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The First Scarlet Door

Published by:

Hampton Creek Press

P.O. Box 177

New Castle, NH 03854

Worldwide Print, Sales, and Distribution by Simon & Schuster

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental unless noted otherwise.

Copyright © 2026 by Jonathan Dylan Barker

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Hampton Creek Press is a registered Trademark of Hampton Creek Publishing, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Barker Creative LLC.

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Cover Design by Domanza

Book design and formatting by Domanza

Author photograph by Bill Peterson of Peterson Gallery

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Also by J.D. Barker

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1999

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1999

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1999

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 1999

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​Also by J.D. Barker

Forsaken

She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

A Caller’s Game

Behind A Closed Door

Something I Keep Upstairs

4MK THRILLER SERIES

The Fourth Monkey

The Fifth To Die

The Sixth Wicked Child

The First Scarlet Door

WITH JAMES PATTERSON

The Coast to Coast Murders

The Noise

Death of the Black Widow

Confessions of the Dead

The Writer

WITH OTHERS

Dracul

Heavy Are The Stones

We Don’t Talk About Emma

The Lies We Tell

The Finer Things

The Quiet Neighbor

The Probability of Murder

​The present is just a pleasant interruption to the past.

—Konstantine, Something Corporate

They say the devil’s water, it ain’t so sweet

You don’t have to drink right now

But you can dip your feet

Every once in a little while.

—When We Were Young, The Killers

​1

​DIARY

I didn’t mean to kill.

Not the first time, anyway.

It got easier, of course.

With time.

With distance.

With . . . practice.

As all things do.

That’s not to say I enjoyed it. I’ve never enjoyed killing, not as one might take pleasure in the finer things of life—the touch of someone you love, a first lick of ice cream, a soft bed after a grueling day. The scent of a puppy. Who doesn’t like the smell of a puppy? No, killing has never been one of those things for me. It’s been a means to an end—an obstacle to overcome. A burden placed before me, then carried heavily upon my shoulders. Some might say it’s a skill; I suppose there’s some truth to that. Others might say killing can be an art. I wouldn’t disagree with them, either. Had you asked Mother or Father, they’d tell you killing was akin to survival, as it had been since the dawn of time.

I imagine all that can be a difficult pill to swallow, particularly since we’ve just met, and I’ll completely understand if you decide you want no part in what I’m about to tell you. There is no shame in closing the cover and walking away. God knows, had that been an option for me, I surely would have taken it. Unfortunately, you can’t close a book when the story is unfolding around you. Not when it’s your story. The only way forward is to turn the page.

My name is Anson Bishop, and this is how it all began.

Ø

​WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1999

​2

​ANSON

“What the hell are you doing, Bishop? You’d better not be writing all this down.”

I looked up to find Vincent Weidner glaring at me in the rearview mirror of our stolen Chevy, specks of dried blood dotting his face, lit only by the dashboard lights in the moonless night. Paul Upchurch was in the passenger seat, his face resting against the glass, snoring loudly. How he could sleep, I had no idea. My heart had been racing for the better part of the night with no intention of slowing down. The fact that I had a nasty graze on my leg from a stray bullet didn’t help; neither did my throbbing right arm. I broke it for the first time after an unfortunate run-in with a pedophile a few weeks ago, and I was fairly certain I’d broken it again a few hours earlier after fleeing an isolated farmhouse. We were maybe two hours outside Simpsonville, South Carolina, on our way back to that same farmhouse just outside Charleston.

“We’re in enough shit as is,” Vincent muttered. “The last thing we need is you documenting everything like some play-by-play for the cops.”

I looked down at the black and white composition book in my lap, the pen in my good hand. “I wouldn’t do that.”

We’d stolen the car from a dirty police detective shortly after we killed him, and I’d found a package of empty composition books in the pocket behind the driver’s seat. I imagined he used them to document his less dirty activity. His name had been Detective Stocks. We killed his partner, too, an equally dirty cop named Welderman. We’d killed them both at the farmhouse we were now returning to. The insanity of that screamed at me. “We shouldn’t go back there. That’s what they’d want us to do.”

Vincent grunted. “How the hell do you know what they want? You’re just a damn kid. You don’t know shit.”

I was fifteen, and tonight wasn’t the first time I’d killed someone. It wasn’t even the first time I had to kill a dirty cop. I knew plenty. “The bodies in that car, they were cheese.”

“Huh?”

“Bait.”

His head shook. “They weren’t bait—they were a message.”

“Bait.”

“You’re an idiot.”

We’d stolen the detective’s car. The girls and the Kid were supposed to be right behind us in Finicky’s car. They were supposed to head straight for the meet. That was the plan. We were supposed to be right behind them, after we picked up Weasel. None of that happened. The cops killed Weasel before we could get to him. The girls didn’t show. Instead, we found Finicky’s car at the meeting spot with the detectives’ bodies laid out inside and a note warning us off. No sign of the girls or the Kid.

“Someone went through the trouble to load Welderman and Stokes into Finicky’s car and drove them three hours to a place only Libby and I knew about. They did that to tell us two things: one, they have the girls, and two, if we want them back, we need to come and get them.”

Vincent rolled his eyes. “The note said, ‘You’ve got an hour to take out the trash before I call the locals. Forget the girls. Don’t follow,’ signed by some jack-off named Sam Porter. That’s a message telling us to go anywhere but Charleston and disappear, or they’ll finger us for the murders.”

“You called me a kid.”

“So what? Now your feelings are hurt? You are a fucking kid.”

“That’s how they see us, too. As kids,” I explained. “When you tell a kid to do something, what do they do?”

He was about to argue, then it clicked. “The opposite.”

I nodded. “They told us to stay away because they knew our reaction would be to do the opposite and come back.”

He shook his head again. “Why go through all that trouble? If they wanted us back, they could have grabbed us at the meeting spot.”

The meeting spot.

My old house in Simpsonville.

I’d given the address to Libby. Only Libby.

She wouldn’t give it up willingly.

What did they do to get it out of her?

I didn’t want to think about that.

Couldn’t.

I’d found Libby’s locket in the dirt right after we found that note. It was in my pocket, the warmth of it throbbing.

From the passenger seat, Paul snorted in his sleep, shifted position, and drifted off again, his breath leaving a foggy stain on the glass.

Vincent lowered his voice. “Listen, you saw all the pictures in the farmhouse, all the kids they ran before us. They’ve been trafficking people through that place for years. This isn’t some little one-off operation; it’s a machine. You, me, Paul, we’re damaged goods. I’m almost eighteen, too old for what they want. Your arm’s busted. They probably know you took a bullet; they don’t know how bad. And Paul, let’s be honest, he’s not much to look at. Not exactly going to fetch top dollar. They don’t give a shit about the three of us; they want us gone. They want the girls. Scratch that, they’ve got the girls. The Kid, too. They’re cutting their losses. They sent a message to scare the three of us off. A loud and clear message. We killed those cops. We surface and they’ll pin that on us.”

“Dirty cops.”

“Cops are cops. Nobody will care if they’re dirty. We can’t prove it anyway.” He let out a low sigh. “We should have burned the car.”

“That would have brought the fire department.”

I knew that because they came when my house burned. Not fast enough to save the house, but they came.

Vincent shrugged. “At least there’d be no evidence. Nothing useful, anyway. That’s probably why they didn’t just kill us at the meet. Killing us creates more questions. More problems. Force us to run, and they can throw all the blame our way. That’s the only reason we’re still breathing.”

Vincent had killed Welderman with a wrench, a nasty blow to the head. I’d stabbed Stocks in the neck. Nothing clean about either kill. Who knows what kind of trace we left behind? Looking down at my hand, I realized Stocks’s blood was still on me. On my hand, on my shirt. It dotted the cast on my right arm. If we got pulled over, there’d be no hiding what we’d done. Somebody else might get hurt.

“Maybe we should stop somewhere and get cleaned up,” I told him. “Change clothes.”

“I could eat,” Paul said in a voice halfway between awake and asleep.

“We’re not stopping.” In a softer voice, Vincent added, “I’m not giving up on Kristina. Every second counts.”

He was right, of course. There was no time. Stupid of me to suggest it.

We needed a plan. A new plan. Stopping meant procrastination. Procrastination was hiding from the inevitable.

I think a part of me was worried about what we would find when we got back to that farmhouse. Maybe I already knew what we’d find. I knew and wanted to put it off as long as possible.

While Vincent’s thoughts were of Kristina, I couldn’t lose Libby, and the idea of that was eating at me. Without her, nothing else mattered. I’d told her I loved her, and I did. A few months ago, I had no idea what that meant, but she brought it out of me. Knowing she was in danger, knowing what they planned to do to her . . . it hurt. It physically hurt. More than my broken arm or the bullet wound in my leg. It hurt deep in a way no painkiller could reach.

Libby.

Kristina.

Tegan.

Vincent.

Paul.

The Kid.

Me.

We were all in this together. Weasel died for us.

There was no running; there was only seeing it through. We’d get them all back. Then we’d end it. We’d end the people responsible. Oh, and if they hurt Libby . . .

That sounds dangerously like an emotional reaction, Champ, Father’s voice chimed in from somewhere in the back of my mind. Emotions are for the weaker lot. Not for you. Not for my boy.

“You loved Mother,” I silently mouthed.

That I did. Look where it got me.

“Anson’s right,” Paul mumbled, sitting up and wiping his eyes. “They’re not there. They’ve ghosted that place, never to return.”

Vincent frowned at him. “How much of all that did you hear? I thought you were asleep.”

“Enough to know you think you’re prettier than me, you self-centered prick.”

“We go to the farmhouse,” Vincent said flatly. “We’ll be careful about it. If they’re not there, maybe we can figure out where they took them.”

“And if we can’t?”

Vincent looked first at Paul, then back at me in the rearview mirror. “Then we figure out who the fuck Sam Porter is and beat it out of him.”

​3

​ANSON

The farmhouse was far from deserted. It was a living thing sitting in the dark pitch of night.

We’d parked nearly a mile away, hid the car behind the remains of two old grain silos, and walked the distance through the overgrown fields and adjoining woods. I use the term “walked” loosely. For me, it was more of a hobble as I favored my injured leg. Paul helped me as best he could while Vincent ran ahead to scout things out. We found him crouched behind a thicket on a hill, peering through the thorny branches at the house below. Light burned from every window. The structure glowed against the black, moonless night like some living, breathing thing peeking from the shadows, hungry with moist lips.

Vincent motioned for us to get down and we settled in beside him.

Two vans were parked out front.

Two white vans.

Vans I knew.

“Those are the same people who burned down my house,” I whispered.

“You sure?”

I nodded. “Last time, they said Talbot Enterprises on the side. Looks like they painted over the writing, but otherwise, I’m sure.”

“You know how many white vans there are in the world?” Paul leaned closer. “That could be anybody.”

Father had once told me, “Incorrect assumptions feed the roots of mistakes,” and I suppose he was right about that. There was no reason to believe the vans were the same. They probably weren’t, but they felt the same.

Vincent’s eyes remained fixed on the front of the farmhouse. “I’ve counted six people so far. They’re wearing these white plastic suits. Covered from head to toe.”

“Cleaners,” Paul said softly. “You see them in comics a lot. They might be destroying evidence. Wiping prints. Removing personal items. Sanitizing. Whatever they gotta do to distance themselves from this place. Like I said, they cut and run. The girls and the Kid are long gone.”

Vincent’s fingers played over the edges of the revolver we’d stolen. He’d found a box of ammunition in the glovebox of the detective’s car. “We don’t know that.”

“Any sign of Finicky?” I asked.

Ms. Finicky ran the place. Ms. Finicky’s House for Wayward Children—that’s how she billed it. A temporary foster home for those who couldn’t be placed anywhere else. She’d been the public face while those detectives and who knows who else ran kids through here like cattle.

“I’ve only seen the guys in white. If Finicky’s still here, she’s inside.” Vincent started to stand.

I grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”

“To get my girl back.”

“You just said there’s six of them inside, maybe more. We’ve got one gun with six shots. We gotta be smart about this.” Father would scold me for saying “gotta,” but it slipped out. “We need a plan.”

“You got one? Some better idea?” He glared at me and patted his pocket. “Because I’ve got ten more bullets in here. I’m thinking I’ll take out five of those fuckers and start breaking bones on whoever is left until they tell me where they took the girls. Sometimes simple is best, genius.”

“Guys . . .” Paul said softly.

Vincent’s face grew red. “Shut up. Stay out of this.”

“Guys, they’re leaving.”

We both snapped back to the farmhouse.

One van started up and began down the long gravel road as the doors on the other van slammed shut. A moment later, the second van’s motor turned over.

“Fuck!” Vincent tore through the thicket and started down the hill, half running, half sliding. He quickly vanished in the dark.

Paul only stared. “Do we go after him?”

He said something else, but I didn’t hear him; I was already working my way down the hill. The gunshot wound in my leg screamed, the muscles threatened to quit, but I pressed on anyway. I couldn’t let Vincent do this alone.

I was halfway down when the first shot rang out.

I could barely make out Vincent crouching at the base of the hill, but I saw the muzzle flash when he fired the second and third shots.

The taillights on the van blinked bright red, and for a second, I thought the back doors would open and they’d fire back. Instead, the driver floored the accelerator, spraying us both with gravel as the van fishtailed, caught, and disappeared down the road.

I tripped, nearly fell, and made it to the bottom of the hill as Vincent fired off three more shots. He had zero chance of hitting the van, not at this distance with a .38, but he kept pulling the trigger anyway, even when it was empty. A half dozen clicks sounded before he finally gave up and shouted, “Goddammit! Those fuckers! Those fucking assholes!”

I immediately looked back at the farmhouse, half expecting someone else to appear at the door and gun us down, but there was no one. Vincent’s cries vanished in the fields, eaten by the neglected corn and weeds until there was no sound but the crickets and our labored breathing.

