Logan clenched her fists.
Paris fixed them each with a skeptical look before walking to the driver’s side of the car. He pulled out of the Bates parking lot with Deputy Golden’s cruiser trailing behind. Logan watched Alejo in the back seat, his eyes trained forward, jaw tight like he was swallowing his panic.
The morning was thick with hanging clouds. The sky was blank white and too bright to look at. Logan squinted into the empty horizon.
This was the end of them.
Brandon turned back toward room eight in silence. Logan followed him inside and slammed the door. Before she could speak, Brandon tore off his glasses and threw them against his nightstand. He pressed his palms over his eyes and turned his back to Logan, taking one measured breath and then another.
“Okay,” Logan said, “what’s the plan?”
Brandon moved his hands to look at her. His expression was as empty as the sky outside. He looked at her like he’d just realized she was in the room. His eyes were wide and glassy with a fear that went deeper than Alejo’s arrest. It was fear of something else, deeper than false accusations, like an animal trapped in a net.
“I know you didn’t let them take Dad without a plan to get him back.”
“I don’t know.”
“We have money from the show.”
“We do.”
Logan leaned in expectantly. “So … we should use it to get Dad out of jail. What do we have to do?”
“I don’t know,” Brandon said again. He fixed his gaze on the floor and massaged the back of his neck.
“I’ll look it up and—”
“No.” Brandon sat on his bed and curled his fingers around the edge of the mattress, knuckles white with tension. “We should … we should leave him. The person is still out there. They’ll know it isn’t him.”
Logan shook her head. “In jail. You think we should leave him in jail.”
“Until we know what’s going on,” Brandon said. “He’ll be safer.”
“Oh, cool, so you’re hoping more kids die.” Logan clenched her jaw. “There’s, like, forty total kids in this town. We just got here and there’s already been three murders. I knew two of them. The next one could be Ashley. Or me.”
“It won’t be you.”
“How do you know?”
Brandon was quiet. He gripped the mattress harder. “There won’t be anyone else. We’ll catch them.”
“You know who it is?”
Brandon stared.
The motel room was quiet, but it was alive with a current that made Logan’s heart race. Because, for just a second, she’d thought everything would be okay. She and Ashley were friends, Brandon and Alejo had promised to tell her everything when this was over, and even if everything hurt, the clues were slowly coming together. There was a light at the end of this—the promise that she would make it out of this town in one piece. But now it was all wrong. Bug was dead, Ashley was gone, Alejo was on his way to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
And Brandon was all she had.
Brandon, who stared at the wall now like his husband hadn’t just been hauled away in handcuffs. Brandon, who couldn’t speak more than a few words without disappearing into himself, who wouldn’t look her in the eyes, whose whole plan was to just wait. Something boiled in her chest, electric and blinding and new. It was a rage she’d never let herself feel before because it was too big, too hot, too much. It was a fire that sparked its way over her skin now. Her breath caught.
“I thought they’d come for you, not Dad.”