In the morning they checked out of the motel and walked a few blocks down the street, to a diner called Freddy’s. From the outside it looked like a greasy spoon, but the interior was surprisingly quaint. There was a bearded man seated at the bartop who scowled at both Lennon and Dante when they entered. They were the only two Black people in the restaurant, if not the entirety of the town, and had been drawing glances (some of them nasty) ever since they’d arrived.

Lennon edged past the man, who was loudly debating with another one of the diner’s patrons about whether or not the most recent school shooting was a government hoax (he argued, most fervently, that it was).

Dante claimed a seat next to a dusty window, and they both opened the laminated menus and skimmed through the offerings in silence. A waitress in a peach dress and matching apron, frilled at the bottom, came to take their order. She eyed Dante with a smile that was, perhaps, a little too urgent. This irritated Lennon, though she couldn’t say exactly why.

Lennon ordered a waffle, a poached egg, and a glass of grapefruit juice. Dante ordered a pot of coffee and a slice of pecan pie. They waited for the food in silence for a while, until Dante said: “Do you see that guy?” He gestured across the diner with a slight shift of his gaze. Lennon followed his eyes to the man sitting hunched at the bar, the one who’d glared at them when they entered. He wore a denim vest embroidered with a number of patches—American and Confederate flags, the “don’t tread on me” snake, and other patches, pins, and paraphernalia that looked vaguely white supremacist. “You’re going to get him to give us his keys.”

“Wait, what? Why?”

“We need a ride to Ben’s,” said Dante. “Consider this today’s class.”

“I don’t think I can do it without hurting him.”

“Then hurt him,” said Dante, exasperated. “I don’t give a shit. Whatever you have to do to make him give you his keys.”

“And if I fail?”

“If you fail, then we stay here until you succeed. If not with him then someone else.”

Lennon swallowed down her irritation and attempted to will the man, to no avail. He was a particularly difficult target. She began to suspect that either the walls of his skull were suspiciously thick, or he was particularly dense, which—given the patches emblazoned across his vest—was highly likely. By the time the food arrived, Lennon could smell the metallic beginnings of a nosebleed, and all she’d managed to do was make the man frown at his twitching fingers.

“Eat,” said Dante, tucking into his pie. It was a large slice, with a generous dollop of whipped cream on top. “It’ll help you focus. You can’t expect to overcome someone else’s mind when you’re not fueling your own.”

Lennon shook her head. She felt put off her food, nauseous from the effort of intense and sustained concentration. “I’m not hungry.”

“Eat anyway.”

Lennon cast her gaze away from her unsuspecting target, onto Dante. “Presumably you could just make me eat, right? Force me?”

“Presumably. But I don’t like to persuade people to eat things because, while I’m capable of forcing your body to chew, I can’t feel the texture of what’s in your mouth at a given time. And the mechanics of swallowing are…delicate and the risk of choking is high if I screw up. Now stop trying to distract me and focus.”

Lennon, with a sigh of frustration, homed in her focus on the man again. She looked for stories in his face, behind that thick beard of his, tried to find weaknesses to exploit, footholds to grasp onto, ways to manipulate. Ultimately, she decided to lean into the conspiracy angle, inspired by all of that bullshit paraphernalia emblazoned on his vest. She figured he’d fall for it, and he did.

The man pushed back from the bar and staggered to their table, his gait strange and unsteady, like a bowlegged baby first learning how to walk.

“For America,” he said, and shoved a hand into his pocket, withdrew a ring of keys, and extended them to her. “God bless you. God bless all of us.”

Lennon took the keys. “Um…thanks? We’ll take care of it.”

The man nodded, firmly, and trudged back to the bar, none the wiser, and resumed his discussion about whether or not the middle schoolers involved in the shooting were, in actuality, adult actors paid by the government that were just pretending to be children. Lennon shook her head, disgusted.

“Creative,” said Dante. As soon as she was finished eating, he slipped two twenty-dollar bills from his wallet, put them down on the table, and got up. “Let’s go.”

The man’s car was a black pickup truck hiked on tires that were large enough to be attached to an eighteen-wheeler. Lennon quite literally had to climb up into the passenger seat. The interior was surprisingly clean. The floors looked freshly vacuumed. Lennon offered to drive but Dante, stubborn as ever, waved her off.

It was a three-hour drive to Benedict’s house in Ogden. To Lennon’s immense surprise, the man they’d stolen the truck from had an extensive collection of audiobooks, and they were able to listen to the better part of a romance novel titled Prince Charmer by the time they pulled into Benedict’s driveway.

Lennon got out of the truck and rang the doorbell. No answer. She rang it again and knocked several times. Nothing. “Maybe he’s out?”

Dante tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. The door swung slowly open. He stepped past it, into the foyer, and Lennon wiped her boots clean on the welcome mat and hesitantly followed after him. The first thing she registered upon entering was the smell of gasoline. The second was that the elevator door was just ajar, the cabin slightly raised, so that it was stuck between the first floor and the second.

“Ben?” Lennon called out into the dark. “Are you here?”

Silence.

Dante started down the hall and Lennon followed him into the kitchen, where the stove burner was on, scorching the bottom of an empty kettle. Lennon switched it off.

And that was when she caught it. A horrible smell, saccharine and decayed and so pungent Lennon stifled a gag, pushing the sleeve of her shirt to her nostrils to block it.

“Go wait in the car,” said Dante, but it was too late. Lennon had already crossed into the study, where she found Benedict, dead behind his desk. He was sitting slumped in his chair, which was pushed firmly to the edge of the desk, his head lolled against his shoulder, his mouth and eyes wide open, wrists cut, palms up. On the far corner of the desk was a brass letter opener grimy with dried blood.

Lennon, not fully processing the scene before her, rushed to Benedict’s side and clasped a hand over his open arm. His blood was cold and black and thickly congealed. The smell was so horrible her eyes watered. She felt the primal urge to flee but remained there, with her hand clasped to his arm as if there were still a chance she could staunch a bleed that had long stopped.

Dante came to stand behind Benedict. Braced his hands on the back of his chair and hunched over him slightly, hanging his head. He closed his eyes. “Get to the elevator,” he said.

“What? No, we can’t just leave him here—”

“The elevator, Lennon. Go.”

When Lennon still didn’t move, Dante forced her, pulling her back and away from Benedict. She took two lurching steps and caught herself on the wall of the corridor before Dante cut her loose from the tether of his will, but he stayed close behind her, as if there were someone else in the house when Lennon knew for certain it was empty. It was a clear suicide. And even if there was foul play involved, what killer stayed at the scene of the crime for days?

“Go straight to Eileen’s office,” said Dante. “Tell her what’s happened.” He reached into the elevator and pressed the glowing 8 button on the control panel, then drew the grate shut.

The cabin lurched violently. “Dante, wait—”

“I’ll be right behind you.”