The man stands in the doorway, haloed by morning light and floating dust. Even from here, he smells of salty sweat, of body odor, of cigarette smoke. His hand shakes, and the gun with it. "You just stay right there, girlie. Don't move."

Him.

As brave as this all was, running out here into a throng of malevolent spirits to save her best friend from certain doom, at least Malevolence is within her element. Unpredictable men waving guns around? Most definitely not. She goes stock still where she stands and doesn't even think of looking for some alternative, for some way to fight. As much as she wants to scream, to run and lash out and make him bleed for this, she knows it'll only make the situation worse and she'll be the one with a bullet in her head. Just like Ro. So she will stand here, lift her hands up beside her head, and do as she's told. Like a good hostage.

With great care, she licks her lips and works her mouth around a set of words. "What you're doing is wrong," she says, slow, steady, "but you can still make this right. You can put the gun away and let us go. He's still alive. Erie is. He's still alive so his blood doesn't have to be on your hands if you just let us go."

Clint's stubbled frown deepens; he's taken this as an insult. "No blood's on my hands. Not yet. And if we both wanna keep it that way I suggest ya shut that mouth of yours and..." He swallows, thick, and scratches his eyebrow once, twice, now the arm is limp at his side. "And surrender to...whatever it is I have to do, that I have to do now. Now that y'all came and made this all more complicated than it had to be. Fuck it, man."

Lacey narrows her eyes but her heart beats so violently in her chest she's convinced the blood will burst right out of the muscle. She keeps quiet. They stare at one another for a long while, him seemingly unsure of what to do or say, and she, trying to gauge just how much time she has left to be alive.

Amidst all this, a slight flutter catches her eye in the corner of the rotted door frame. A flighty beige thing, drifting inside. It lands in Clint's greasy hair. He doesn't notice it.

Lacey grinds her teeth together, staring at the moth in his hair all the while. "And what is it that you have to do now?"

She tries to make eye contact with him so she can catch a hint of honesty in them despite what it is he might answer with, but his gaze darts around the room so fleetingly she can't keep up. With his free hand, he scratches aggressively at the back of his head, where the moth once sat. "I do what I gotta do to keep my girl safe," he answers finally. "That's what I've always done and I'm gonna keep doin' that." He jabs the gun in her direction. A threat. "If that means I gotta stuff you up in a wall in one of Isaac's projects too, that's what I'm gonna do."

A pang strikes her chest and she sees that hole in a young girl's skull clear as day. "You killed Ro." A pause. Everything bubbles up at once and her next words come up steamed. "You killed Stella."

"No! No, I ain't ever killed nobody. Like I said, no blood's on my hands. All I've ever done is-" He squeezes his eyes shut like he can't even stand the fact that the words have to cross his mind, whatever they may be. "Listen," he says, strained, "she asked me to. She asked me to hide that girl in the best place I could think of, so I did. Simple as that. I'd do it again if it was for her, y'see? Y'gotta understand, I'd do anything for her, so I did even that horrible thing. And I'll do even this too. To keep her safe. Both of us, at this point."

"Who?"

A cry of anguish flies out of Clint's throat and Lacey jumps back. He wags the gun at her in response to this movement and she freezes, but still, he damn near flies off the deep end. He's lost it. He's completely, absolutely fucking lost it. "Shut the fuck up and let me think!" Two seconds later, he's rubbing a quivering hand down his face. He huffs, and to himself, mutters, "Think, think, think."

If what he's saying is true - that he only covered up a murder by hiding a body - then it's no wonder that the man she'd met only a couple weeks ago, a lot more steady than this, has progressively taken a nosedive. That guilt would drive anyone nuts, but he's justifying the best way he can, by putting half the blame on another person. Who is "she?"

"She" appears behind the man in a flurry of red and butterscotch, beady eyes ablaze as they stare down the hawk-like projection of her nose. Clint hears the creak of the step behind him and whirls the gun on her, but relaxes soon enough. Well, as relaxed as someone wielding a gun and threatening adolescents can be.

