They piled out anyway. The air smelled of dust, hot asphalt, and something sweetly rotten from a dumpster behind the station. Alexis took a picture for her Instagram story. “Desert vibes,” she captioned it. “Pray for us.”

He was tall. Wearing a long coat. His face was lost in shadow, but in one hand he held something that glinted—not a weapon, but a film canister. Old. Tin.

From the passenger seat, Jessa Rhodes let out a low, throaty laugh. “You’d glow in the dark for a week, Alex. That’s not a good look for the premiere.”

“You girls lost?” he asked, his voice a gravelly whisper.

“I have the director’s cut,” the man said. His voice was smooth, too smooth, like oil over gravel. “The one they buried. The one that shows what really happened out here.”

The man smiled. She could see his teeth now, white as bone.