When Agent Elms and I were first alone in the San José hotel, she hugged me. A tsunami of grateful tears consumed her. Bill Hannigan was her first case after graduating the Academy; she’d fought an ugly, uphill battle to keep the case alive in the Bureau’s minds, but now here were these kids handing her the Devil on a silver platter. She’d become the first of many crying people to ask if they could hug me. Strangers even cry on me. All the time. They just walk up and cry. Bill’s violence cut through hundreds of thousands—millions—of people like a rusty blade, slicing and infecting anyone who heard the story. Bill’s victims number so much higher than his initial three. That’s what a hate crime does: it reaches out, through space and time, and touches you with a greasy hand. You can still feel its touch long after you think you’ve wiped it off.

It took Agent Elms until the end of our second day to secure permission to send a team to the island. As we all feared, they found Nightlight empty. All records burned beyond recognition in the fire pit in the woods. The Winner’s Walls in both cabins picked clean. Most horrifically, the Reverend’s body was nowhere to be found and the bunker scrubbed of evidence. Somehow, Miss Manners was able to reach management and get them to rescue her and the remaining staff. In exchange for immunity from charges of child endangerment, harboring a fugitive, and complicity in Drew’s death, Ben Briggs named every single Nightlight employee in his deposition to the FBI, but they’re all as good as ghosts now—especially Miss Manners. Ramona Hayward doesn’t even exist. At least, it’s not her real name. She was last spotted in an airport in Moscow but has since vanished.

Just like that, Nightlight fled into the shadows like locusts.

On the morning of the third day—today—we returned to the United States. Special Agent Rhodes extradited Bill to California, where he is awaiting arraignment for the murders of Ricky Hannigan, Rodrigo Valdes, and Officer Clark Prescott. Cleared of all charges, Briggs returned to Colchester. I hope he finds his son.