‘Nice of you to worry about me. Next time, don’t. You call me the second something goes wrong.’

I let the air out of my lungs. She’s letting me live, for now. ‘Sure.’

‘And if you decide you can’t handle the work,’ Warner says, ‘let me know, and we’ll figure something out.’

‘Sure,’ I say again.

‘Don’t try to run,’ she says. ‘You have no family and no friends, which limits the number of ways I can threaten you. But don’t assume that makes you safe. There is nowhere on Earth you can go where I won’t find you.’

I realise that everyone in the diner is staring at me. The young woman, the middle-aged man, the server, everybody. The same cold, level stare, like a room full of androids.

They all work for her.

‘Do you understand?’ Warner asks.

I nod.

She signals to Sariklis, who drags me out of the booth.

‘Take him home,’ she says.

Francis goes to follow us.

‘Francis,’ Warner says. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ She points at the seat I’ve just vacated.

Francis slowly sits down, suddenly old, as Sariklis takes me out the door.

•

After Sariklis leaves my house, the adrenaline wears off and the sleepless night comes crashing down. I’m like a zombie, yawning and shuffling as I throw some of Elliott in the fridge and the rest in the chest freezer on top of the mystery man. The freezer isn’t quite big enough for both men—first world problems. I have to break Elliott’s neck to make him fit.

I scrub the blood from my clothes and hang them over the heater to dry. Then I stay crouched in front of the heater for a while, letting my bones thaw. While I wait, I check the weather on my burner phone. Lake Bob Sandlin State Park isn’t far from Dallas, and it’s had record snowfall.

‘I was driving to Dallas,’ I say out loud. ‘I was supposed to go camping near Lake Bob Sandlin with my cousin, Jesse. But the weather was bad, so Jesse called to cancel. I was driving to Dallas. I was supposed to go camping.’

It’s not a perfect cover story, but it fits what I told Shawn earlier, and it’s the best I can come up with in this state. I microwave some meat and eat until my stomach hurts.

When I can’t take another bite, misery seeps in, like the cold drafts under the doors. Just after a meal is the worst time. That’s when I’m not eating, or looking forward to eating, so I have nothing to distract me from what I am. A bad guy who does bad things for bad reasons. I’m not religious, but the word damned seems to cover it.