I came up behind him and nearly put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Father had taught me that was the appropriate reaction. We’d even practiced, but I always had trouble touching other people, being touched. Always trouble with anyone but Libby. Instead, I said, “We’ll find them.”

Vincent let out a frustrated grunt and smashed the gun against the ground several times before finally calming down. Finally getting back to his feet.

“675BG3,” Paul muttered several times between winded breaths as he reached the bottom of the hill.

I turned and frowned at him. “Huh?”

“The tag number on the van.”

“Shit.” Vincent was staring at the ground. He crouched to get a better look at whatever caught his eye.

I drew closer. “What is it?”

Then I saw.

Someone had dragged the toe of their shoe through the dirt and gravel and made a circle. The Kid did that when he was nervous. Drew circles with his foot. Half the time, he didn’t realize he was even doing it. “There’s no way to know when—”

“You know when,” he fired back. “Right before they loaded them in one of those vans. Why else would he be standing out here?”

The color drained from Paul’s face. “He needed a doctor. You saw him. They beat the hell out of him. How was he even standing?”

The Kid had been carrying a note for us; money, too. All part of an elaborate escape plan that had fallen apart. They’d beaten him within an inch of his life and brought him back here. When we killed the detectives, the girls were supposed to take the Kid to a hospital, then meet us, but they never left this place. Someone had stopped them. We were all thinking the same thing.

“Finicky musta gotten loose,” Paul said.

Vincent’s eyes were on the circle. “Could have been Van Man.”

We didn’t know his name, only that he was another dirty cop. He drove the van they sometimes used to shuttle us around. Always wore the same navy blue trench coat. Sometimes he’d just be at the hotel, like some kind of middleman between the pedophiles and the detectives. Always around, though.

“There was that patrol car, too,” I thought aloud. “The one that showed up right before we killed Stocks.”

“Right before I killed Stocks,” Vincent corrected.

I let that go. “Van Man talked to him for maybe a minute, then he turned around and left.”

“Maybe that was the guy from the note, Sam Porter,” Paul added. “Him or Van Man might have come back, overpowered the girls, untied Finicky . . .”

“I gave Kristina Stocks’s gun,” Vincent said. “She wouldn’t let . . .”

“It was empty,” I reminded him. “We don’t know if they found more ammunition.”

“Yeah, well, I got some.” Plucking bullets from his shirt pocket, Vincent reloaded his .38 and stomped up the porch steps toward the front door.

​4

​ANSON

Father had taught me how to enter a room, how to secure a room. Always low. Always fast. Get through the door, round the corner, get down before anyone on the other side has a chance to react.

Vincent did none of those things.

With the revolver held high, he kicked the door hard enough to shatter part of the wood frame. The whole porch shook with it. Then he stood in the opening for a good twenty seconds, surveying the interior. Had anyone been on the other side with a weapon of their own, he’d surely have died at that moment, but nobody fired, and nobody shouted. There was nothing. Not a sound as Vincent went inside.

I followed cautiously behind him with Paul at the rear. The stillness of the interior slapped us both. Even the dust felt like it was no longer moving. Like it hung in the air, frozen, suspended, an image of an interior rather than a living, breathing space.

Only hours earlier, the room had been alive—the girls, the Kid, Finicky, both detectives, and Van Man, the tension thick enough to have weight, and now it was a tomb. There was no other way to describe it. Like lying in a casket and opening your eyes an hour after they’d piled the dirt up top.

All the furniture had been covered in sheets.

No doubt this was the work of the men in those white suits.

Vincent went to the couch and tore away its covering, revealing the spot where Welderman had bled out. They’d made some attempt to remove the stain, but it hadn’t come out; they’d only made it worse. It was as if they’d taken a wet sponge to it and only spread it out, then given up and covered it. Vincent only gave the dark blood a moment’s glance before bounding up the steps to the second floor while shouting Kristina’s name.

Paul and I looked at each other, knowing nobody would answer. We listened to Vincent’s heavy footsteps as he went room by room above. We listened as those footsteps slowed, as that same realization finally took hold in him, too. We were too late.

I quickly checked the parlor and found more of the same: white sheets covering the chairs, table, and the large china cabinet against the wall. In the kitchen, the refrigerator door was open, the plug had been pulled from the wall, and everything had been removed from the inside. All the food had been removed from the pantry, too.

None of this made sense to me. They hadn’t cleaned the house in the sense Paul had said—they may have wiped away prints, but aside from that, nothing had been done to conceal evidence. Instead, the farmhouse looked like someone had closed it off. Prepared it to sit empty for some time. The kind of thing you do when you go on an extended trip. It’s like they weren’t concerned with whatever evidence they might have left behind.

When I went back to the living room, Vincent was coming down the stairs. “All our clothes are gone; the girls’ stuff, too. Every dresser and closet is empty. Toothbrushes and all our personal things from the bathrooms—they took it all.” He gestured up at the pictures on the walls. “But they left all of these. I don’t get it.”

The photographs were of all the kids who had been trafficked through the farmhouse. More than I dared to count. Our pictures were up there too, along with many others, dating back years.

I looked back at the bloodstain on the couch. “They emptied the refrigerator, too. They’re more worried about food going bad than they are about getting caught. This all goes way beyond a few local cops.”

“Oh, shit.”

This came from Paul. He’d pulled the sheet from one of the armchairs—the yellow wingback Tegan liked to lounge in. She’d sometimes sit there for hours with a book or just listen to music, positioned sideways, her slender legs dangling over the side. The center cushion and the backrest were stained with blood. Like the couch, someone had tried to scrub it out and only made it worse.

Paul looked like he might get sick. He had a thing for Tegan.

“We don’t know it’s her blood,” I told him.

“We don’t know it’s not.”

Vincent rounded the chair and sat on the arm of the couch. He scratched his chin with the barrel of the .38. I could only imagine what Father would say if he saw someone do that. Father was a cautious man. Vincent must have realized the danger because he lowered the gun to his lap. “What was it Welderman had said? When he told Finicky nobody could leave the house?”

“‘I want your keys. Nobody is leaving this place until Guyon,’” I told him. “‘Understand? Not you, not them, not anyone.’”

I didn’t realize I had also imitated Welderman’s voice until I looked up, and both Paul and Vincent were staring at me. Father and I often did memory exercises. We’d sometimes visit open houses, and when we got back home, he’d quiz me on what was in a particular room at a certain house. We only had one television in the house, and one of his other favorite games was to watch three minutes of a show, then switch the channel, watch three minutes of another, and so on. After thirty minutes, he’d ask me to recite snippets of dialogue from one he’d pick at random. I could also do entire movies. Dirty Harry was one of my favorites. I could rattle off—

“Anson,” Vincent cut in. “Can you stay out of your own head long enough to have a conversation?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry.” Self-conscious now.

“What’s Guyon?” Paul asked. “Any idea?”

None of us answered. Nobody knew.

Favoring my injured leg, I went over to the rolltop desk against the far wall and removed the sheet. I was hoping to find a calendar; instead, I found more blood. There were streaks of it on the wood, all over some utility bills that had been left behind. Someone had done a number on the chair, too. It was splintered in pieces, the remains shoved under the kneehole.

“Jesus.” Paul had gone as white as the sheet in my hand. “They’re dead. They’re all dead. They’re not in that van, they’re—”

“They’re not dead,” Vincent said emphatically. “The girls are worth too much money to them. They won’t hurt them.”

“Unless they had to,” Paul replied softly.

“It could be the Kid.” I didn’t want to say it, but somebody needed to. “He was in bad shape. Maybe they decided—”

“It’s not the girls,” Vincent cut me off. “And it’s not from the Kid.”

Saying it doesn’t make it so, my mind muttered, but I wasn’t about to tell Vincent that. “It could be Finicky,” I suggested instead.

Vincent nodded at that, like I’d fed him something he’d been craving. “Yeah, Finicky. She was a liability.”

“Yeah, Finicky,” Paul repeated, although he didn’t sound as convinced.

“Guyon,” Vincent said again.

Paul turned away from all the blood and looked out the window. “What was the date on the calendar? That date you said was circled everywhere?”

“August 29,” I told him. “Finicky had it marked on the calendar in the kitchen. It was circled at Dr. Oglesby’s office, too.”

“That’s only four days,” Paul muttered.

“You think your shrink is in on all this?”

“I think they’re all in on it. Everyone we’ve dealt with since we got placed here.”

“So what’s Guyon?” Paul asked. “A place? A person?”

A heavy silence came after that. None of us had any idea.

It was Vincent who spoke next. “The cop that got shot in the alley back in Charleston. He was trying to catch Weasel with Van Man, right?”

Paul nodded. He’d been the only one who saw. “He came in from one end of the alley and Van Man came in from the other. They tried to box Weasel in. I don’t know who fired first, but he got hit, same as Weasel.”

“Did it kill him?”

Paul pursed his lips as he thought about that. “I don’t know. Not for sure. I only got a glimpse before I ran.”

I knew what Vincent was thinking. “They would have taken him to Roper Hospital. That’s closest.”

Vincent nodded. “Sam fucking Porter. Got to be.”

Turning back to the desk, I opened the phone book and found the number for Roper. I was surprised to find the old desk phone still had dial tone. I would have cut the line. I keyed in the number and it began to ring.

Vincent frowned. “What are you doing?”

I held up a finger and silenced him.

Crackle of static on the line.

“Roper Francis, how may I direct your call?”

I cleared my throat and did my best impersonation. “This is Detective Welderman, Charleston PD. I need Officer Sam Porter’s room. Now. Police emergency.”

“P-O-R-T-E-R?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking weird,” Paul whispered.

“He’s in 412. One moment while I transfer you.”

The line rang twice before a woman picked up. “Hello?”

I hung up.

Paul and Vincent were staring at me.

“Room 412,” I told them.

The look in Vincent’s eyes shifted and went cold as his gaze dropped back to the .38 in his hand. “You wanted to get cleaned up. We get cleaned up. Then we’re taking a ride to the hospital.”

Paul shuffled his feet. “Am I the only one who’s hungry?”

Neither of us answered him. Vincent was lost in his own thoughts, and I was watching Vincent. The anger brewed within him like a growing storm. Churning clouds, thick and black. He wasn’t holding the gun; he was squeezing it. Every inch of him was tense. The muscles in his arms were tight. I wanted to understand that feeling, but I knew I never would. Anger and hate were as distant to me as love and happiness. Yes, I loved Libby. I loved her in my own way, but was that the way other people loved? The way normal people experience that particular emotion? I knew it wasn’t, just as I knew what I felt inside for Sam Porter and the other dirty cops involved in all this was not the same as what Vincent and Paul felt. It didn’t fuel me. It didn’t drive me. I saw Sam Porter as the next logical step in finding the girls, but Vincent looked like he might tear the man apart limb by limb in the moments before remembering he was supposed to ask him a question.

I wanted to feel that. Just once.

When I found Libby, I’d want her to know I felt it.

From a cup of pens and pencils on the desk, I found a metal letter opener and carved three words into the wooden desktop.

Maybe it was time I followed Vincent’s lead.

Maybe if I did, I could feel what he felt.

Just once.

As two of the showers upstairs came to life, I brushed away the wood shavings and stared at my handiwork.

“Father, forgive me.”

Forgive us all for what we are about to do.

​5

​ANDY

When Andy opened his eyes, he was staring at a glass bowl.

At first, Andy thought the bowl was resting at a precarious angle, then he realized no, that was his head. He was sitting upright in a chair, but his head had dropped to his right shoulder. When he raised his head, the muscles and tendons ached. They were tight, unused, stiff.

There was a white rabbit inside the glass bowl.

The rabbit watched him with black, beady eyes. Its nose was in a constant state of twitch.

The rabbit didn’t want to be in the bowl—its worried movements showed that—but it had no way out. The bowl appeared to be meant for fish, but it was upside down, with the opening pressed to the tabletop, and the rabbit didn’t possess the strength to set it right.

The room in which Andy sat held little light, just enough to give outlines to the objects around him. More of a crude children’s drawing of a room than a living, breathing space. Grays and blacks smothered whatever color existed beneath.

Andy’s arms were tied to the armrests of the chair with thick, white rope, his legs affixed to the chair legs. Another rope encircled his chest, fastening him to the high back. Aside from raising his head or twisting it from side to side, he could not move. Something was taped to his right index finger. A small plastic box. A cord trailed from the device down the length of the chair and vanished. There was something wrapped around his upper right arm, too. Every few minutes it tightened, then released with a soft rush of air.

“Hello?”

The word came out rough, full of sand and gravel.

Andy’s throat had never been so dry.

There was a glass of water next to the bowl containing the rabbit, but Andy couldn’t reach it any more than he could see what was behind him, and he knew something was—he could hear it breathing.

​6

​ANSON

The sun was coming up when we pulled into the parking lot of Roper Hospital. Vincent found a space near the emergency entrance, about forty feet from the wheelchair ramp leading up on the left side. Unlike the hospital’s main entrance, which was quiet, the emergency entrance was bustling with people. Two ambulances were in the drive, along with half a dozen staff members in scrubs and white coats. As we walked calmly past, I caught bits of the clipped conversations. “Head trauma, not wearing a seatbelt! Ruptured spleen! Nonresponsive! BP is—” There must have been some kind of car accident. A woman, maybe twenty at most.

Walking with a limp and cradling the cast around my broken arm, with Vincent and Paul on either side of me, we fit right in. Nobody gave us so much as a glance. We stepped past the chaos outside and through the automatic doors to the waiting area of the ER. A large check-in desk flanked the wall opposite us. It was designed to accommodate four staffers, but at this early hour, there was only one—a large black woman with her hair pulled back in a bob, wearing purple scrubs. She looked as if she’d been working all night, taking silent inventory of the injured standing in line to talk to her with the indifference of someone nearing the end of their shift. She held a phone between her cocked head and shoulder as she typed, while simultaneously speaking to the elderly man currently on deck. He was pressing a blood-soaked towel to the side of his head.

