I run through the checklist in my mind one more time.
Money moved. Cryptocurrency converted and routed through Singapore. Cash withdrawals scheduled across Arizona, Nevada, California. Small amounts. Nothing that triggers alerts.
False trails laid. Digital breadcrumbs pointing to Florida. Plane tickets. Hotel reservations. Car rentals. All purchased with burner cards that will lead nowhere.
Accounts burned. Roxy's dark web presence erased. My old contacts severed. No loose ends.
Van is ready to ditch, and I have a guy ready to collect it to sell on my behalf. An old contact. We'll leave it in a long-term parking lot in Bakersfield for him to pick up. Buy a second hand car from a private seller in cash that’s nondescript. A Honda or Toyota. Something that blends in.
Appearances are changing. Roxy's already dyed her hair dark brown. I'll buzz mine short tomorrow. Different enough that the descriptions circulating won't match.
Documents are in progress. Marcus will have them ready in a week. Passports, driver's licenses, social security cards, birth certificates. Complete sets. Clean backgrounds. Employment history. Tax records. Everything we need to be real.
The machinery is working and everything is in motion.
I pull Roxy closer, feeling the warmth of her body against mine. The hickeys I left on her neck are already darkening. Tomorrow they'll be purple and obvious. Everyone will see them and know she's claimed.
Good.
I want them to see. I wish I could stamp my name in her neck so people know she is claimed.
My hand tightens on her throat again, but not squeezing, just holding.
In one week, Dom and Roxy will be dead, but James and Roxy Brennan will be free. And whoever tries to stop us will have to go through me first.
I close my eyes and let myself drift, the weight of her in my arms settling me.
We're going to make it.
We're going to disappear.
And we're going to be free.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ROXY
Part 1: The Waiting
The motel room smells like lemon detergent and old smoke. I don't mind though, as it's temporary. Everything is temporary now.
I set up my darkroom in the bathroom with blackout curtains taped over the window, red light bulb screwed into the fixture above the sink. The solutions smell sharp and chemical and real. Acetic acid. Sodium thiosulfate. The smell of transformation.
Dom sleeps in the other room. I can hear him through the thin wall, the steady sound of his breathing, the occasional shift of weight on the mattress. He's resting. Preparing. I'm doing the same, just differently.
The photographs are spread across the bathroom counter in the red light. Thirty-seven images. The last three days of Roxy and Dom.
There's one of Dom sleeping, his tattooed forearm across his chest, the marks I left on his neck visible even in the dim light. A picture of the van from the outside, our home, soon to be abandoned. There is also one of my hands holding the dark web laptop, the screen glowing with the final account deletions. There's one of the hickeys on my own collarbone, taken in themotel mirror, my big brown eyes staring back at me like I'm already invisible to the world, like I never existed.
I slide the first negative into the enlarger and adjust the focus. The image appears on the paper, Dom's sleeping face, magnified and precise. I expose it for twelve seconds, then move it to the developer tray.
The image blooms in the chemical bath, as his face emerges from nothing. This is what I do. I make the invisible visible. I document what people don't want to see.
I've been documenting our death for three days now.
The first day, I burned my old sketchbooks. The ones from before Dom at a time where I was drawing dead things alone, trying to understand the world through death instead of living it. I took them to the parking lot behind the motel and burned them in a metal trash can along with Dom’s bloodied shirt, watching the pages curl and blacken before turning to ash.
Roxy's old art. Roxy's old obsessions. Gone.
