Page 74 of Misery
Thiago went to Mexico at seventeen.
Got involved with the wrong people.
Ended up in a shallow grave somewhere outside Juárez.
We didn't have a funeral—no body to bury.
Just Emil and me drinking ourselves stupid in this very room, promising never to end up like him.
Promising to be smarter, better, more careful.
But dead men don't buy black roses for girls they've never met.
Dead men don't carve 'little artist' into corpses like love letters written in flesh.
Vanir's typing now, fingers flying across keys.
Screens pop up—databases I probably don't have clearance to know about.
Government sites. Criminal records. Things that would get him arrested if anyone knew he could access them. "Holy shit."
"What?"
He turns the laptop toward me.
It’s an arrest record from three years ago.
Thiago's face staring back—older, harder, but unmistakably him.
The boy who taught me how to pick locks.
Who shared his lunch when Charm forgot to pack mine.
Who held my head while I puked after my first real drunk.
The scar through his eyebrow from when we fought those kids from Northside.
The crooked nose from when Emil broke it over a girl neither of them ended up with.
"Arrested in El Paso. Possession with intent. Released on a technicality." Vanir scrolls, pulls up more records. "Then nothing for two years. Like, he went underground. Then this."
Another photo.
This time from a security camera at a gas station.
Thiago pumping gas into a black sedan.
The timestamp makes my stomach drop like I'm falling off that water tower with him.
Two weeks before Elfe's attack eight months ago.
"He's been here," I say unnecessarily. The words taste like betrayal. "He's been here the whole time."
"Gets worse." More typing. More screens. His fingers move so fast they blur. "Cross-referencing with known associates and... fuck me."
The screen fills with images.
Surveillance photos. Social media posts. Security footage from various sources.
