Right. Let's do this like they do it on the TV show, shall we?

Previously, on Underwood and Flinch.

He was pulled from sleep by an angry intermittent buzzing.

He opened his eyes.

The room was dark, but the light from his phone on the nightstand was glowing in his peripheral vision.

The LED on the bedside alarm clock told him it was just after 2 a.m.

The phone buzzed again demanding his attention. He reached out and

picked it up. Who the hell was calling him in the middle of the night? From the small screen, Lisa's face smiled at him, a picture he'd

taken not long before he'd left Brighton. Guilt flooded him. He closed his eyes and

fell back onto the pillows. The phone continued to vibrate insistently in his hand. He was amazed that she was too bothering to call him. He hadn't taken a call from her since he'd come out here. Once he'd

decided to resurrect Underwood, the idea of speaking to Lisa in person had felt wrong, as if opening a direct line to her might somehow contaminate her with

the evil of the world he now inhabited. Initially, his only replies to her voicemail

messages had been brief texts. Then, as things with Underwood had grown increasingly

dangerous, he'd continued to listen to them, but stopped replying. Eventually he'd just stopped playing the messages altogether. But now Underwood was dead. Lydia was dead and the evil of this world had gone with them.

He opened his eyes, seeing her again, smiling at him, and was just about to take the call

when he stopped.

What of himself? Wasn't he now part of the evil?

Hadn't he embraced his role as Underwood's guardian at the end?

Hadn't some part of him even relished it?

It was a question he considered for a long time lying in his cell in Malaga in between interrogations.

Maybe he deserved to be in jail for what he'd done, or if not in jail at least banished from the company of decent people like Lisa.

The phone continued to throb in his hand.

...