"Dolly," he breathes, turning back to train the gun on Lacey before she's got a chance to think about booking it. "You never said you were taking today's shift with the boy. Why uh, why're you out here?"

Dolly hears his words, she hears him loud and clear, but she can't take her eyes off of Lacey. Wide brown eyes, ringed in pristine eyeliner, in dark lashes so stiff with mascara it's probably why she can't blink anymore. Lacey knows what the look means. She's not supposed to be here. She wasn't ever supposed to be here but now she is, and her gut broils. It was these two. These two are responsible for Ro, for Erie. For Stella.

"Dolly, listen. We can't let this one go. You know that well as I do after everything. We either chain her up down there with that boy or we get this over with here and now before this can escalate and fuck us in the asses."

Finally, she tears her gaze away from Lacey and turns it on Clint. Her eyes are still wide, but she swallows down her own surprise and lifts her chin, as if honestly contemplating his words. "That's...a reasonable conclusion, based on how we've done things in the past, and really, honeybunch, I appreciate all you've done. But really, I think I can handle this situation on my lonesome."

He ignores her last sentence. "All for you, you know that. You know I love you 'nough to do everythin' on this earth for you, Dolores. Let me stay. Let me take care of this."

She's smooth, and her hands are on his cheeks fast, rubbing where the bones hide with her thumbs. "Thank you, darlin'." Curious, though: Lacey's got a good look at her jaw. The woman's teeth grind together. "But it's wrong of us. I was wrong. We gotta let this poor girl go, Clint."

That wildness that was there before enters his face again; he starts to shake his head, to breathe fast. "Dolly, no, we can't do that. The whole reason we had to-" He lowers his voice. "The whole reasn we had to do what we did to that Stella girl was 'cause she found out. The whole reason we done took that other boy was 'cause he found out. We just gonna let that all be for nothing?" His eyes redden and gloss over. "Dolly, if we let her go, our lives are over. Your life's over, Dolly. My life - it's over."

He looks down his arm at the gun, and Lacey stares through the barrel, knowing that at any moment, it could be the very last image she'll see. I'm gonna die. Dolly stares down his arm, too, but she only looks at the gun for a moment. She's more focused on Lacey. The latter throws a scorching look the woman's way, one that conveys all the betrayal of this. She dabbed the blood from my head like everything was fine. Like she didn't know the whole time. If she does go down, she'll go down making sure Dolly remembers this look on her face.

The woman only curves her brows solemnly, a frown on her face that's almost...apologetic. It rubs Lacey odd, but she remains firm. I don't forgive you.

"Let her go, Clint. I won't say it again."

"Those are self-destructive words. I can't let you ruin the both of us like this."

He means to pull the trigger. All three of them know it. He squeezes. Lacey's body spasms in fear.

A shot goes off. Something whistles by her ear and cracks through the wood behind her. There's another crack, but this one comes from Clint's skull striking the doorway behind him. Dolly's hand is on his forehead, pushing him back. He's just as stunned by her actions as Lacey is by the shot, and because of this, she pulls his head forward and cracks his head against it a second time.

"Holy shit," Lacey wheezes.

Dolly whirls, butterscotch waves flying into her mouth. "Run, girl!"

Her knees wobble but then she's off, sprinting across the floor. She practically throws herself at the stairs before booking it down.

"No, not that way, damn it!"

There's a grunt and a yelp, and the sound of two tussling, but Lacey ignores it all and pounds her way down the stairs. She leaps into the water and wades through the flood, tripping over herself until she reaches Gideon's side. "Guys, we gotta, I- I don't know how, but we need to get out of here."

"Erie's still chained down. We can't go anywhere until we get him out," Gideon says.

She wraps cold fingers around his damp arm. "Clint's here, he's got a gun."

His blood runs cold under her touch. He stares at her for a moment, then back at Erie, and the hollows in his eyes darken with terror. "Oh, God. We gotta get him outta here now, Lacey. They'll kill him. But even if we do, like, he can't run, he's weak, he's barely awake. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck." Instead of doing or saying anything, he stands there, hands hovering over Erie's head, the latter too tired to process anything she's said. Gideon's overwhelmed, too overwhelmed to move.

