Cole set the dead man’s wallet on the counter before he let himself think too hard about it.
The motel was called the Starlight, eight units, and the clerk wanted ID.
He’d found the wallet in the glove box twenty miles back, wedged under a folded road map and a receipt for gas in Des Moines.
The clerk was a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a beaded chain.
She looked at Cole like she was deciding whether to call someone.
“Just the one night,” Cole said.
“Forty-two,” she said.
“Cash up front.”
He counted out two twenties and three ones and slid them across.
She took them and wrote something in a ledger without looking up.
“ID?”
Cole opened the wallet.
There was a driver’s license inside, Illinois, expired two years ago.
The photo was a younger version of the face he was wearing same jaw, same eyes, close enough.
The name was CHARLES BRENNER.
He set it on the counter.
The woman picked it up, looked at it, looked at him.
“This you?”
“Yeah.”
“Charlie?”
Cole’s hand was still on the counter.
“I go by Cole.”
She handed the license back.
“Room six.
Check-out’s ten.”
He took the key and the duffel and walked to the end unit.
The door stuck.
He shouldered it open and dropped the duffel on the bed and sat next to it.
The room had a TV bolted to the wall and a lamp with a busted shade.
The carpet smelled like cigarettes and something older.
Cole unzipped the duffel.
Inside: two shirts, a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee, socks that didn’t match, a half-empty bottle of bourbon, a Zippo lighter, and a Polaroid.
He took out the Polaroid.
A woman, mid-twenties, standing in front of a house with vinyl siding.
She had the same nose Cole’s reflection had.
She was smiling.
Someone had written on the back in blue pen: Maddie, Joliet, Oct.
Cole set it on the nightstand and pulled out the bourbon.
The cap was loose.
He unscrewed it the rest of the way and smelled it and put it back without drinking.
The TV came on when he hit the power button.
Local news.
A ticker ran across the bottom.
OMAHA HOSPITAL FIRE 4 DEAD ARSON SUSPECTED
Cole watched it scroll past twice.
Omaha.
Four dead.
Arson.
He turned the TV off.
Season four.
Late season four.
The seals were breaking and the hospital in Omaha was burning and somewhere Sam Winchester was drinking demon blood and lying about it.
Cole picked up the Polaroid again.
Maddie.
Joliet.
He didn’t know her.
He didn’t know Charlie.
He was wearing a dead man’s body and the dead man had a sister and forty dollars left and a taste for bourbon he’d never finished.
Cole put the photo back on the nightstand and stood.
The bathroom mirror was over the sink, spotted at the edges.
He looked at himself.
Brown hair, longer than he’d kept it.
Brown eyes.
A scar across the knuckles of his right hand he didn’t remember earning.
The jaw was squarer than his had been.
The shoulders were broader.
He stared.
The Writ flared.
Not a print.
Not a death.
Just a flicker.
A cold pull behind his sternum, the way the barn had felt, the way the diner had felt, but turned inward.
He was looking at his own face and the Writ was looking back.
Cole gripped the sink.
The flicker faded.
He turned the faucet and splashed water on his face and didn’t look up again.
When he came out of the bathroom the duffel was still on the bed and the Polaroid was still on the nightstand and the bourbon bottle was still half-empty.
He sat on the edge of the bed and opened the wallet again.
The license.
Twelve dollars in cash.
A gas receipt.
A folded piece of paper.
He unfolded it.
A phone number, no name.
Illinois area code.
The ink was smudged at the bottom like it had gotten wet.
Cole refolded it and put it back.
Charlie Brenner had a sister in Joliet and twelve dollars and a phone number and a car he’d stolen and a body he’d died in.
And now Cole had all of it.
He lay back on the bed with his boots still on and looked at the ceiling.
Water stain in the corner.
Crack running along the seam.
The woman at the diner was alive.
The wolf was dead.
A hunter somewhere had Cole’s face and the name Brenner.
The seals were breaking.
And Maddie in Joliet didn’t know her brother was gone.
Cole closed his eyes.
Sleep didn’t come.
He got up at dawn and repacked the duffel and left the key on the counter.
The clerk wasn’t there.
He walked to the Civic and threw the duffel in the back and got in.
The road went south and west and he followed it.
By midmorning he was in a town with a diner that looked like every diner he’d seen so far.
He parked and went inside and sat at the counter.
The waitress was younger than the one in Pontiac, blonde, smiling.
She set a menu in front of him and leaned on the counter.
“Coffee?”
“Yeah.”
She poured and he wrapped his hands around the cup.
“You passing through or staying?” she asked.
“Passing.”
“Hm.” She tilted her head.
“You look familiar.”
Cole looked at her.
No print.
No cold pull.
Just a woman at a diner counter, twenty-three or twenty-four, still smiling.
“I’ve got one of those faces,” he said.
“Maybe.” She tapped the menu.
“Breakfast special’s eggs and hash browns.
I’ll come back.”
She walked to the kitchen and Cole watched her go.
The diner had four other people in it.
A man at a booth reading a newspaper.
A couple near the window.
A kid with a backpack.
None of them had prints.
Cole drank his coffee and ordered the special when the waitress came back.
She brought it ten minutes later and set it in front of him and didn’t leave.
“Charlie, right?”
Cole’s hand stopped halfway to his fork.
She grinned.
“You came through here last month.
You told me your name was Charlie but you hated it.
Said to call you Cole.”
He looked at her.
“You don’t remember,” she said.
“No.”
“Well.” She shrugged.
“You were pretty drunk.
You left a decent tip, though.” She leaned on the counter again.
“You still hate Charlie?”
“Yeah.”
“Cole it is, then.” She tapped the counter twice and walked off.
Cole ate the eggs.
They were fine.
The hash browns were burnt at the edges.
He ate them anyway.
When he paid the waitress smiled again and said, “See you next time.”
He walked out to the Civic and sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and the keys in his lap.
Charlie Brenner had been here.
A month ago.
Drunk.
Tipping well.
Telling a waitress his name.
Cole started the car.
The road kept going and he followed it.