The Sun Down Motel Novels & Stories

"We've got a location," Jensen announced, striding into the compound's security center with renewed purpose. "Sunset Motel, Highway 16. Clerk confirmed seeing a woman with facial scarring check in two hours ago." Max looked up from the map he'd been studying, hope flickering across his exhausted face. "How solid is this?" "Marcus Devlin used his credit card at a gas station three miles away," Jensen replied, pulling up surveillance images on the main screen. "And we have this from the motel's security camera."

He got calls from producers and editors at least twice a week. Everyone wanted to use the motel to film the ten year reunion of the only surviving victims of the 'motel muderers' as the news had taken to calling them. That is how 'murder motel' had come about and stuck. They wanted Lacey, Andy and the kids show up and talk about what happened. They were hoping that Lacey and Andy would blame Owen, with sparks flying on national television. Conflict made for higher ratings apparently.

The sun was long gone below the horizon when two black SUVs inconspicuously pulled along the side of a dirt road a few miles away from I-49, still a good mile’s walk from their final destination but far enough away not to attract any unwanted attention from the residents of SouthWest Moe’s RV Park and Campground. Cadence had wondered if Moe was just a clever take on the abbreviation for the state of Missouri until she saw the website and realized the owner was an older fellow by the name of Moe Wilson whose parents may have had an affinity for slapstick and eye-poking. She wondered if he had any brothers named Larry or Curly.

"There’s a motel about three miles out. It’s a dive, the kind of place where people pay in cash and don't ask for names. The Rossi guards won't look for us there, and Silas... well, Silas probably won't look for us at all." I stared out the window, my reflection in the dark glass unrecognizable. The violet contacts were still in, but the eyes beneath them were hollow. My heart felt like it had been put through a paper shredder. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt Silas’s teeth on my lip, heard his desperate, angry command: Say you won't play the bastard's lover. But I had said it. I was going back. "We’re here," Jax muttered. The Starlight Motor Inn was a neon-flickering nightmare. The sign

The late afternoon sun crackled in through the windshield as we grew closer and closer to our GPS destination. We'd driven all day, stopping only for dinner. The radio hummed on, low and melodic, as the repetition of tires moved us slowly on. In the distance, a road sign boasted a nearing motel and Alpha Rhodes pointed towards it, "I'll secure us a room for tonight, at least we'll have somewhere to crash," he stated simply, pulling out onto the exit and up the gravelly lane to the dilapidated motel. He paid for a room, and collected the keys, then we were on the road again.

"Dawson’s at a motel. Outskirts of town." I was already grabbing my jacket. "Then let’s go." The drive was quiet. Dark roads. No streetlights. Just the hum of the car and the weight in my chest. Kyle pulled up in front of a run-down motel. It looked like hell. Peeling paint. Flickering neon sign. Smelled like cigarettes and bad decisions. "Room 206," Kyle muttered. We got out, walked up the rusted stairs. Stopped at the door. Kyle knocked once. Twice.

Fernando’s POV The sky had turned an inky blue when we finally pulled off the road. A blinking neon sign buzzed faintly in the distance, illuminating the weather-worn letters that read: Sunset Pines Motel. Its name sounded better than it looked. The parking lot was half-empty, cracked and littered with dried leaves that skittered across the pavement in the night breeze. One lonely streetlight flickered overhead like it had given up trying. Ashley killed the engine and I let out a sigh.

Reaching forward, he pushes some icons on the screen of his stereo and Biggie Smalls' voice oozes out of the speakers with Puff Diddy doing the intro. We listen to Soul Hip Hop as we drive through the metro parts of the town, adding our headlights to the nightlife beauty, painting the roads with the glow of yellow in front and red at the back. We are so evil-minded. ______________________ Third POV Pete drives to a motel called Sharon. This one doesn't have a neon sign at the parking lot. Its sign is a wooden box nailed to the top of the door. "Here we are," Pete says, turning off the ignition and pulling up the handbrake.

I watched the car while standing at the curb until the car disappeared into the river of vehicles. No one from my past will ever know where I am again. *** The Sunset Motel sat on a street that didn’t get much sun. I've been here for twelve days. The wall had thin walls that let in every conversation from neighboring rooms, every argument, every TV show turned up too loud and headboards hitting drywall at two in the morning. But it was perfect. Because I’d chosen it, because no one knew I was here. I packed the few things I’d bought with Richard’s cash over the past week and a half.

Psychological vivisection. **<< Truck, >>** Winters deduced, his voice cutting through Silas’s distress. **<< Transporting Mack. Away from the river. >>** He glanced at the fuel gauge. **<< Need fuel. Shelter. Soon. >>** They found it in the form of an abandoned roadside motel, a relic of a forgotten highway. The "Sunset Rest" was a row of crumbling cabins, windows boarded, paint peeling like sunburned skin. It looked like the perfect place to get murdered, which also made it the perfect place to hide. Winters pulled the van behind the most intact-looking cabin, killing the lights and engine.