The stairs creak violently. Lacey tugs Gideon's arm but there's nowhere to go and he's not budging anyways. They look back in unison.

Clint's on his way down when Dolly's legs shine behind him, rushing down. She grabs at his head and yanks it back and he grunts. They wrestle with one another on the stairs. Flesh smacks flesh and bones strike the wall but eventually Dolly loses her footing and goes tumbling halfway down the stairs until she splashes in the water. Clint stands his ground, clutching the rail as he catches his bearings. "Shit. Fuck."

Dolly comes up coughing and spitting up water and blood. She crouches there, seething up at him.

Even after all that, Clint has the audacity to ask: "Are you alright?"

She can't look at him. She looks back at Lacey and Gideon, at Erie slumped over behind them. They stare back at her, the three of them sharing the same scrunched, shocked looks. Betrayal. Fear. Desperation. Just about every other damn thing in the book.

The woman's smudged lipstick drips red from the corner of her lip, or maybe it's blood, she can't tell. All she knows is that something in their faces, something about them all huddled in the corner waiting for their own deaths like they are, must do something to the woman, because after another beat, Dolores Carina starts to cry.

A pang of sympathy almost compels Lacey forward, but then she remembers those words she and Clint had shared and she stays put. She stays put even as Dolly tries and fails to put herself back together, and even as "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" seeps from her busted lips.

"I never wanted to get involved in all this, I never wanted any of this at all, you gotta understand. I'm not a bad person. Only reason I did was 'cause a close friend called me, told me everything about what happened with Ro, and he was afraid, so afraid, and I was struggling and he offered me money if I could just, just find a way to help...cover it up. Now I said no at first but like I said he was afraid and my bills were stacking up so I eventually said yes and I shouldn't've, but Clint was there and I asked him to, to help me take Ro away and so he did.

"Then. Then that Stella girl started coming around a little while after, oh, such a sweetheart, we got on swell. We got on swell and she had this whole life laid out that she wanted and the more we talked the more I could forget about that little blip in ours, that mistake we'd made because things were fine and the police weren't lookin'. Nobody was lookin' for that girl and it was sad but I felt safe so I didn't think 'bout it. Things were fine. They were, really."

Her eyes light on Clint, and there's a deep fury in them, there. She blames him for something. Something bad. "Then Clint had to go get drunk off his ass one day and come around while I'd left Stella outside the trailer to head over to the neighbor, to borrow some tea bags. He had to come around, slurrin' his damn words and tellin' that poor girl how pretty she looked on that evenin', he had to come around and say some shit he shouldn't've, he had to come 'round and scare her off. Scared her right into his own trailer, he did. Scared her right to the back room, where she found some shit he should've gotten rid of when he dumped the body."

"Dolly that ain't fair and you know it. Y'only handed me that backpack after the fact and it looked just like any other backpack so it should've been fine just sittin' there as it was. She jumped to conclusions is all."

"But her conclusions were right, Clint! Then after she gave you a well-deserved punch to the face, where did she go? Who'd she turn to, all scared like a little kid, to tell about the bad man who'd killed Ro? To tell about you, who was too sloppy to do the job right and got found out by a high schooler."

Lacey's hands move to her temples. This is too much. Her head pounds, it pounds fierce. This is too much information at once and she keeps running through the scenes, trying to think of how it was for Stella when she found herself cornered with the bag of a dead girl, of how it was when she must've gone to Dolly and then...and then what?

"She didn't know I already knew 'bout what Clint did. Well, to a degree. She was almost right. But if she went to anyone about Clint, it'd all come back to me. I realized then and there that my life was over, and that I'd ruined Clint's just by gettin' him involved in the first place. So I did with that girl all I could do. I shushed her right down, told her everything was gonna be alright, and that I'd take her somewhere safe."

Dolly swallows. She closes her eyes so she doesn't have to look at anyone, so she doesn't have to watch them watch her sniffle and rub the inky marks from her cheeks with wet hands, just smudging it all over her face. "I took Clint's car and drove her off to that 'safe place' I told her 'bout. To the man who started this whole mess. We talked a minute where she couldn't hear, and we decided it was best to tie her up and stuff her someplace while we figured out what to do. We didn't want anything else to happen, you gotta get that. We thought we could just scare her into silence, or negotiate. The plan was always to let her go, always.

