuing my investigation. But then I thought of her. And talked myself out of it. You’ve come too far to regress to your old ways, Haze.
But now, it’s closed again.
Has been for around three days according to my brother. He told me to come prepared, that something definitely went down between these walls and that someone could still be hiding inside.
And if we’re lucky…
That someone is Marcus.
It’s a long shot, I know. But this was the last place he was ever tracked back to, and everything about it is so fucking sketchy. This has to be the answer. I glance at the gun lying on my passenger seat from the corner of my eye.
It wasn’t too hard to get my hands on one. All I had to do was go back to the shady guys I met up with when I was the organization’s little bitch.
I exhale a long breath and reach for the weapon next to me. I curse myself for forgetting to charge my phone before coming here. What dumb fuck forgets to charge their phone in a moment like this? This dumb fuck. It’s almost dead. I had to turn it off in case I need to make an emergency call.
Slipping the gun inside my coat pocket, I stalk toward the entrance of the beat-down motel. The front door isn’t locked, nearly coming off its hinges. It opens with a screech, and as soon as I walk into the dark building, the absolute most horrendous smell I’ve ever experienced in my life guts me. I slap my palm on my mouth with a gag. What the fuck is that?
The very same lobby I once stood in has been turned upside down. The furniture has been knocked to the floor, some snapped in two, some wrecked. I grab the flashlight I brought and turn it on as I venture deeper into the dark corridors. The farther I get, the more awful the smell. I cover my mouth with the inside of my shirt as I pass countless rooms, my eyes watering to the point of blindness.
That’s when I hear it.