Vincent gave me a soft nudge and nodded toward three cops huddled around a vending machine in the far corner. Agitated. Arguing about something. I didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t mean much. We didn’t know who was involved in all this and had to assume the dirty cops had shared our names with other dirty cops—maybe even our pictures. Van Man and Sam Porter might have put out arrest warrants, for all we knew. I was thinking about all this when I realized Paul was gone.

A sharp scream came from behind us, and all heads turned.

A girl on a gurney.

Fifteen. Sixteen.

Curly blond hair. Long. Partially braided, the rest wild. She wore a short jean skirt and a black tank top, both filthy. No shoes.

Strapped down.

Back arched as her entire body thrashed.

Two more cops.

Three paramedics—one holding an IV bag in an outstretched arm above her head, another attempting to inject her with something, the third trying to keep the gurney upright with the two cops as she thrashed and jerked, sucked in a breath, and screamed again.

“Holy shit, that’s Twill,” Vincent said in a voice barely above a whisper.

He started toward her and I grabbed his arm. “We can’t—”

“The hell we can’t.”

Even as he said it, I saw his eyes jump from the two cops near her to the other three back by the vending machine. He shook my arm away but otherwise remained still. No doubt he was thinking about the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans.

“Who is she?”

“Twill was at Finicky’s when I got there. She ran off a few days later; been planning it for weeks. Welderman said they found her in Woodland sucking dick for bus fare. Then they told us she was dead. Buried out in the field somewhere.”

I closed my eyes for a second and tried to visualize the photographs on the wall by the stairs. It took me a moment, but I found her. “Third row, fourth from the left up at the top.”

“Huh?”

“Her . . . never mind.” There was no reason to give Vincent yet another reason to think me odd. “Nobody ever mentioned her. I didn’t know anyone tried running away before us.”

“Oh, they tried, but nobody ever made it.”

That clearly wasn’t true. If they’d lied about this girl being dead, maybe they lied about others, too. Easier to keep everyone in line when they think there’s no way out. We’d gotten out. Sort of.

She let out another scream and jerked at her bindings with enough force to cause the gurney to jump, even with all the hands attempting to hold it down.

The three cops at the vending machine ran over to help.

Twill disappeared behind a wall of bodies.

That’s when I spotted Paul. He was standing near an open door to the right of the check-in desk with an empty wheelchair. He silently mouthed, “This way,” and motioned at the hallway behind him with a bob of his head.

If the woman behind the desk noticed Vincent and I step out of line, she said nothing. The cops were too busy to notice much of anything.

When we reached the door, Paul casually turned the wheelchair around and started down the hallway. He ducked through another door on the left labeled “Radiology Prep.” Inside, he thumbed the deadbolt, locking the door, and led us to an open cabinet filled with scrubs, masks, gloves, and booties with elastic bands. There were lockers, too. Each numbered with keys. Reaching into the cabinet, he pulled out a set of green scrubs and tossed them to Vincent. He handed me a white gown with blue stripes—the kind you tie behind your neck and leave open in the back. “Suit up, gentlemen.”

“Twill’s out there.”

Vincent’s words stopped Paul cold. “As in the Ghost of Twill?”

“As in Twill’s not really dead. They just brought her into the ER tied to a gurney. She’s completely out of it. I’m guessing she’s on something.”

Paul’s mouth fell open and his gaze dropped to the floor. “Twill doesn’t do drugs.”

“It’s been months. We don’t know where she’s been or what she’s been doing.”

Paul once told m he’d lived on the streets. I could see his mind churning, working out the possibilities. When he looked back up, there was a determination in his eyes. “We have to help her.”

“She’s surrounded by cops,” I quickly told them both. “And she’s not the reason we’re here.”

“She’s a bitch, but she’s still one of us,” Vincent fired back. “She’s exactly the reason we’re here. Same as the girls and the Kid. No way we’re leaving her behind.” He started changing out of his clothes and glanced back at Paul. “How’d you even know this was here?”

Paul was clearly thinking about the girl. It took him a moment to snap back. “If you ask Ronald and Gert DeSilva, my foster parents from two years ago, they’d tell you I had a habit of running into things like doors and tables and sometimes Ronald’s belt. I spent a lot of time in this hospital.” He held up his left hand, his pinkie jutting out at a slightly off angle. “When I broke one of my prized digits, I needed X-rays. They make you change in this room. Clothes go in the lockers, then they take you down the hall to dose you with cancer rays.” He nodded at the cast on my arm. “I figured we put the gimp in a wheelchair and nobody will give us a second look.”

Vincent finished with the scrubs and pulled a matching mask off the shelf. “I’m unlikely to ever heap praise on you, but the fact that I’m not actively abusing you means I approve.”

“Understood.”

I made no move to change clothes, and when Vincent noticed, he frowned at me. “Now what?”

I held up the gown. “What if we need to get out of here fast? How far are we going to get dressed in this stuff?”

Vincent considered this, then turned his glare back to Paul. “The gimp’s got a point.”

Paul wasn’t about to be deterred. He rummaged through several cabinets and found what looked like a laundry sack with a drawstring at the top. “We put our clothes in here and tie it to the chair. If we need to change back, we can.”

Reluctantly, I took Libby’s locket from my pocket and slipped it around my neck before changing into the gown. My thoughts bounced from the scene in the ER to whatever we’d find on the fourth floor. Father once told me situations like this were much like chess; it was always best to anticipate what would come next and what would happen after that. Always try to stay four or five moves ahead of your opponent.

I had to factor in what Vincent might do. What Paul might do. The girl would be trouble. I couldn’t hear her screaming anymore, but I knew she was. I couldn’t help but wonder who else would be screaming by the end of the hour.

​7

​ANSON

Nobody stopped us in the hallway.

Nobody stopped us at the elevator.

We rode to the fourth floor with two nurses who rattled on as if we weren’t there about some cardiologist they called McGrabby.

I was in the wheelchair with a blanket draped over my lap, holding Vincent’s .38. I didn’t want the gun—Father had preferred knives to guns and instilled those values in me—but Vincent had no pockets, and he felt if he put the gun in the bag with our clothes, he wouldn’t find it if or when we needed it. I suppose there was some truth to that, but I didn’t like it. The metal was cold, slick with sweat from my palms. My finger played over the trigger with a mind of its own, wanting to fire the weapon if only to ensure the gun actually worked. A knife always worked.

It was when the doors opened on the fourth floor that the three of us realized we had a serious problem.

The hallway was filled with cops.

Uniformed officers.

Detectives.

Others who were probably civilians but had a smell about them. A cop stink. No doubt staffers from one or more local precincts.

One of the nurses said to the other, “You’d think instead of standing around, all these people would be out looking for whoever shot him.”

“You’d think,” the other replied as they both exited the elevator and vanished in the crowd.

When the doors started to close, I stuck my foot out and stopped them. “Are we going to do this?”

“Maybe we need a new plan,” Paul said softly.

“Fuck it,” Vincent grunted from behind his mask and pushed my chair out into the crowd.

My hand tightened around the gun, and that time, I nearly did pull the trigger, which would have landed a bullet in my already injured leg. I twisted the barrel around, pointing it straight ahead, and moved my finger to the guard. I held it there even though it wanted to go back.

“Which way?” I heard Paul say, although it was pretty obvious to me, as the crowd of cops thickened up ahead. There were several gray-haired men who had that I’m in charge look about them. I had no doubt room 412 was somewhere in the middle of all that. Vincent must have understood that too because he didn’t pause, didn’t slow down; he kept pushing the chair forward as if we had a destination and all these people were just in the way. Just another day at the busy hospital.

When we passed the door to 408, he slowed, but only a little; at 410, he didn’t have a choice. The people standing around there, the I’m in charge folks, didn’t move for us. They were the kind of people who expected others to walk around them.

When we came upon room 412, we moved at a crawl. I counted thirteen guns strapped to the hips of the various people surrounding us, and that didn’t include the detectives who kept their weapons hidden beneath their jackets or the legs of their pants. We were deep in enemy territory, and it would only take one person to recognize us. This was not something we’d get out of. If I pulled the trigger, if Vincent made a grab for the gun and tried to shoot some path out, the three of us would be dead in seconds. I gripped the gun tighter.

The door to 412 was open. Vincent made no effort to stop, but we were moving so slowly that it didn’t matter. All three of us got a good look. I pulled on everything Father had taught me—I took a mental snapshot. Not just a visual, but the smells, the sounds, every beep, whir, and tick of the machinery inside.

There were three people in the room.

The man who had to be Sam Porter was in the bed, surrounded by screens and various devices. His head was heavily bandaged. A plastic mask over his face. A thick tube ran from the mask to a machine behind him that gently rose and fell with a soft hum, some kind of ventilator. Three separate IV bags—two converging at his wrist, the other in a vein at his neck. His body was wrapped in thick blankets like some man-made cocoon. He wasn’t conscious; there was no doubt about that. Although only one eye was visible, it was clearly closed. Other than the steady rise and fall of his chest with that machine, there was no movement. If someone told me Sam Porter had died ten minutes ago, I would have believed them.

A nurse hovered over him, and something seemed peculiar about that. There was something odd in her eyes. With that brief glimpse, I got the impression she wasn’t just caring for him; she cared for him. When she checked his pulse, her hand rested on his just a little longer than necessary, lost in the tangle of tubes and wires.

I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew what kind of monster he was. What he did when he wasn’t in that bed beneath her hand. Had anyone told her Weasel was dead because of him? Would she care?

If I harbored any doubt about his involvement, it vanished when I saw Van Man standing in the far corner of the room, his back to everyone, staring out the window at God only knew what. He wasn’t wearing his trench coat; I saw that draped over the back of a chair. He did have a gun, though, in a holster attached to his hip right next to a badge that caught the light just so.

I saw all of this in the handful of seconds it took for Vincent to maneuver the wheelchair past the door and through the crowd. It was only when we reached the far side of the hallway that he leaned down and whispered, “That fuck isn’t telling us shit about Guyon.”

Paul leaned in too. “You saw Van Man, right?”

And we all had.

But there was no getting to him right now.

As I mentally replayed all the faces I saw in that hallway, I couldn’t help but wonder which others were bad. Who would Van Man turn to with Porter, Stocks, and Welderman down? Like Sam Porter’s ventilator, some machines didn’t stop running; defective parts were simply replaced.

​8

​ANSON

“​We should pull the damn plug,” Vincent spat out in an angry whisper. “Piss in his goddamn IV bag.”

We were in a bathroom we found at the end of the long hallway. At least Vincent had the good sense to check each stall to ensure we were alone before he started ranting. Now he was pacing back and forth.

Paul looked up at him and nodded slowly. “We should carve Weasel’s name in his chest. Send a message. The girls’ names, too. The Kid.”

“We should go,” I told them both. “There’s no way we’re getting in that room. Not today, anyway. Standing around here is suicide.”

Vincent ignored me. “I bet he can’t scream with that tube down his throat. That means we could kill him slow.”

Paul’s eyes narrowed to devilish slits. “Pour drain cleaner down the tube. Watch it eat him from the inside out.”

You need to leave them both, Father’s voice whispered in my head. Those two will get you killed.

He wasn’t wrong, but I needed them. With a broken arm and my hurt leg, I was in no condition to find Libby on my own.

You need to leave her, too. Forget her, Champ. Forget the whole lot of them. This mess you’re getting yourself into . . . I taught you better. Mother, too. She’d be so disappointed if she saw you now, pining after some girl.

I shut him out. It wasn’t easy—Father could be insistent—but I did. I shut him right out and cleared my throat, did it defiantly. Take that, Father. “All those people can’t stay forever,” I told Vincent and Paul. “We’re better off coming back in a few days when things settle down. Catch him when his room is empty. He’s not even awake right now. He can’t help us.”

Vincent blew out a frustrated breath. “Yeah, tell that to the girls and the Kid. ‘Sit tight a few days. We’ll get to you when we get to you. It’s all good.’ Think they’d be okay with that?”

There was another angle. Another way. “Van Man is here.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“That means his van is here too. Outside somewhere.”

Vincent stopped pacing as that sank in. He turned to me slowly. “You think the girls and the Kid are in his van?”

I thought about that for a second and shook my head. “No. He wouldn’t risk that. I think he took them somewhere before coming here, but maybe he left something in the van that will help us find them. Receipts. Notes. Who knows? Maybe there’s nothing, but this might be our only chance to check.”

“We could hide in the back,” Paul offered, his wheels turning now too. “Wait for Van Man to come out. We’ve got a gun. We make him tell us where they are.”

I squeezed the gun. Still in my hand under the blanket.

Not a bad plan. Not the best, but not a bad one either.

While Welderman and Stocks had been tasked with transporting us from Finicky’s to the hotel where most of our encounters took place, Van Man had transported the men and women who paid to be with us. I wanted him dead, we all did, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he kept records of those people. Because they deserved to die as much as he did. Die horribly.

“Better idea,” Vincent said. “We could get his name and address from the registration. A house is a lot more private than a parking lot. We could take our time with him if we get him alone someplace like that.”

I shook my head. “Van’s better. We get him in the van and take him someplace secluded. His house makes no sense. What if he has a family?”

“Fuck his family.”

I didn’t get the chance to respond to that.

A shrill alarm went off, followed by a robotic female voice. “Lockdown initiated. Please remain where you are. Please remain calm. This is not a drill.”

The message repeated three times. When it finally ended, a red light was flashing above the door. The alarm continued but dropped in volume.

All three of us looked to the door. My grip tightened on the gun. “Is that for us?”

“No.” Vincent’s lips slipped into a thin line. “I bet it’s Twill.”

​9

​ANDY

“​I know you’re back there.”