"But then..." She sucks in a shaking breath and sticks her fingers through her wet, tangled waves. She tugs on them. "Then she somehow got those ropes all cut up and ran off before we could make sure she'd stay quiet. I don't know how, but she did, and she went through the window, the basement window. We saw her through the back door. And...and I got scared, I didn't know what to do. I was so scared of losin' everything. I was only thinkin' of myself in that moment.

"So what I did was I...I ran out after her. I ran out and chased her through those backwoods and when I got her I-"

"You strangled her," Lacey croaks, recalling the vivid images of Stella on the ground, unable to breathe, unable to fight. Unable to save herself. Unable to do anything but dig her fingers into the mud and grab at worms while the life drained out of her. Stella died afraid and trying, and it was all for nothing. All because a woman could only think of herself.

"Yes," Dolly whispers, ducking her head. "I killed that girl. I never wanted to. It just happened, is all. And- and one of the worst parts about it all is that...that man still tried to pay me. Even worse than that, I took the money. I took the money because I didn't know what else I could do. Ain't make any of it better. Just filled my pockets. Just paid my bills. Didn't take away what I did, didn't buy the memories off my hands, didn't buy the blood off them."

Her gaze cuts past Lacey and Gideon and lands on Erie, and her face softens. Something like pain, something like apology. Something like relief that this boy can still look her in the eyes. "Then Erie started snoopin' round. He snooped well, not by any accident. Nearly as dead-set on all this as you two. Admirable. But he got too close. That fear built up again and as the days passed and he got closer, I could only think of myself again. Clint pushed me. That other man pushed me. They all pushed me 'til I finally said okay. So we set a trap for him. Nabbed him up. Brought him here, kept him here, didn't make the same mistake of usin' rope.

"It was only when you two darlins' started coming around that I got tired of it. It'd turned into a habit, taking away the people who threatened me. But then, then you two came around, and I realized I didn't wanna do this anymore. Y'all scared me back into my senses 'cause I didn't wanna do this, didn't wanna take more children from their families. All that I'd done, all that guilt, it started eatin' me alive. Eatin' me raw, from the inside out. So I...I told myself it was okay to help y'all. Just so long as I threw you off the trail, I could throw you hints wrapped in lies. I never really meant for y'all to find anything, but...here you are. Here we all are."

She rubs the side of her thumb under her nose to wipe away the mucus. A struggling moan leaves her as she tries to take a breath around her clogged nose. "I'm sorry for that. Truly. I'm sorry for all this. It's time I stopped thinkin' only about myself. This is wrong. All of it's wrong. I can't make up for any of it."

Her eyes lack the fire from before when she looks up at Clint this time. This time, they're full of pleading. "What I can do is make sure it doesn't happen again. I don't care what you do or say or think about it, Clint. We're gonna have to let these kids go and deal with the consequences that come."

Pressure wraps around Lacey's hand. Gideon squeezes her palm. It grounds her and brings her back into herself, and it's only now that she notices how harshly her teeth have been chattering, not even from the chill in the water, but the shiver of adrenaline and anger and uncertainty. Dolly killed Stella. Clint hid Ro's body. They took Erie together, kept him here. Lied to them for weeks, concocting stories, spreading rumors. Leading them astray when they knew full well where Erie was, knew full well who killed who.

Dolly might as well have grown horns and a tail in the past few minutes. Lacey should hate her. A part of her does. A part of her burns to deliver unto her the same treatment Stella got, to deliver unto her a cell and lots of time to think about what she's done. But no matter how much she wishes for these things, it doesn't change the fact that Dolly is standing down here in the water with them, shoulders straight and chin lifted, to defend them. To protect them. To prevent any more damage.

And who knows? Maybe in another life, Lacey could see herself taking the same steps, doing the same things. She certainly knows what it's like to be afraid, to only think of herself. She knows too well what that's like.