Billy Summers

Billy tells Alice that they will have to go their separate ways before he reaches his destination. He contacts Bucky, asking if he and Alice can join him in his hideout. Bucky uses YouTube comments on an obscure video to direct him to Sidewinder, Colorado. It takes them more than two days to drive to Sidewinder. Billy and Alice bond on the journey, and he reflects that she is like his sister, if she had had a chance to grow up.

The pair drives through the mountains and reaches Bucky’s cabin in Colorado. Bucky and Billy discuss the job and what went wrong. Bucky tells Billy that he is a hunted man and that there is a $6 million bounty on his head. Bucky creates a new identity for Alice, “Elizabeth Anderson.” She expresses surprise that she can’t choose her own name, and Bucky tells her that it is better if it is random: She would likely choose something with a traceable connection to her own past.

Alice goes for a walk. Billy tells Bucky that he plans to pursue Nick in Las Vegas to get an explanation and the money he is owed. Bucky suggests that Billy take Alice with him: Because Nick’s men are on the lookout for a man travelling alone, her presence will put them off the scent.

When Alice returns from her walk, she tells them that she saw the Overlook Hotel, which Bucky told her had been a haunted hotel that burned down. It has in fact been destroyed, but Bucky says she is not the only person who has glimpsed a vision of it since. He warns her that it is a bad place.

Bucky tells Billy that Alice thinks he is her “guardian angel.” Alice and Bucky go shopping. Billy writes in a smaller cabin that Bucky calls his “summerhouse.” There is a painting in the cabin that Billy finds disturbing and turns to face the wall. It shows hedges in the shape of animals, some of which have red eyes. When Billy finishes writing and turns the picture around again, he is unnerved to find that the hedges in the picture seem to have moved.

Billy writes about the episode he refers to as the “Funhouse”—a disastrous expedition clearing a house, during which many of his friends were killed and others gruesomely wounded. Before this mission, he found that he had lost the baby shoe he had been carrying as a lucky charm.

Bucky and Alice return with a truck for Billy to drive to Las Vegas. It is old, nondescript, and has a local license plate that won’t link him to Red Bluff (as his current vehicle does). Alice has also brought him a new, dark wig that is better quality from his blond one. He worries that it doesn’t match his Dalton Smith ID. They find images of Nick’s house and grounds, Promontory Point, on Google Earth and Zillow and use the pictures to plan Billy’s attack. He gets an idea that will require the new truck and the dark wig.

Bucky and Billy talk alone. Bucky warns Billy that Alice has become so attached to him that she would follow him anywhere. She has imprinted on him like a baby animal. Bucky says that she should return to him if Billy is killed. He says that she can use the identity of Elizabeth Anderson temporarily and then return to being Alice Maxwell.

After their fifth day at Bucky’s house, Billy and Alice leave for Las Vegas, their truck loaded with tools suggesting he is a migrant laborer.

When they stop for the night, Billy asks Alice to tell him her story, and she reluctantly tells him that her father owned a furniture store; he died when she was eight. Her mother was a bookkeeper, and her older sister, Gerry, a hairdresser. She is not close to either of them; she says that her mother never approves of her choices and didn’t want her to go to business school.

Billy tells Alice how he became a hired killer. Johnny Capps—a Marine who was badly injured in the Funhouse attack—became addicted to drugs. He was saved by a distant cousin—a mobster—who said he’d give him a job if he got sober. When a female family member was assaulted, Johnny remembered that Billy was a crack shot, and the family hired him to do his first job: killing a “bad guy” who beat women.

“Dalton Smith” and “Elizabeth Anderson” book into a hotel near Las Vegas. She helps him disguise himself as a Mexican gardener using fake tan. He leaves her at the hotel when he goes to confront Nick.

Billy drives to Nick’s house hoping to find him watching a Giants game on TV. When he arrives at Promontory Point, Billy drives through an open gate and past a broken security camera. He wonders if Nick has let his guard slip. A woman who Billy initially takes to be Mexican is gardening near the entrance and challenges him. He then sees that she is tanned but “Anglo” and gets the feeling that he recognizes her, but he can’t place her. She demands to know why he’s there on a Sunday. Billy claims to be deaf and mute, writing his answers on a piece of paper in Spanish. She directs him to a storage area for his delivery, but as he gets back in his truck, she stabs at him with her trowel. He remembers where he knows her from: She is Frank’s mother, Marge, whom he met at Nick’s dinner in Red Bluff and mistook for a member of serving staff. She has recognized him too, so he knocks her unconscious and takes her phone, weapon, and walkie-talkie before proceeding toward the house. On the way, he encounters another guard, Sal, whom he shoots dead.

Arriving at the main house, Billy finds the front door unlocked. Nick and his men are watching the game. Billy meets Frank in the kitchen and strikes him with his gun, causing serious injury to his head. Billy then goes into the TV room. Nick is sitting with Reggie and Mark Abromowitz, watching the game. There is another empty chair, meaning someone is unaccounted for. Billy orders Reggie and Mark to get down on the floor, their arms and legs splayed like they are making “snow angels.” Mark tells Billy that the missing man went to the bathroom. Reggie protests and Billy shoots him in the ankle. It is Dana Edison in the bathroom, and Billy shoots him dead through the door.

Billy interrogates Nick about the job. Nick tells him that Georgie is not dead but in Brazil at a weight-loss clinic. He needs a liver transplant and won’t be eligible unless he loses weight. He tells him that the client who ordered Allen’s assassination is Roger Klerke, an aging media mogul. Billy accepts this version of events and tells Nick to hide in his panic room for an hour, telling him that if he emerges sooner, he will be killed. He demands that Nick call off the manhunt for Billy and tell everyone (Klerke included) that Billy died in a shootout with Nick’s men. He tells Nick to be “honorable” and pay what is owed.

He leaves the house, passing Marge, who is distraught over the prone figure of her injured son. He takes Reggie’s SUV and leaves his own truck behind. He calls Alice to let her know he is alive.