Andy wanted the words to come out tough, unfazed by his situation, which was clearly dire, but instead, they came out an octave too high. Some voice he possessed back when he was a child, nothing like his fifteen-year-old voice. Nothing like the voice he’d honed after two years of living on the streets.

Oddly, he’d been in worse situations. There was that guy in Poughkeepsie. The one who hit him in the head with a hammer moments after he climbed into the guy’s car, a rusty Volkswagen littered with take-out trash and empty soda cans. That man had handcuffed him while he was unconscious, wrestled him into the cluttered back seat of the car, and done things to Andy he would never speak of aloud. Two and a half hours of hell in an alley behind a shuttered Texaco station under a sodium streetlight that made this godawful hum the entire time. When he’d finished, the man had simply pushed Andy from the car and driven off. While it was a rough night, listening to that hum while every inch of his body ached, it was arguably better than being dead. And on that particular night, Andy was certain that was how things would end. The man had even slipped an extra two hundred in the pocket of Andy’s jeans. He’d found it the following morning when he located his jeans in a rumpled heap next to the station’s abandoned trash cans.

Andy was a survivor.

He’d always been a survivor.

He wasn’t about to allow the twisted kink of some John to rattle him. At least this one hadn’t undressed him. Best he could tell, not a button had been touched. He was still wearing his shoes.

“You drugged me,” Andy managed. His tongue felt thick. “That wasn’t part of the deal.” He jerked up on the ropes securing his arms. “Neither is this. Either you untie me and let me go, or we need to renegotiate my fee.”

He did the math in his head.

Fifty for a blow job was one thing; that was over in five minutes. How long had he been here? An hour? Two? He didn’t know where here even was, so there was transport time. The time needed to get back. The time between for this guy to get his rocks off. “I usually charge $500 for the night.” He threw the number out there even though it was baseless. He’d never spent the full night with a John and had no idea what he should charge. $500 seemed right, though. “I need the cash upfront, or whatever this is needs to end.”

Behind him came the soft shuffle of feet.

Had the man stepped closer or stepped back? Andy wasn’t sure. He’d stopped moving, but he could still hear him breathing. Sounded closer.

“I could do $450,” Andy told him when the silence became unbearable. “But no lower than that, and only if you tell me what you have in mind.”

Behind him, a throat cleared. “The specimen has been responsive for twelve minutes and appears to be in a growing state of agitation.”

This was followed by a soft click. More shuffling.

Under the bowl on the table at his side, the rabbit’s head jerked up at the sound of the new voice. Its nose twitched. It went back to sniffing the glass.

Had it grown more frantic?

No.

That was Andy’s imagination.

It was a damn rabbit.

“Heart rate is eighty-nine. BP is 137 over 80; high for a specimen of this age and physical condition. This may be due to poor diet or subpar living conditions. Maybe a combination of both.”

The man spoke in this low, calm tone. Under different circumstances, Andy would consider it soothing. Right now, it was anything but. Goosebumps jumped from Andy’s skin at the sound of it. He felt as if a dead hand had found his spine and ran an index finger up the length of it.

“Heart rate is now ninety-three.”

Another soft click.

“Are we playing doctor now? Is that it? You gonna take my temperature, too? Play hide the thermometer?” Andy let out a nervous chuckle at this, meant to emphasize his joke, but it only came out sounding desperate.

“I have no interest in your temperature at this time.”

Was the temperature in the room rising?

A drip of sweat fell from Andy’s brow and trickled its way down the side of his face to the corner of his mouth. He licked it—more of an involuntary thing than a conscious thought—and his tongue came away salty. His thirst only increased. “Listen, man, I don’t know what this is, but you’ve got the wrong guy. If you want someone to role-play, I can give you a few names, but it’s never been my thing. I won’t be any good at it. I’d hate to disappoint you. You seem like the kind of guy who knows what he wants.”

The cuff on Andy’s arm grew tight again, held for a moment, then released with a low rush of air.

“BP is 141 over 83. Heart rate is ninety-three. Both rising.”

Andy jerked hard on the ropes. “Come on, man! Cut the shit!”

The overhead lights switched on. Fluorescents. The old tube kind typically found in offices and department stores. Andy pinched his eyes shut against the sudden onslaught of harsh light, then eased them open slowly. They filled with tears. He wanted to wipe them away, but couldn’t. The lights gave off a soft buzz not unlike the streetlamp in Poughkeepsie, and Andy tried not to think about that.

Through his moist vision, he got a better look at the room.

The walls were covered in light green patterned wallpaper with thin vertical stripes of yellow spaced every few inches. Several prints hung in glossy black frames. Landscapes. Mountains. Lakes. Nothing special. There were two windows, both with blinds drawn. No light inched around the edges, none at all, and as Andy narrowed his gaze, focused, he realized this wasn’t because it was dark outside—it was because the glass behind the blinds had been painted black. A brown leather couch filled one wall. A large wooden desk backed against another. Directly across from the chair in which Andy was tied was another chair, this one plush leather. The table with the rabbit sat between them, slightly to the side.

With the lights, the rabbit had taken the opportunity to look around too, as if, like Andy, it was seeing this space for the first time. Contemplating the unfortunate events that brought it here.

A throat cleared.

Footsteps.

Moving away, then drawing closer.

A hand reached around from behind Andy and set a battery-powered drill on the table next to the bowl with the rabbit. A yellow and black DeWalt with a drill bit maybe a quarter inch wide and three inches long. It shimmered under the overhead lights.

The rabbit inched to the opposite side of its bowl. It didn’t like the drill. Andy didn’t either.

“What the hell is that for?”

He saw him then, the John. Blond hair. Oily, slicked back, making his forehead appear much larger than it probably was. He wore an argyle sweater and tan pants. Brown loafers. As he rounded the table and settled into the plush leather chair, he retrieved a notepad and pen from the desk and rested them on his knee. He removed a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, wiped the lenses with the hem of his sweater, and placed them on the bridge of his nose. Then he produced a microcassette recorder, pressed record, and set that on the table next to the drill.

He stared at Andy for a long time, gently tapping the pen against the corner of the notepad. When he finally spoke, there was a calmness to his voice as unsettling as salt near an open wound. “Shall we begin?”

​10

​ANSON

“​Security personnel, code yellow,” the robotic voice said. “Code yellow, level one.”

Vincent got behind my wheelchair and quickly spun me around. “Get the door,” he told Paul.

“Where are we going?”

“You heard her—level one.”

They will get you killed, Father muttered again from his corner of my head.

The atmosphere in the hallway had changed. All the cops standing around outside room 412 no longer appeared lost or morose, but instead, they’d come alive with purpose. Several members of hospital security had appeared; they were talking to the gray-haired men, who were barking orders to the detectives and uniforms. The door to 412 had been closed, two uniformed cops standing guard. As we pushed through the crowd, I picked up snippets.

“Possibly armed.”

“Agitated state.”

“Dangerous.”

“Three known dead.”

“Four known dead.”

“No, two dead.”

“I heard five.”

They were attempting some coordinated search. They’d start on the third and fourth floors and work their way down while hospital security started at ground level and worked up. Catch—

“Her.”

“Him.”

“Them.”

—in the middle.

I only caught snippets, but it was enough.

The gun felt hot now.

Excited.

The elevator doors were open. It was crowded with cops and hospital personnel, but Vincent pushed us in anyway.

“Go to two,” I told him.

I wanted to add, she won’t be on one anymore, but the look in his eye told me he already knew that because he knew her. I only knew that I wouldn’t be on the first floor anymore, and I was following my gut.

When the elevator doors opened on three, all the cops got out, leaving us with two male nurses, a woman whose name tag said “Sabrina, Financial Services,” and a janitor with a wheeled laundry bin. One of the nurses reached by me and pressed the button for the first floor several times. Someone else said, “What the fuck is going on?”

Sabrina from Financial Services quickly told them, “An addict down in the ER got ahold of a scalpel, stabbed the attending, and injured the officers who brought her in before running off. Last I heard, she was spotted near pediatrics, but she could be anywhere.”

The nurse who had pushed the elevator button didn’t seem shocked by this at all. “Just another day in paradise. I need to hit the bank, and now I’m stuck here.”

The other nurse asked, “Who was attending?”

“Dr. Applebaum.”

“Is she . . . ?”

“Superficial. She’ll be fine. She did a number on the cops, though. I heard one was on his way to surgery.”

“Twill,” Vincent said in a low voice.

The woman looked over at him. “Excuse me?”

Vincent just shook his head.

When the doors opened on two, he quickly wheeled my chair out.

As they closed behind us, Paul held up a security swipe card on a retractable belt clip, a sheepish grin on his face. “Lifted it from Chatty Kathy. Figured we might need one.”

Vincent did his best to look unimpressed.

I quickly took in our surroundings. We were in a large lobby facing a rounded nurses’ station with various hallways branching off from the center, like spokes on a large wheel. Many of the doors were closed. Hospital personnel and security bustled about quickly. Aside from a few hurried glances, nobody paid us much mind.

Vincent leaned down. “Okay, hotshot. You said two. Now what? Where is she?”

I had no idea.

Paul looked around nervously. “This is wrong. I think she’d head for the roof.”

“She’d be cornered on the roof.”

“Basement, then.”

I shook my head. “She’d want people. But somewhere she could blend.”

Vincent let out a soft laugh. “Twill wouldn’t know how to blend.”

“Then maybe disappear and wait them out. They can’t keep the doors locked forever. Not in a place like this. Find someplace quiet. Sit tight. Make them think you’d already gotten out. That’s what I would do.”

Atta, boy, Champ, Father beamed. Puzzle it—

“Shut up,” I grunted.

Vincent gave me an odd look but said nothing. Instead, he wheeled me a few feet deeper into the lobby, found a directory on the wall, and studied the layout. “Okay, so wait them out where?”

She’d get off the first floor as fast as possible. Had to take the stairs. Too easy to get caught in an elevator. Wouldn’t want to stay on the stairs too long; that was dangerous too, so second floor. This floor. Crowded, though; she wouldn’t risk this lobby. Too many people. She’d find someplace close to the stairs. Someplace she could get to without running into any—

Then I saw it.

I pointed at the top left corner of the directory, directly across from the far stairwell. “The morgue.”

“Oh, hell no,” Paul breathed.

They’d be watching the exits, not someplace like that. “That’s where I’d go.”

Vincent was nodding his head. “That’s totally a Twill move, too.”

“How about the cafeteria?” Paul suggested. “That’s where I’d go. Food. Drink. Comfortable chairs. That seems like a perfectly sensible place to wait this out. I vote we check there.”

Vincent snatched the swipe card from his hand. “Nope. Morgue.”

Before Paul could object again, he spun my chair around, circled the large desk until he found the correct hallway, then wheeled me off at a quick pace. Hospital personnel buzzed around, all on edge, but lost in their own jobs—so much so that nobody seemed to notice the three of us. That didn’t keep my heart from drumming against my ribcage. Nor did it prevent Paul’s head from swiveling around like a broken bobble. Vincent kept wiping the sweat from his palms on the legs of his stolen scrubs. We were on borrowed time. Every second we spent in this hospital.

When we reached a double security door marked “Authorized Personnel Only,” Vincent ran our stolen card through the machine. Nothing happened.

“Fuck.”

He swiped again.

Still nothing.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Paul pointed out. “Flip it around.”

The magnetic strip was on the other side.

Swearing softly, Vincent ran it again.

A green light flashed, soft buzz, and the double doors swung open automatically.

A rush of cold air came out, followed by the thick scent of industrial cleaners.

Paul swallowed. “Guys, I’m not so sure about this.”

“You were bound to end up here eventually,” Vincent told him. “Why not today?”

As we stepped in, the doors closed behind us.

Sealed us in.

Vincent thumbed the deadbolt, locking the door from our side.

Overhead lights on motion sensors buzzed to life.

That told me we were either alone, or if someone was in the room, they hadn’t moved in a while. I didn’t see anyone. No coffee cups or phones lying around to indicate someone was working in the space and would return.

There were six stainless steel tables in the center of the room, flanked by rolling tables with instruments carefully laid out and organized in prep for the next procedure. None of us were under any illusion as to what that procedure would be. I couldn’t help but look at the drains under each of those tables. The channels in the tables that ran to those drains. Clean and tidy. Then I thought of the basement of my house in Simpsonville. I thought of the bloodstain on the concrete left by Mr. Carter, nowhere near our basement drain. Some would see that as a design flaw. I certainly did.

Three of the morgue walls were white tile, same as the floor, scrubbed spotless. There were counters, cabinets, and several doors; most likely storage closets. The fourth wall was lined with stainless steel lockers. Six across, three high. Each about two feet tall, and maybe two and a half feet wide. Stickers on each read, “Please don’t open Morgue Drawers.” Under seven of those stickers were labels with names and numbers written in neat black Sharpie.

Vincent thrust his hand out. “Give me the gun.”

I rose from the wheelchair and handed it to him.

Both of us took a step closer to those lockers.

Paul cleared his throat. “Maybe I should just keep an eye on the door.”

“Chickenshit,” Vincent muttered.

“I’m willing to admit that.”

“The door’s locked.” I pointed at the closets and storage cabinets on the opposite wall. “How about you check those?”

He quickly nodded, went to the cabinets, and began systematically running through each.

Vincent closed the distance to the drawers. “Twill, you in there? It’s me, Vincent!”

He didn’t quite shout this, but it was loud enough to echo off the harsh surfaces in the otherwise silent space. When he drew in a breath and looked like he’d do it again, I pointed at all the stainless steel. “Those drawers are airtight. If that’s where she is, she can’t hear you.”

The dead had never scared me, only the living, but somehow knowing there were bodies on the other side of some of those doors got my heart pounding again. So did the items I found on the trays near the autopsy tables. There was a wide assortment of saws, blades, scalpels, drills, retractors, and something that looked like a small battery-powered pump with a tube attached to the end. I imagined that was for removing fluids from the body cavity, but I couldn’t be sure. I picked up one of the scalpels and studied it in the light. If it were possible for a piece of steel to look sharp, it certainly did. Far sharper than my Ranger buck knife. Far sharper than anything Mother or Father owned or used. I would have preferred something with a little more weight, some heft to it, but it would do.

