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In that moment, I realized that nothing hurt right now. All my bruises had healed, and since I’d been gone for seven days with no one hitting me, I didn’t have any fresh marks that stung.

Instead of thinking about Brooke, I let myself wonder what would have happened if Jessie, not Mouse, had faced up to the Creep. It was a stupid game, not only because he was dead, but because he would have never let me fight back.

I was starting to think of Mouse as a temporary state. I hadn’t been her when I was born, and I wasn’t her now. It had been too many years of my life, but what was that in the grand scheme of things? A wasted childhood, for sure. If whatever I did next put Mouse behind me, I could probably live with that.

This trip, and Brooke – mostly Brooke – had let me close the door on that part of my life.

At three in the morning, I put the key card in my back pocket, pulled on my sneakers and slipped out of the room.

The night air was cool but not cold. Even so, the hairs on the back of my arms stood on end – more a reaction to my nerves than the temperature.

Stick to the plan, Jessie.

I’d stuffed a couple of dollar bills in my back pocket, too, so if anyone stopped me and asked where I was going, I could ask for directions to a vending machine. I’d studied pictures of the hotel lobby online, so I had a better idea of the layout. And I had a plan for causing a distraction, if I needed one.

When I reached the lobby, I noticed there was only one receptionist on the night shift and no security guard. The bar was closed, and the shutters were down on the breakfast area. The receptionist was in a little room behind the desk. She was awake, but looking at her phone, with her feet up on a second desk chair.

She didn’t notice me.

The reception desk was pretty low, and I caught sight of a folder that was open, its pages spread.

Something clicked in my head.

When we checked into places, they sometimes took the car’s license plate number and wrote it in a book, so they knew who had paid for parking.

I mentally shifted my plan to take into account this new information. My fingers curled into a ball, and I forced myself to take a deep breath.

In the hours I’d been lying awake, I’d run through dozens of options for causing a distraction, which I needed now. The receptionist would definitely see me if I just casually walked behind the desk. I didn’t want to throw a rock at a car, and too many people ignored car alarms anyway, especially in places like this. They were part of the background noise. I also didn’t want to do anything stupid on CCTV and accidentally get the cops breathing down my neck.

In the end, I crossed over to the lobby restrooms, not trying to hide, stuffed most of a roll of toilet paper into a toilet and flushed.

Back in middle school, someone pulled this prank at least once a month, flooding one of the restrooms. Like clockwork, the water rose and spilled over the top of the bowl.

Bingo.

I dashed back out into the lobby and pressed my hands on the desk.

‘Sorry, but I think your restroom is flooding,’ I said, a little breathless from the lie and the running.

The girl rolled her eyes and set her phone down.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ she muttered, just loud enough for me to hear. ‘Gimme a second,’ she said, louder this time, and I nodded.

She went into the restroom, and I ducked behind the desk, my breath shallow now from nerves more than exertion. I reached up and pulled the folder off the desk, then sat down on the floor so I was out of view of anyone passing by.

‘Come on, come on, come on,’ I muttered to myself, running my fingers along the rows of handwritten information.

I found the Mustang:

M Summer, red Mustang, 063 - BBH (WA)

And a few rows underneath that:

C Turner, black Mercedes Vito, AAN 8912 (UT)

Meredith Summer. Red Mustang, Washington plates.

Chris Turner. Black Mercedes van, Utah plates.