Mike remembered everything so suddenly, that he found himself once again without words. The trauma of all that had happened slapped him in the face with a force that made his whole body shake, and it took him a while to recover.
Once he did, he realized there was still a day missing from his memory. A day he assumed he had spent unconscious. But that wasn't the main thing bothering him. If he had been in New York, how did he get all the way to Illinois?
He decided the only way to find answers was to go looking for them. The hotel he'd wound up in was his only lead.
Mike looked around for a cab, but realized once again that he wasn't in New York anymore. There weren't cabs waiting around to take people places. He took out his phone to see if he could call a cab service nearby or whatever the equivalent was, only to find that his phone was almost dead again. He decided to use what little battery he had to GPS the hotel. He memorized the map and started walking.
The hotel was farther away on foot than Mike had thought, and he was understandably exhausted from the events of the last two weeks. Mike checked his phone again. 1%, and Harvey still hadn't texted him back. Mike used the last percent to send him a message. BRB, it read. He hit send, and then his phone screen went black.
By the time he reached the hotel, he'd been walking for two hours, having taken a wrong turn and backtracking sometime around the hour mark. The sun was threatening to leave, and Mike was at the brink of exhaustion. In the time it had taken Mike to walk to the hotel, he had begun to put some of the pieces together. Matthew Gonzalez hadn't trusted that Mike would keep his mouth shut, so he did everything he could to discredit his story in case Mike decided to come forward. That was the reason he was in Illinois, and that was the reason he still had his phone. He knew for a fact he hadn't had it when he was being held in that crappy apartment. Matthew Gonzalez seemed to be making things up as he went, which is probably why he had gotten sued in the first place.
Mike had also realized that if Matthew hadn't threatened Rachel's life, there would have been nothing stopping him from telling Harvey, Rachel, and Donna everything. The things he'd said about Harvey were embarrassing, but he'd been drunk and Harvey could forgive that. Probably. Although he wasn't sure Harvey would forgive him for feeding Matthew Gonzalez information, even if it was unwillingly. Mike was certain this was all his fault. How could he have been so careless?
Regardless, Mike was on a mission and needed to prove if his theory was right. Mike had no ties in Illinois, so Matthew had to have put him here. If that was the case, there had to be witnesses.
Mike walked into the hotel with a purpose, and found the same guy at the front desk from earlier.
"Hi again," Mike said, "do you guys have security cameras?"
The man from earlier seemed surprised to see Mike again. Mike looked at his name tag and saw that it read 'Kevin'.
"We do," Kevin replied, "but I'm afraid we aren't really allowed to show them to you. Privacy reasons and all that."
Mike understood, but he was nonetheless disappointed.
"Do you have a manager I could speak to?" he asked, "I really need to figure out if I came in with anyone the other night."
"No," Kevin responded. But then his face lit up. "But Lisa's shift starts in fifteen minutes, and she should have been here around the time you came in. If you can stick around she might have some information for you."
Mike was relieved, and found a seat on a nearby sofa for the second time that day. He realized he liked Kevin. Not only was he helpful, but he didn't ask a whole lot of questions either.
A girl walked in rather hurriedly twenty minutes later, and immediately walked behind the front desk.
"Lisa?" Mike inquired.
Lisa's head jerked up suddenly and she looked kind of nervous.
"Yes?" She asked.
Mike explained his situation as vaguely as possible, and waited for her response. It didn't take her long to remember him.
"Oh yeah!" She said a little too excitedly, "you came in with a guy your age and some older dude. He mentioned something about a wild night gone wrong? You were knocked out cold. Anyway, they paid for your room and left."
"Can you tell me who paid for it?"
Lisa seemed to debate something for a minute or two before responding.
"Well, seeing as you came in with them, I don't see why not. It was the older gentleman. I don't recall his name, but I think the younger guy called him Dad once or twice."
"The younger guy...he was my height? Slicked back jet black hair, big brown eyes? Obnoxious red tie? Expensive suit?"
Lisa nodded slowly in response, and Mike started to connect the dots. It suddenly dawned on him that the Matthew Gonzalez from Harvey's case was Matthew Gonzalez Senior. He had a son. Mike deemed this visit a success, he'd gotten the information he needed. Now he just had to figure out what to do with it.
Mike walked outside only to find that the sun had gone down. He had to walk back to the hospital in the dark. Harvey's plane had to of landed by now. Judging by how dark it was, he assumed his plane had landed a while ago.
As he began the walk back, a car pulled up beside him, matching his pace. Mike's heart was going a million miles a minute. Matthew Gonzalez was back, and he was going to murder him. Mike debated running, and just as he decided to do exactly that, the window rolled down.
"Seriously, Mike?? You had one job to do, stay put. BRB?! What are we, in high school? Get in the damn car."
Mike had never been more happy to see Harvey in his life.