Scalpel in hand, I went back to the wall of drawers and gave Vincent a soft nod.

Vincent reached for the handle of the first drawer, quietly counted down from three, and pulled it open, revealing a pair of hairy feet sticking out from under a sheet. There was a tag on the toe, and the skin was this bluish-gray color. He quickly shut the door. “That is certainly not her.”

The next three were empty.

The fourth held an elderly woman.

Two more empty.

The body in the next drawer was—

Vincent gasped. “Holy shit.”

The body was covered in a sheet similar to the others, but the sheet was riddled with fresh red stains, at least a dozen of them. Bright red blooms in the cloth. Most were around the chest area, but at least one was at the neck, and two smaller stains dotted the legs. There was another on the right arm. Unlike the other bodies, the feet weren’t exposed, nor was the head. The sheet covered all. When Vincent didn’t reach for it, I did. I slowly tugged it down.

A man.

Forties.

He was fully dressed.

The name tag pinned to his white lab coat read, “Steve Philmore, M.D.”

I was reading it when his eyes snapped open and he let out a gurgled cough.

​11

​ANSON

“​Oh, Jesus!” Vincent jumped back.

The man’s body stiffened. His back arched. Blood and spittle foamed from his lips.

I raised the scalpel more on instinct than anything else, was ready to drive it into his chest, when the man fell back to the table and went still.

Dead.

Vincent stumbled backward. “Holy fucking shit! Did you see that!? Holy—”

Behind us came a sharp scream, not from Paul, but—

She moved fast.

I was still turning when she shot out from one of the lower cabinets, a scalpel of her own held in an overhand grasp, blood still dripping from the blade. She slashed out at Paul as she ran toward us. How he dodged it, I had no idea, but he managed to sidestep, and that was just enough to throw off her balance. She launched at Vincent, coming off her right foot at the wrong angle. Vincent spun to the side and grabbed her mid-flight. He wrapped his arms around her from behind in an awkward bear hug, pinning her arms. She tried to reach him with the scalpel but couldn’t. Both her legs lifted from the ground, kicked, flailed. Vincent squeezed her tighter. “Twill! It’s me, Vincent! Vincent from Finicky’s! Stop! STOP!”

When it registered, when a blip of recognition crossed her red, angry face, her body went limp. She became a rag doll in his grasp. Although her feet went back to the floor, had he released her in that moment, she surely would have dropped. Her breathing hitched. Tangles of matted blonde hair covered most of her face. “Vinny?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I got you,” he said softly. “I’ve got you.”

Behind them, Paul was bent over, his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. He looked like he might throw up. He glanced up at the rest of us, held up a single finger, and muttered, “I’m okay. All good here.”

When Twill put weight on her legs and looked up, Vincent slowly released her. He stepped around and faced her, brushed the hair from her eyes with both thumbs, then lifted what was left of her loose braid and dropped it behind her shoulder. “There you are.”

When she looked back at him, there was something in that exchanged look. Silent words. Something that made me think they knew each other far more than he had initially let on. For a brief second, I thought I saw fear on Vincent’s face.

When her gaze finally broke from his, she looked right past me, like I wasn’t there, and glared at the dead man. “He was going to hurt Emily. Make her disappear.”

Vincent frowned and let her go. He took a step back, putting some distance between them. “Emily?”

Twill pointed at the drawer in the bottom right corner. “She’s in there.”

I glanced at Vincent, then went to the drawer and pulled it open.

No sheet this time.

Another girl.

Young. Maybe fourteen. Fifteen at best.

She’d been dead for several days. Maybe a week.

Dotted lines had been drawn from her shoulders to the center of her chest, where they met in a single line that continued down to her pubic bone. Father had an illustrated medical text, and we had reviewed the section on autopsies many times. I knew what a Y incision looked like.

I glanced back at the man Twill had killed. She’d stumbled into the medical examiner about to open up this girl.

“Whoa.” Paul stepped up to get a better look. “She’s naked.”

“She’s dead, you sick fuck,” Vincent shot back.

Twill’s face twisted and grew red. “Cover her back up.”

I was studying Emily’s neck. I didn’t look up. Instead, I peeled one of her eyes open, looked for burst vessels in the haze, and found none. “What killed her? She has no bruising. No visible wounds.” I pried her mouth open with my thumb and index finger, and although the lighting wasn’t the best, I could see the back of her throat. “I don’t think she was poisoned, either. I’m not sure how she died.”

“It will be on the back of her head. You didn’t look there.”

You didn’t, did you, Champ? What have I told you about rushing to conclusions?

I gently turned her head with my good hand.

At first, I didn’t see it. The wound was so small—a hole no more than a quarter inch in diameter near the base of her skull. I imagined someone making her kneel. Pressing a gun to the back of her head. Small caliber, had to be, but . . . no, that didn’t make sense, because even a small caliber would have muzzle flash. There’d be burn marks, and I saw none.

“Cover her back up.” Twill stepped closer, raising her bloody scalpel. “Now.”

I was still holding a scalpel too, and I raised it defensively. The two of us probably looked like we were about to have a miniature sword fight, and the thought of that nearly made me laugh, but I managed to swallow it back down because that would certainly antagonize this girl, and she didn’t seem like the kind of person I wanted to antagonize. She reminded me of Mother in that way. A bomb with a hair trigger, moments from detonation. I lowered my scalpel and replaced the sheet. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She sneered like she’d smelled something rotten. “Who the fuck is this, Vinny?”

“Anson Bishop. He was at Finicky’s after . . . after you. Christ, they told us you died, Twill.”

“I didn’t.” She shoved a folded piece of paper in her pocket.

He jerked a thumb back at Paul. “You already know him.”

She didn’t bother to look at him. “Wish I didn’t.”

“Missed you too,” Paul said.

The robotic female voice rang out again. “Security personnel, code yellow. Code yellow, level two.”

Vincent eyed the overhead speaker for a second. “We need to get out of here.”

“They know what I’m wearing.” Twill looked me up and down. “What did you wear in here? Where are your clothes?”

I nodded at the bag tied to the wheelchair. “In there.”

“Give me your gown.” She began peeling off her clothes.

That’s when the security lock on the morgue’s door beeped and the light blinked from red to green.

​12

​ANSON

The door rattled but didn’t open.

I remembered the deadbolt Vincent had locked when we came in. “That won’t hold long. If they don’t have the key, they’ll find one fast.”

Twill changed her mind about my gown and shrugged back into her tank top. “That’s the only door. I looked. There’s no other way out of here.”

Vincent moved fast. Faster than I’d ever seen him move.

He snatched up a bone saw from one of the tables and shoved it into Paul’s hand, then he checked the cylinder on his gun before nodding at Twill and me. “You two might want to find something better than scalpels.”

Like I said, Father muttered. They’re going to get you killed.

“We can’t fight them off.”

“You got a better idea?”

The door rattled. This was followed by a heavy knock. “Charleston PD! If you don’t open this door and surrender, we’re coming in!”

I quickly looked around the room, took it all in. Not just the tables, drawers, and tools, but everything. My gaze fixed on a cabinet with glass doors lined with shelves of chemicals. I ran over, yanked the door open, and began studying the labels. When I found the glass bottles of formaldehyde, I set them on the counter. Lined them up in a neat row. Eight bottles in total. I found bleach under the sink.

Vincent just stared. “What are you doing?”

“Help me,” I told him.

“With what?”

I unscrewed the cap from the first bottle and began pouring it down the drain. “Empty half of each of these.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

I didn’t mean to yell at him. I didn’t like yelling at anyone. But I did, and it took him by surprise. He began emptying the bottles as I fumbled the cap off the gallon of bleach and poured some into the first bottle of formaldehyde. It quickly began to smoke.

Vincent choked and turned his head. “What the fuck?”

I twisted the cap back on the first bottle, trapping the gas inside, and started on the next. “When you mix them, they make chlorine gas. It’s toxic. Try not to breathe it.”

Vincent choked again, his eyes red. “No shit!” he managed before coughing again.

“They think she’s alone in here. We can use that.”

The door rattled again.

“Guys . . .” Paul muttered. He was holding the deadbolt thumb latch. “They found a key . . .” He squeezed, his face pinched, doing his best to keep it locked. He wouldn’t be able to hold it long.

Vincent understood, though, and that was good. With my broken arm, I was moving too slowly. Between the two of us, we managed to get it done. He scooped two of the bottles up and handed them to Twill. “Kneel in the center of the room. Get ready to surrender yourself.”

She nodded and quickly got in position.

I took three bottles and balanced them in the crook of my cast. Vincent took the last three. We got on either side of the double doors and hid around the corners. “When we go, hold your breath and try to shield your eyes,” I told them all.

Still squeezing the thumb latch, Paul offered a worried glance but said nothing.

Vincent nodded at Twill.

She cried out, “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone! I’m so sorry! You gotta believe me!”

Another heavy bang on the door. “Unlock this door and surrender immediately!”

“You’ve got to promise you won’t hurt me! I’ll let you in if you promise!” Her voice was filled with tears, each word choked out between fake sobs as her fingers coiled around the glass jars in her hands, judging the weight of them, calculating. “It was the drugs! I’m okay now! I swear! Just promise you won’t hurt me!”

The voice on the other side of the door dropped lower. “If you surrender peacefully, you will not be harmed. You have my word.”

Vincent tapped on Paul’s shoulder.

Paul released the lock.

​13

​ANDY

Andy glared at the little man sitting across from him. “Begin what?”

He was little.

Stocky.

Overweight.

But not very tall. Out of shape, for sure.

Andy wasn’t exactly some gym rat, but he did twenty push-ups every morning. Some days, he even managed ten pull-ups on that bar Stash mounted on the bathroom doorframe back at the Quick. Twice each week, he even drank those godawful protein smoothies from that stand on Calhoun, even though they were filled with green crap he’d never touch if they found their way to his dinner plate. He’d kick the shit out of this guy if he wasn’t tied to a chair.

He was, though, tied to the chair.

Jerking on the ropes only seemed to make them cinch tighter.

The little man watched him tug at the ropes with a calm disinterest. “Why don’t we start with your name?”

“I told you, I’m not doing jack until you untie me.”

In the bowl, the rabbit grew still and watched him for a moment before returning to the glass. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.

The cuff on Andy’s arm tightened, then released. The little man looked over Andy’s right shoulder, then made a note on his pad. When Andy twisted his head, he could see the corner of a monitor on a pole behind him, but he couldn’t read the screen.

“Your name,” the man repeated.

“I’m Robert Suckyourowncockyoupervertedpieceofshitbastard.”

Andy grinned at this because it told the man he wasn’t afraid. Not in the least bit. Fuck him.

The man scribbled something on his notepad, then set the pad on his desk and rose. He crossed the room and disappeared somewhere behind Andy. Andy could hear him moving around, but he couldn’t tell what he was doing. When he returned, he was holding a cotton ball in a gloved hand. In his other hand, he had a syringe. He plunged the needle into the cotton and depressed the plunger, saturating the ball. He then lifted the glass bowl, slipped the cotton ball in with the rabbit, and quickly replaced the glass. Calmly, he peeled away the latex glove and settled back in his chair.

“What the hell is that?”

The rabbit was curious, too. It padded over and gave the cotton a cautious sniff.

The rabbit’s body jerked. It jumped back from the cotton with such force, its rounded back slammed into the glass bowl with a hard thud. The small animal pawed at its nose, first with quick strokes, then with harsh swipes, claws extended. Frantic.

“What’d you do?” Andy managed, unable to look away.

“I didn’t do it,” the man replied calmly. “You did. When you lied to me.”

The rabbit’s nose was bleeding.

“It was a fucking joke! Make it stop! Don’t hurt it!”

“Will you tell me the truth?”

“Yes!”

“Because lying to one another is no way to start this journey.”

“Andy! Andrew Dickson! That’s my name!”

The man only stared at him for several moments, then finally rose and vanished behind Andy’s back. When he returned, he was wearing another latex glove and holding a small dish of yellow liquid. He lifted the corner of the glass bowl, retrieved the cotton, and replaced it with the dish. The rabbit must have recognized the liquid or somehow understood it would make it feel better; it plunged its nose into the dish and held it there for several seconds. When it lifted back out, the rabbit sneezed five times in quick succession, then appeared okay again. By the time the man had discarded the cotton and returned to his chair, the rabbit was back to sniffing the glass as if nothing had happened.

The man retrieved his notepad and pen, wrote something, and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I’m glad we understand each other, Mr. Dickson. Or do you prefer Andy?”

Andy didn’t much care what this insane asshole called him, but he knew better than to rattle him. This guy was nothing like the one with the hammer in Poughkeepsie. That guy had been some animal, driven by instinct or some kind of deep-down desire, like some crazy rabid dog. This guy was something else entirely. When Andy looked at him, he saw something in the man’s eyes far worse than some crazed lunacy.

The man was calm.

Who does this and remains perfectly calm?

The cuff on Andy’s arm tightened, held for a moment, then released with a low puff of air.

The man made a quick note and returned his gaze to Andy, his head cocked slightly to the side.

Andy swallowed. “Andy is fine.”

With a nod, the man wrote that down too. A quick scribble in the top corner of the page.

“Where were you born, Andy?”

“Toledo. In Ohio.”

“And your age?”

“Fifteen,” Andy told him. “I’ll be sixteen in November. The twelfth.”

A slight smile edged the man’s lips as he wrote that down. “See, that’s much better. You volunteered your birthday. A free exchange of information is far superior to pulling teeth.”

