After leaving Point Lookout, Bel texts Ash from his phone or contact thread, pretending to ask him to meet her at McDonald’s and specifically telling him not to bring the camera. Bel hides near the Royalty Inn, waits until Ash leaves, and enters the hotel because she needs time alone in his room to destroy anything that could expose Rachel, Carter, and Bel.

Bel convinces Kosa at the front desk that Ash asked Bel to retrieve a lens from room thirty-nine. Once inside Ash’s room, Bel finds his SD cards, including marked and unmarked cards, and snaps them one by one. Bel also removes the SD card from Ash’s camera, knowing it contains the night’s most dangerous footage: Rachel’s message, the trip to the logging yard, and Charlie chained in the red truck.

Because Ash had told Bel he backed footage up onto an external hard drive, Bel destroys the drive by stamping it apart. Bel then breaks Ash’s laptop screen from its base and takes the base with her, intending to dispose of the hard drive in the river. Before leaving, Bel writes “Sorry” on the broken laptop screen.

Back at home after three in the morning, Bel waits anxiously for Rachel and Carter. Carter returns first, saying she recovered all the coded books without waking Yordan, but kept The Green Mile because its message, “we are being kept,” referred to Carter and Rachel. Bel reassures Carter that Carter did well and that Rachel will come home.

Ash arrives at the Price house and confronts Bel, devastated because he would have deleted everything if Bel had asked. Bel refuses to explain what happened in the red truck and repeats the public story that Rachel was taken by a stranger and that Charlie ran away to Canada. When Ash asks what Bel is doing, Bel says she is protecting her family, making clear their relationship must end.

As Ash walks away, Bel stops him and kisses him goodbye. Bel tells Ash that their connection was not pointless and did matter, and Ash agrees. Bel lets Ash leave, accepting that leaving is not the same as being left behind.