Carl watches as Eric approaches Alana’s daughter at the top of the hill. Carrie watches him, his face as serene as if he’s listening to a church choir. She coughs into her hands to get his attention.

He faces her, annoyed to be drawn away from the main event. He clearly doesn’t want to miss a second of the blood and pain.

“You want to know something personal about me, Carl?” she asks.

“Is it something dirty?”

Carrie sighs. “No. I have a photographic memory. It means I don’t forget anything.”

“Not what I was hoping for, but good for you, I guess.”

“It’s actually a huge pain in the ass. You would not believe what I have to sift through on a daily basis. So sometimes I shelve things. I have to prioritize. And for a long time, you weren’t worth my attention. Again, no offense.”

He only scowls at her. He wants to get back to the pregame for the human sacrifice. Eric is still talking up there.

“But when I thought back, I realized I never saw your patrol car that day,” she says. “When Andrew Goodson died. Which meant that you weren’t parked at the motel. At first, I didn’t care. I assumed you were a coward. I mean, by the time I left Middleton, I decided that any town that would replace my father with you deserved whatever it got.”

“Ouch,” Carl says.

Carrie continues as if he hasn’t spoken. “It occurred to me that you might have already been there. At the motel. You might have parked your car somewhere else so no one would see it. And there’s only one reason you would do that. You were there first. Because you were working with the Followers.”

“I already told you that,” Carl snaps, annoyed. “Pretty easy to look smart when you already have all the answers.”

“You killed my dad, Carl,” Carrie says. It’s not a question.

He hesitates, then shrugs. “You know he waved to me? Like I was his friend. But just like you, he didn’t have a clue. He never saw me coming.” He chuckles again. “Too bad you didn’t figure all this out sooner.”

Carrie smiles back. “That’s the thing, Carl: I did.”

In the sudden silence that follows, there’s a loud click as Carrie unlocks her handcuffs with the key she had hidden in her mouth. She nearly swallowed the damn thing. She’s an FBI agent, and Carl really didn’t think she might have a handcuff key.

Then Eric calls down the lightning, and the world goes bright, and the sound of thunder rolls over all of them.

Carl is stunned. Carrie is not. She has all the time in the world to punch him in the throat and take the sidearm from his weak and unresisting hand.