When the man said that, Andy got the distinct impression this man had pulled teeth. He’d probably done far worse. Something else was very clear, and it might have explained why the man was so calm—he’d done this before. He’d done it more than once. He’d done it enough times to be calm about it. And hell, Andy didn’t want to think about that. That was the point of the rabbit, right? He’d had the rabbit ready before he grabbed and drugged Andy. The little demonstration with the cotton ball? There was no hesitation there; he just did it. He had all of that ready to go because he’d done it before, and it was the simplest way to get Andy to go along. How many others had sat in this chair? How many does it take to get to that point?

“Twenty-seven,” the man said calmly. “Twenty-seven others have sat in that very place.”

“How do you know . . .” The words trailed off before Andy could say something stupid like psychic or mind-reader, because those were the first words that popped into his head, but that’s not what the man said.

“I knew what you were thinking because people are horribly predictable. The first twenty-seven to sit in that chair were unable to surprise me.” He removed his glasses, held them between pinched fingers, and leaned forward slightly. “What do you think, Andy? Do you think you can surprise me? I certainly hope so.”

​14

​ANSON

The door burst open.

I didn’t wait for anyone to come through. I sucked in a deep breath and threw the first bottle to the ground at the opening. I watched it shatter in slow motion. Saw the liquid splash up and catch the start of shoes and pants coming through the door, but I didn’t see more before Twill launched up from where she’d crouched and bound forward, a piercing scream ripping from her throat. Somehow, she managed to throw not one, but both glass jars through the open doors into the hallway beyond, and I heard both explode when they impacted the tile floor.

No hesitation.

Not a hint of slowing down.

She barreled through the first two officers like pins at the end of a bowling lane. The stunned men stumbled to the side, one clutching his throat, the other shielding his face.

Vincent rolled out from behind his door, quickly threw both his jars, and followed behind her. Paul went next, with me last.

With six shattered jars, the hallway was filled with acidic white haze. Officers and hospital security rolled on the floor. Some staggered back, others ran—gasping, searching for air. I don’t know how many—there was no time to count—but it didn’t really matter. One man made a grab for Twill as she bolted by, but Vincent caught him in the chin with his elbow, sending him spinning.

I’m not sure who pulled the fire alarm. Maybe it was Paul or Vincent. Maybe it was one of the cops. The high-pitched alarm sounded and lights began to strobe as we shoved through the fire door at the top of the emergency stairs.

All of us sucked in the clean air.

My eyes burned, and when I caught a glimpse of Paul’s frightened face, his eyes were beet red and dripping with tears from the gas.

Voices below.

I couldn’t tell how many.

I had two jars left.

I dropped one over the railing to the level below.

Crash.

Screams.

The four of us kept running. Bounding down the steps two at a time.

The first-floor door was open, blocked by the body of some guy from hospital security. He was curled up in the fetal position, his entire body jerking with spastic coughs.

When I stepped over him behind the others, we found ourselves at the back of the ER.

It was a madhouse.

People streamed in from everywhere, searching for the exits. Hospital personnel, patients, visitors. Some moved slowly, orderly. Others pushed and jostled through the crowd. With the fire alarm sounding, all the emergency doors had automatically unlocked and swung open. Four exits in total. All guarded.

One bottle left.

“Throw it!” Twill shouted out.

And I did.

I heaved it as hard as I could toward the exit leading to the ambulance ramp, picking it for no particular reason other than the fact that there was only one security guard rather than two or more, and he was busy shouting something into the radio clipped to his shoulder.

While I aimed for the metal frame above the door, my throw came up short. The bottle crashed against a support pole about ten feet from the door, sending glass and liquid raining down. There were screams and hoarse shouts as gas plumed, filling the space with a white mist. The crowd pushed out from the center like an angry ripple in a pond, and those near that exit forced through the open doorway, knocking the officer aside, gasping and lurching in search of air.

My eyes were burning horribly when I finally got outside. I tried wiping them with the sleeve of my hospital gown, but that only made them worse. I realized we had left our clothes in the bag tied to the back of the wheelchair still up in the morgue—nothing we could do about that now.

Paul slammed into my back and pushed me forward. He shouted something, but I couldn’t make it out over the cacophony. When he pointed, I followed his finger.

Vincent and Twill were climbing into the front of a rusty brown minivan parked in the ambulance bay with its hazard lights flashing. Paul and I ran over and scrambled into the back as Vincent reached under the steering column and yanked out a cluster of wires. He had Twill’s scalpel and used it to strip the ends of two. When he twisted them together, the minivan’s engine turned over with a rough growl. He shoved the mess of wires back up under the dashboard.

Twill had Vincent’s gun. She held it in her lap, pressed between both palms, her fingers kneading nervously over the metal. “Go! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!”

Vincent pointed out the windshield.

Van Man was standing at the mouth of the portico, directly in our path, his dark eyes locked on Vincent.

Paul nudged up into the space between the two front seats. “Run his ass over!”

Twill’s grip tightened on the gun. “What the hell is he doing here?!”

Vincent didn’t answer.

He jerked the gearshift into drive and slammed his foot down on the accelerator.

The minivan lurched and shot forward with far more power than I expected, the tires shrieking on the pavement.

Van Man didn’t move.

Didn’t reach for his gun.

Didn’t so much as flinch.

He glared at us like he could stop us with sheer will.

It wasn’t until we were mere inches away that he finally sidestepped, and he only did so long enough for us to shoot past. Through the rear window, I watched as he stepped back out behind us and calmly took out one of those new cell phones to place a call. A bulky thing with a nubby antenna on top. His gaze never left us as we exited the parking lot and vanished into traffic on Calhoun.

​15

​ANSON

“​Take this left.” Twill pointed. “Right here!”

Vincent yanked the wheel hard, barely slowing down. The wheels screamed in protest, and the back of the minivan felt like it would tear away from the front.

“Now right on Bull!”

Paul slammed into me and both of us toppled across the seat as Vincent quickly turned, fighting to keep the vehicle on the road. I heard loose blacktop and gravel crunch under us, the spin of a wheel, then it caught and jerked us back to the pavement.

When I sat back up, I caught Vincent’s bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Is he following?” he blurted out before looking back to the road ahead, narrowly missing a motorcycle on our left.

I twisted in the seat and looked out the back. With Vincent driving like a madman, most of the traffic was hanging back, giving us a wide berth. I didn’t see Van Man’s white paneled van, but he could be in something else.

“Is he following?!” Vincent shouted.

“I don’t think so.”

Vincent let out a frustrated grunt. “Christ, Bishop, is he back there or not?”

Paul sat up beside me and quickly took in the traffic. “He’s not back there. I think we’re in the clear.”

“Why was he even at the hospital?” Twill asked in a stunned voice. “How did he find me?”

When I turned back around and got a good look at her, I saw fear in her face for the first time. “He wasn’t there for you,” I told her. “He was there for Sam Porter.”

“Who’s Sam Porter?”

“We’ll tell you later,” Vincent cut in. “Where are we going?”

Twill glanced out the windshield and studied the road. “Keep straight. When we get to Cumberland, make a left.”

“Van Man called someone,” I said. “He knows what we’re driving. He probably even got the plate number. We need to change cars.”

Twill nodded. “I’ve got that covered. It’s not much further. There. Turn left.”

Vincent took the turn, which was followed by a handful of others as we wove down various side streets. I knew very little about Charleston. I remembered reading that city planners had passed a law prohibiting any building taller than four stories. Something about wanting to keep the historic charm intact. As a result, there was very little space between each structure. Some had narrow alleys. Others had nothing at all; walls were either shared or pressed against each other. The roads were narrow too, especially in this part of town. Not meant for cars. Built for horses. Carriages. As we neared our destination, a number of the roads were roped off to traffic. Those spaces were filled with tourists wandering about. Busy sidewalks became crowded sidewalks. Narrow streets and roadways became impassible.

“Make another left right here,” Twill told Vincent. “Pull into the lot on the side of that bank.”

“I don’t have any money for parking,” Vincent told her. “Everything got left at the hospital.”

“We don’t need it.”

When he turned into the lot, he was blocked by a red and white arm across the pavement. There was a small guard shack on the left. A window slid open, and a freckled boy of maybe sixteen poked his head out. His hair was long and red, braided in the back, and he had a small silver hoop in his nose. I couldn’t imagine that being sanitary, and when he spoke, I couldn’t help but think of the germs festering on it every time he inhaled. He had a slight twang to his voice. I didn’t think that was from the hoop. He held his hand out. “Twenty dollars for the first hour, five for each hour after. You pay upfront for the first, and we’ll settle the balance when you come back.”

Vincent turned to Twill.

The redheaded kid spotted her in the passenger seat, and his eyes went wide. “Twill! Holy shit! I saw them haul you off. I figured you were halfway to Cannon Juvie by now. How’d you get out?” He took a quick look around. “Are they looking for you?”

She smirked. “Always.”

“Right on.” He nodded. Then he took a closer look at the minivan. “Where’d you get the wheels?”

“Borrowed,” she told him. “It’s a gift for our friend.”

With that, he frowned. “A minivan? With all this rust? I don’t know. Paco don’t like rust much.”

“Paco can’t say no to me—you know that.”

He chuffed. “Paco’s been saying no a lot lately.”

“Come on, Ruddy . . .”

He steepled his hands under his chin and let out a slow breath. “I’ll do five. Any more than that and he’ll kill me.”

“Deal.”

The boy, Ruddy, leaned back inside the booth, fumbled with a metal lockbox, and returned to the window with a roll of bills. He tossed them through the window, over Vincent, into Twill’s lap. She winked at him. “I owe you one.”

“You most certainly do,” he told her, eying her legs. “Pull it to the back of the lot, next to the white Mercedes. That one’s for Paco too.” Then he seemed to remember something. “Hey, did you find Emily?”

The lines of Twill’s face fell. “Not soon enough.”

Ruddy pursed his lips and tapped twice on the side of his small guardhouse. “I told that girl . . .”

“We all did.”

He tapped a button and the arm blocking our path rose.

Vincent maneuvered the minivan through the small lot and parked next to the Mercedes, as he was told. Reaching under the dash, he found the wires and pulled them apart. The motor sputtered and died. “Who’s Paco?”

Twill twisted a finger through her knotted hair. “Local guy. Got his hands in just about everything. By the end of the day, this clunker will be in a thousand parts in ten different trucks.”

“You trust him?”

“I don’t trust anyone. You know that.” She held up the cash. “We have a mutually beneficial relationship.”

When we got out, I heard music nearby. A lot of voices. Smelled food. My stomach grumbled. “Where are we?”

“Market District.” Twill looked the three of us up and down. “We need to get you some real clothes.”

​16

​ANSON

Twill led us through a narrow opening between two buildings at the back of the lot, an alley no more than three feet wide, littered with broken bottles and discarded trash. We followed the narrow space to the opposite end, blocked by the wall of a red-bricked building. An old refrigerator was propped up against the wall. Once white, the flaked paint was covered in rust, the chrome handle tarnished and dull. Someone had fastened a padlock to the door, and I couldn’t help but think of our refrigerator back home. Mother locked ours, too. Unlike Mother’s lock, this one wasn’t real. When Twill pulled on the door, I realized the brackets attached to the lock weren’t screwed in, only resting against the battered metal. The refrigerator opened with a tired squeal. The interior shelves were gone. The refrigerator had no back. Instead, it was open to a dark tunnel. It was a door.

“Ain’t that some Alice in Wonderland bullshit,” Paul muttered.

Twill reached inside and found a small magnetic flashlight fastened to the backside, just out of sight. She flicked the beam on and stepped through the opening. “I prefer The Witch and the Wardrobe.”

Unlike the narrow alley, the tunnel was clean and free of garbage. The air was cool and fresh, fed by some draft up ahead.

We pushed through a beaded curtain on the opposite end and found ourselves in the center of a giant indoor marketplace crawling with people. Shops lined both walls of a long building that seemed to go on forever. Between the shops were tables cluttered with t-shirts, trinkets, tourist memorabilia, toys, books, and magazines. Food, too. I didn’t see it, but the smells filled the air—burgers, hot dogs, funnel cake, and who knew what else.

Twill pressed a folded hoodie into my hand. A moment later, she handed me a pair of jeans. The cash she’d received from Ruddy never left her pocket. She swiped the items from nearby tables with a practiced expertise, moving with the crowd’s noncommittal shuffle, gazing around as if looking at this place for the first time, although I was fairly certain she knew every inch. When she stopped and pointed at an old photo booth, I realized she’d gotten clothing for Paul and Vincent, too. She pulled the curtain open and gestured inside. “Hurry up! Change in there.”

A few minutes later, the three of us were dressed, and Twill shoved our stolen hospital wear into the mouth of a trash can. Somehow, she even managed to get the sizes right. She’d slipped into a hoodie, too.

When we passed an electronics store, we froze. A wall of televisions in the window were tuned to the news with live shots of the hospital. The parking lot was flooded with patients, visitors, and cops. Talking heads stood in front of the chaos, rambling on with excited hand gestures.

A photo appeared in the top right corner: a still shot of the four of us taken from one of the security cameras. The caption below read, “Hospital terrorists at large.” The image was hazy, not the best quality. Our faces were visible, but not very clear. I was hopeful this was the best shot they got when it was replaced by four individual photos of our faces.

“Fuck me.” Vincent stared at the images.

Twill raised her hand above her head and let out a sharp but short whistle, just enough to get the attention of the kid manning the counter at the back of the store. When he looked up at her, she twirled her finger in a slow circle and pointed at the televisions. He nodded, reached beneath the counter, and all the screens switched from the news to a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

This girl . . . Father’s voice muttered.

“Yeah,” I said.

Twill heard and was staring at me. “Do I need to be worried about you?”

“I’ve seen him shoot,” Paul told her. “He’s weird, but harmless. Can we eat now?”

Her gaze lingered on me for several more seconds before she turned and led us to what looked like half a food truck built into the wall. An older bald man dressed in white hovered over the grill, expertly flipping burgers into the air and catching them with his spatula. At the sight of Twill, the hard lines around his mouth and eyes softened. “Hey, beautiful.”

“Hey, Lou. Four with the works, please.” She took the wad of bills from her pocket, peeled off a twenty, and handed it to him. He reached for the bill, drew his fingers over it, but didn’t take it. The bill went back into her pocket. To anyone watching, it looked like she paid.

“You track down Emily?”

The look she gave him told all he needed to know. The harsh lines tightened up again and his jaw clenched. “That goddamn bastard. They need to catch the guy.”

“Nobody’s looking. They don’t give a shit about us—you know that. As far as they’re concerned, he’s cleaning the place up. One less girl on the streets.”

“He’s a fucking psychopath.” He slid four boxes, bottles of water, and a stack of napkins toward us, then slapped a small bell on the corner of the counter. “Order up!”

We carried everything over to an empty table in an open courtyard just outside the door and tore into the boxes. We were all starving. It’d been nearly a day since we’d eaten anything, and while I might have consumed just about anything and liked it, the burgers were absolute perfection. Nearly as good as the ones Father made on the grill. The fries, too. Minutes passed without a word—only grunts, slurps, and a rather loud burp from Paul before he told nobody in particular, “My compliments to the chef.”

“Screw him,” Vincent said. “Fucker gave us used napkins. Someone wrote all over these.”

He spread the napkins across the table.

Names and phone numbers were scribbled on seven of them. One of them had an address.

For the first time since I met her, Twill appeared embarrassed. Her cheeks flushed red. She quickly scooped up the napkins and shoved them in her pocket. “They’re potential clients.”

​17

​ANDY

“​Is that water?”

Andy didn’t want to show any sign of weakness, but his throat was so dry, it hurt to swallow. Speaking was even worse. The glass was on the table next to the bowl with the rabbit, and he couldn’t stop looking at it.

“When you and I first met, I injected you with a drug called Etorphine. It’s an extremely effective paralytic and sedative. Unfortunately, it also causes severe dehydration. Tell me, do you also have a headache?”

Andy nodded, and that slight movement rippled through his skull from back to front like a jagged wave. When it hit his eyes, he had no choice but to pinch them shut against the building pressure, like his eyelids were the only things keeping them in his head.

“Dehydration is a peculiar thing. The texts break it down into three stages: mild, moderate, and severe. Mild and moderate can typically be reversed with a simple intake of fluids, ideally containing electrolytes, while severe may require intravenous intervention. You’re still early in your condition—exasperated by the Etorphine, to be sure, but still relatively mild. I imagine your tongue is swollen, and you’re probably craving sugar along with water. Am I correct in those assumptions?”

Andy nodded again and immediately regretted it. The pain was sharp, like an icepick to the temple.

“The good news is that withholding liquids will decrease your blood pressure. I’ve seen a significant drop just in the past several minutes. Unfortunately, the reason for the decreased blood pressure is the taxing nature of dehydration on your heart. It causes your heart to beat faster, but with less force. And, of course, the stress can act as a multiplier. Your heart rate is currently at ninety-eight beats per minute and increasing.” He adjusted his glasses. “Most people believe the human body can survive up to three days without succumbing to dehydration. They think the thirst is what kills them, but that is actually untrue. It’s not the thirst; it’s heart failure. Lack of water typically ends with some type of coronary event. Of course, the subject usually isn’t aware at that point because dehydration also makes a mess of the brain. A simple two percent drop in brain hydration will cause short-term memory loss. Prolonged dehydration causes brain cells to shrink in both size and mass, resulting in a condition not unlike dementia in the elderly. The kidneys and liver don’t fare much better. It’s honestly amazing some people live such long lives, considering how fragile our bodies really are.”

Andy eyed the glass. “Can I have some water?”

“No, you may not,” the man stated flatly. “At this point in our work, I feel that would be counterproductive.”

Andy knew what the guy was doing. Just talking about water and all this garbage was making him thirstier. Psychosomatic suggestion. Andy had no idea where he’d heard that term, but he was pretty sure that was what it was called. You tell someone they’re thirsty, and they become thirsty. You tell them they’re sick, and they feel sick. You tell them they have a headache . . .

He did have a headache, though, and he was fucking thirsty. When was the last time he ate or drank anything? He wasn’t sure. He’d had a corn dog and bottle of water for lunch, but when was lunch, exactly? Had that even been today? He had no idea how much time had gone by.

Andy licked his lips and tried not to think about how dry they felt. “If I don’t have water, I won’t be able to think clearly. I won’t be able to answer your questions.”

“Nobody said you have to speak to answer my questions.”

As if in response to that, the cuff on Andy’s arm tightened, held, and released. The man checked the monitor and made a note on his pad.

“You said you were born in Toledo. Is that also where you grew up?”

Andy swallowed and tried to ignore the sandpapery texture of his throat. “Haskins.”

The man nodded. “Forgive me if this is insensitive, but do you know both your parents?”

“I never met my father.”

The man tapped his pen with impatience. “I didn’t ask if you’ve met your father—I asked if you knew your father. It’s important you pay attention.”

“I knew of him,” Andy answered, and when the man didn’t object to that, he went on. “He’s in Ohio State on a third strike. He got caught in possession of thirty-two grams of coke for some buddy of his. Enough for a trafficking charge. He drank a lot, and Moms said he used to hit her, so she wasn’t too sad about him going away.”

Twisting to the desk at his back, the man studied several folders. When he found the one he wanted, he turned back around and opened it on his knees. “Your father’s name is Brian Dickson. Thirty-seven years old. Inmate 98503. Would it surprise you to learn he claimed your mother planted the drugs on him and tipped off the police to get him out of the house?”

“Moms wouldn’t do that.”

“You were eighteen months old at the time,” the man stated. “What qualifies you to make such a statement?”

“I didn’t know my father, but I sure as shit know Moms, and she don’t got a hurtful bone in her body. She bent over backwards to raise me right.”

“Yet you ran away from her and you’re living on the streets cultivating a burgeoning criminal record of your own.”

Andy fought the urge to tell this guy to fuck the hell off. What did he know? He knew how to lure a kid into his car. He knew how to jab him with some kind of knockout juice. Knew how to strap him to a chair. But he didn’t know jack about him and the bullshit he’d been through. He knew nothing about Moms.

“Your father said your mother was sleeping with other men for money while you were in your crib. Apparently, she hauled you and your crib out to the living room while she was ‘entertaining’ and wheeled you back into the apartment’s single bedroom when they’d gone. He said he’d sometimes come home to find you wearing the same diaper you were wearing the previous day. Your person and sheets covered in leaked shit and piss.”

“That’s not true.”

“She once forgot to feed you for two and a half days.”

“Bullshit.”

“Your mother planted the drugs on your father when he threatened to report her to Child Protective Services.”

“He was a drunk piece of shit who beat the hell out of her.”

Reaching into the folder on his lap, the man withdrew a single sheet of paper and smoothed it out. “Aside from the cocaine, would you care to hear what your father had with him when he was arrested and booked into the Wood County jail?”

Andy didn’t want to hear. He didn’t want to hear any of this. That didn’t stop the man from reading it to him.

“The possessions of one Brian Dickson upon intake: one Casio wristwatch, thirty-eight dollars in cash, a tube of Chapstick, mint-flavored, a pack of Marlboro Reds—six cigarettes remaining—and one ninety-day sobriety chip from Alcoholics Anonymous. He volunteered for a blood draw. Blood alcohol came back at zero point zero, and the only drug found in his system was ibuprofen.” He stared down at the page for a moment, then looked up at Andy. “Does that sound like the kind of man who beats his wife on some stoned bender?”

“The chip don’t mean shit,” Andy shot back. “You know how many people I know who got those? Just ‘cause he was sober when they brought him in doesn’t mean he was any day before that. And he had all that coke on him, too. He probably just didn’t get around to putting it up his nose yet.”

“The cocaine was found stuffed under the passenger seat of his pickup truck. He claims it was planted. He’d never seen it before. Who told you he was holding it for a buddy? I imagine that was your mother?”

Andy pinched his eyes shut. His head was killing him. His throat. He needed water, but he wasn’t about to give this guy the satisfaction of asking again. “Why are you telling me all this?”

The man didn’t answer; instead, he read from another sheet of paper in his folder. “Shortly after your father was arrested, you were removed from the house by child services. You were placed with a foster family. Where you, at eighteen months old, were treated for heroin withdrawal. Your mother’s habit found its way to you through her breastmilk.”

“She got me back,” Andy told him. “You think I don’t know all this? She sobered up and got me back six months later.”

“She did,” the man conceded. “Apparently, she was far from done with you.”

​18

​ANSON

“​Clients?” Paul spat the word out more than spoke it. Like he’d bitten into something that had gone bad and couldn’t rid himself of the taste fast enough. “Seriously?”

Vincent silenced him with a glare and held it for a moment, as if daring Paul to say something else. When it was clear Paul had gotten the message, he looked back at Twill. “You’re still . . .”

If Twill had been embarrassed, she quickly buried it. Her face became stone. “How else do you think anyone can survive out here? I’ve got no ID, so I can’t get a real job. No real skills, so I don’t qualify for a job even if I can find one. Hell, I tried, believe me. When I first got out, I filled out applications all over town. Even went to a few interviews. Guess how that went? How far you think you can get on fake names and a bullshit history with no residence?”

“When you ran,” Vincent said, “you told us you were going home.”

Twill dipped a French fry in ketchup and popped it in her mouth. “I have no home. My mom’s a junkie in San Francisco, last I heard. My stepdad”—she did air quotes around the word stepdad—“when last I had one of those, he spent his days trying to score his next hit, and his nights trying to get in my pants. No way I’m going back to that.”

Vincent appeared confused. “You told us your mom was an ad exec for some tech company and you only ran away because she was too controlling.”

Twill blew out a breath and ate another fry. “Grow up, Vincent. I told you what you wanted to hear.”

“You could have told us the truth.”

“I couldn’t tell myself the truth. You think I’d tell you?”

“We all come from shitty circumstances. We would have—”

“Understood? Maybe I didn’t want you to understand. Maybe I didn’t want you to think of me that way at all. Maybe, for once in my life, I wanted the people around me to see me as something other than some cliché born and bred on the streets of California.” She sighed and shook her head. “I think part of me hoped if I pretended long enough, I could make the lie real.” She gestured around. “Clearly that’s worked out well for me.” Finishing off her fries, she wiped her hands on her skirt, studied her newly acquired hoodie, and sighed. “I look like touristy shit and I stink. I need a shower. Then I need to burn these clothes. Are we done here?”

Aside from a few errant fries, the food was long gone. Inhaled more than eaten. Empty boxes and wrappers littered the table.

Paul and I exchanged an uncomfortable glance as the realization of our circumstances sank in—after this, we had no place to go. Our stolen car was back at the hospital, possibly crawling with cops. Any money we had was in the bag attached to that wheelchair, also back at the hospital, no doubt also crawling with cops. And they had our photos . . .

If Vincent was having similar thoughts, he didn’t show it. His eyes never left Twill. “Weasel’s dead.”

The color drained from Twill’s face. “What? How?”

Vincent told her about the chase down the alley with Van Man. Sam Porter. The gunshot.

She looked at Paul. “You saw it? He shot Weasel?”

Paul hesitated, then nodded.

Her fists curled into tight balls.

“We only got a quick look at the guy back in the hospital,” Vincent continued, “and he was in rough shape. Van Man was in his room, just standing there.”

“What does Porter look like?”

Paul plucked one of the empty boxes from the center of the table and tore off the cover. “Anyone have a pen or pencil?”

Nobody did.

It took Twill all of three seconds to lift a pen from a woman’s purse on the ground at the next table over and hand it to Paul, who quickly went to work on a sketch. When he finished, he slid the drawing across the table to her.

Twill studied the image for a moment, then looked up at him with a newfound wonder. “Damn, boy. You got skill.”

Vincent tapped on the drawing. “Do you know him?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before.”

I took in the drawing from across the table. I hadn’t gotten a good look at Porter when he drove out to Finicky’s. Not in the alley, either. Things happened so fast. At the hospital, he was covered in bandages. This was really my first real look at the guy, and knowing Paul, it was spot-on. He could recreate just about anything. I remembered the drawing he’d made me of Libby back at Finicky’s. He’d drawn her naked, probably just to embarrass me. She and I slept together that night. My first time. I had no idea where that drawing had ended up.

I had no idea where Libby . . .

That thought sent a pang through my stomach. She could be anywhere by now. Maybe—

Your mind’s wandering again, Champ. Stay in the game.

Snap.

Back at the table.

Sam Porter.

I memorized every inch of his face.

Twill slid the drawing back to Paul. “You know, the rubes here eat this kind of thing up. You could probably get twenty bucks a pop for drawings like this.”

Paul’s eyes lit up at the prospect. We needed money.

Vincent shot the idea down real quick. “We can’t exactly set up shop on the sidewalk right now. We—”

Twill kicked him under the table and lowered her head.

Two uniformed officers were standing at the mouth of the courtyard.

​19

​ANSON

“​Are they looking at us?” Paul said in a rushed whisper. “Do they see us?”

“Sit fucking still,” Vincent uttered between clenched teeth. “We’re just eating lunch. Don’t draw attention, you idiot.”

The courtyard entrance was behind me. I waited for Father’s voice to chime in and remind me of how important it was to always face the entrance when seated in a room, but he remained silent. I glanced at a window in the wall of the building behind Twill, hoping to catch the officers’ reflection, but I couldn’t see them.

“I know them.” Twill kept her head down, partially shielding her face with her hand. “Sort of. They’re assigned to the market district, so I see them most days. Wilder and Hernandez.”

“Could they have recognized you from the news?” Vincent asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Like me, Paul’s back was to them, and it was clear it took every ounce of his being to keep from turning around. His fingers were twitching on the table. “Are they part of them?”

I still couldn’t make out anything worthwhile in the glass. “You ever see them with Van Man?”

“I never saw Van Man with anyone but those two detectives, Welderman and Stocks.” Her eyes grew wider. “Shit. They’re in the courtyard now, walking around the tables. Be ready to move.”

“We should split up,” I said softly. “They’re looking for four.”

Twill gently shook her head. “Too late for that.”

I finally saw them then in the glass. Five rows of tables separated them from us. The two men moved slowly. Although they were attempting to appear casual, there was a deliberate pattern to the way they moved. Systematic. While it may look like they were just walking through, they were checking each table.

Twill yawned and leaned over. When she came back up, she was holding a cell phone pilfered from the same purse where she’d gotten the pen. A gray box not unlike the one Van Man had used back at the hospital. She quickly keyed in a number, typed a message, and returned the phone to the purse. All of this happened so quickly that had I not been looking, I surely would have missed it.

A moment later, an alarm went off. The harsh clank of a frantic bell somewhere deep within the main building.

“Jewelry store,” Twill mouthed silently when she caught me looking at her.

In the window’s reflection, one of the officers reached for the radio clipped to his shoulder, said something, then ran off, the other man on his heels.

“Move.” Twill shoved the drawing of Porter in her hoodie pocket. “Now.”

She was up in an instant, the three of us right behind her.

Every ounce of my being wanted to run. Paul and Vincent clearly did too, but we also knew that would draw attention. Instead, we followed behind Twill, who was moving only slightly faster than we had earlier, her head twisting around with a noncommittal gaze. To anyone watching, she looked like she was only studying the storefronts and tables lining the walls of the marketplace. I could tell she was taking in everything—every face, every movement, every exit, every blockade. To say I was in awe would be an understatement. She didn’t appear remotely stressed. Unlike Paul, who was sweating. Unlike Vincent, who appeared as tense as a coiled spring about to burst. Father had taught me to appear casual; I liked to think I did, but I didn’t pull it off as well as she did.

When we reached a table filled with handmade jewelry and various trinkets, she rounded the side and went to the wall behind, which was covered in large tapestries. An older woman dressed in colorful clothing and large silver hoop earrings manned the table. She was busy crafting a bracelet from pink and purple string, carefully wrapped around her fingers. She didn’t so much as look up at the four of us as Twill peeled one of the tapestries aside, revealing an open doorway and narrow stairs. She quickly ushered us in.

We ascended the steps two at a time, and when we reached the top, we were standing in another world.

​20

​ANSON

Vincent was first to reach the top of the narrow steps, and when he did, he froze. “Holy shit.”

By the time I saw the monster of a boy holding the shotgun, he’d seen me. He nearly fell from a stool near the opening, took a lumbering step back, and jerked the barrel back and forth between us. His thick finger was halfway between the guard and the trigger. When Paul slammed into my back, causing me to lurch forward, I thought for sure the kid would shoot. To his credit, he didn’t—probably because Twill was shouting at him, and some things were more frightening than potential intruders.

“Back the fuck off, Pudge!”

When he didn’t lower the shotgun, Twill pushed through us and grabbed the barrel. She shoved it down and to the side before getting in the boy’s face. “Stash is never going to let you load that thing if you keep swinging it around like some extension of your pecker at everything that moves.”

He towered over her by more than a foot. “Stash told me to watch the stairs!” The boy’s voice was heavy and thick, like his tongue was too big for his mouth.

Twill jerked her thumb at a red lightbulb above the doorframe. “Did Matilda hit the panic button?”

The large boy glanced at the unlit bulb and shook his head. “No.”

“And what’s the rule?”

He lowered his head. “Weapons stay hidden unless there is a viable threat.”

“And how do we know if there is a viable threat?”

“Matilda,” he said in this defeated voice. “She’s our eyes and ears. She’s our protector. She pushes the button, and the light goes red.”

“Exactly.”

His bottom lip was quivering, and his gaze had dropped to his feet. “I’m sorry, Twill.”

He was maybe six-two or six-three. Taller than Vincent and as wide as a wall. He probably weighed close to three hundred pounds. As intimidating as he first appeared, there was a gentleness there, a subtle warmth living behind his eyes and the harsh lines of his face.

Twill patted the side of his stone-like arm. “It’s okay, Pudge. Can you find Stash for me? I need to talk to him.”

The large boy nodded and vanished through an open doorway on the left, his shoulders wide enough to nearly touch both sides.

“We don’t know much about him,” Twill told us when he was gone. “Rumor is he had a tumor in his pituitary gland when he was younger. His mother couldn’t deal and abandoned him at the hospital. They got the tumor out through his nose, of all things, but not before it did whatever tumors do in that particular gland to make him grow like that. He bounced around the system until he found his way here. We think he’s seventeen or eighteen, but nobody knows for sure. For the most part, he’s harmless. Mostly.”

“Where is . . . here?” Paul muttered from behind me.

From the top of the stairs, a long hallway branched off. One side ended at a large stained glass window under a peaked roof; the other went on as far as I could see, with additional rooms or hallways breaking off on either side, all of it bustling with people.

Twill gestured around. “We call this place the Quick. I guess the easiest way to think of it is a large attic. Right now, we’re above Market Hall, but it continues on for nearly four blocks, covering the entire marketplace down below. It was originally built as some kind of boarding house during the Great Depression. Later, it housed some of the people who worked the shops and booths. Storage, too—all kinds of old crap found its way up here. But over time, the homeless have taken it over. Most of the entrances have been hidden since the fifties, so most people have no clue this place even exists. We’ve got power, running water, even cable TV. Whenever a city official stumbles into some mention of it, they tend to look the other way.”

“Because it keeps the homeless off the streets,” I said, glancing around.

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

There was no light coming through the stained glass window. Twill caught me looking at it.

“At some point, they bricked over that. If you look up at it from the outside, you can’t see the window at all; just this ugly yellow stucco. A place this old has all kinds of secrets hidden in the walls. Up top, too.” She nodded toward the ceiling. “Because most of the windows are closed up, we get our light and airflow from skylights. Can’t be seen from the ground, even at night, which is an added bonus. Follow me . . .”

Paul, Vincent, and I fell in line behind her as she started down the hallway, pointing at random rooms and hallways like some tour guide. The place was huge.

“Bathrooms and showers are down there. I hope you’re not shy. We’re co-ed here; there’s not much room for modesty. There’s a kitchen at the end of that hall—all cooking has to happen in that room. We do that to prevent fires. If you happen to score a hotplate, you can’t use it in your room; only in there. Best to lock it up, though. That kind of shit tends to disappear. Same with food.”

In some of the narrower portions of the hallway, the air was heady with sweat; in others, there was a breeze. With every open doorway and nook we passed, curious eyes landed on us—old, young, tired, and scared. Some people said hello to Twill; others ignored her. When we reached an arched opening, Twill slapped at a painted handprint up above in the brick and stepped through into a room filled with bunk beds fashioned together from thick wooden planks. “We call this the dorm,” she told us. “It’s where most of us sleep. Some of the older people find quiet corners in other parts of the building, maybe hang a sheet to get a little privacy, but us younger folk tend to stay in here.” She pointed at a bed against the wall on her left covered in a stained Snoopy sleeping bag. “That’s me. The one above me is open.” She pointed at another set of bunk beds across the aisle. “So are those two right there.”

“We can stay here?” Paul asked, his voice filled with relief. “For how long?”

“That’ll be up to Stash. He’s kinda in charge.”

“I’m hardly in charge,” a deep voice grumbled behind me. “But you’re welcome as long as you like.”

He was maybe fifty. Short-cropped black hair riddled with spots of gray.

Salt and pepper, Father told me. His eyes are different colors, too. Did you catch that? One blue and one brown. Like a wolf. You’d best get out of there, Champ. No good will come of this.

Stash stepped deeper into the room and eyed Twill worriedly. “Griff and Derringer brought in a boy about twenty minutes ago. He’s in bad shape. I’m thinking you might know him. He muttered something about that Finicky place before he passed out. Isn’t that where you came from?”

My heart thumped.

The Kid. Had to be.

​21

​ANDY

The man stood, brushed by Andy, and disappeared behind him for about a minute. When he returned, he was holding a spoon, two needles, a length of rubber cord, and a lighter. He set all five on the table beside Andy and settled back in his chair.

“Do you recognize those things?”

Andy shook his head.

“Let me rephrase. I know you’ve never seen those particular items before, but do you know what they are?”

A clammy sweat broke out on Andy’s skin. He was no stranger to a heroin kit; he had lived on the streets for a good portion of his life. He hadn’t expected to see one here. Wherever here was. Although his mouth and throat were both horribly dry, he felt saliva form in the back of his throat, thick and warm. Andy swallowed and nearly choked on it.

The recognition must have been visible in his face because the man went on before Andy could respond, disdain entering his voice. “I must admit, I cheated a bit. One of those needles contains pharmaceutical grade heroin. I was a little squeamish about heating raw powder in the spoon and drawing the dose the old-fashioned way. The way most likely familiar to you. It seemed too easy to get the dosage wrong with such an archaic method, and in my profession, it’s best to be precise. It’s surprisingly easy to obtain pharmaceutical grade products when you know who to call.”

Andy was confused. “You said ‘one of the needles’ contains pharmaceutical grade. What’s in the other one?”

The man went quiet at that. There was only a brief grin before that, too, was gone. He settled back in his chair and appeared to study Andy. He looked at him like some kind of exhibit in the museum. But he didn’t answer the question.

To Andy, the contents of both needles appeared the same. The liquid was tan in color, not brown. Neither looked like some of the sludge Andy had seen on the streets. The plastic of the needles was this flawless white. No smudge marks from dirty fingers. No nicks or scratches from years of repeated use. Both looked unused, as if removed from their packaging with gloved hands. Clean. Fresh.

Inviting.

Tasty.

The words popped into Andy’s head from some unknown place, just a whisper, and with them came a thump in his chest. The stir of a craving, a need, a want.

“Interesting . . .” the man said before scribbling something on his pad.

“What?”

“The Pavlovian reaction.” He looked up at Andy with this smug face, like Andy should know what that meant. Then he said, “When was the last time you did heroin?”

Andy nearly told him he’d never done heroin. Never ever. He was practiced in saying exactly that whenever asked by a doctor, counselor, cop, or even Stash. He didn’t lie to Stash about nothing else, but before the words could come from his mouth, he pulled them back. This guy didn’t seem to ask questions unless he already knew the answer, and Andy was quickly beginning to understand that lying was akin to digging a deeper hole. “About two weeks ago. Ruddy, Lisco, and me scored a bindle. We partied in an abandoned house off Reid for a couple of days. No big deal.”

“No big deal,” the man repeated, nodding at this. His pen flicked on the paper with what looked like a check mark. “Aside from heroin, what other drugs have you done?”

“None.”

Andy spat out the word quickly, and it wasn’t a lie. He was kinda proud of that fact. He’d been around coke, pot, uppers, downers, and just about everything in between, and he never did one of them. Not once. Even that time Ebby had those tabs of molly. He might’ve gotten a hand job out of her if he’d done it, but he hadn’t. Boy, was she pissed.

From inside its bowl, the rabbit’s curious face was pressed to the glass as it tried to get a good sniff of the new items on the table.

“Prior to this time with Ruddy and Lisco, how many other times have you used heroin?”

“That was my first time.”

Again, the man nodded knowingly, retrieved another folder from his desk, and opened it on his knee. “Two weeks ago. And you’re fifteen years old, right?”

Andy nodded.

“Would it interest you to learn the first time your mother used heroin, she was also fifteen?”

Andy had never heard that before, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you talked to your Moms about around the dinner table. He knew Moms grew up rough, no different than him.

The man continued, “At fifteen years old, your mother was brought into the MUSC emergency room at a little after midnight on a Saturday with an apparent overdose. Well, I’m using the term ‘brought in’ rather loosely. She was left on a bench outside the ER door. Nobody got a look at the person or persons who dropped her there. It was a good thing they did, though, because according to the attending physician, the heroin she’d injected was laced with fentanyl—a rather new compound back then, much more powerful. She was unconscious, unresponsive, with shallow breathing. One of the notes here says her skin had turned blue. Once she was stabilized and identified, her caseworker tried to speak to her. She didn’t say much, wouldn’t even admit to doing the drug, even though it was right there in her tox screen. You’d think finding yourself in the emergency room on your deathbed would be enough to scare her from ever considering the use of that drug, but she was brought back into the same emergency room not two weeks later for her second overdose. That time, it had happened while she was entertaining a ‘male friend,’ and while that male friend made no mention of the exchange of funds while talking to the police, the facts were obvious to everyone. He told the police she had brought the drugs; he insisted he didn’t even know she had them until she shot up. Whether or not that was true is anyone’s guess. The point of all this is quite clear—once she had her first taste, she was hooked.”

“Well, I’m not,” Andy insisted. “Just because I did it once doesn’t mean I’ll do it again. I was just experimenting.”

“Let’s be clear—the instance you’ve described was not your first taste. Your first taste came through your mother’s breast milk as an infant. What I’m honestly curious about is how you managed to stay clean from the age of two through fifteen. That is, if you in fact did stay clean.”

“I never touched the stuff before that time, honest.”

The man licked his lips. “I believe you, Andy. I believe you never touched the stuff prior to that time. What I don’t believe is that you didn’t want to.”

“I didn’t—”

“You’ve somehow found it within yourself to be honest with me, Andy. Honest up until now. Let’s not backpedal on that. When you injected yourself, did you find a vein in your arm or did you insert the needle between your toes? That was your mother’s preferred location.”

Andy mumbled a reply.

“Speak up, please . . .”

“Toes.”

“Because, like your mother, you sell your body for sex and visible needle marks are bad for business, correct?”

“Yeah.”

Andy’s gaze had drifted back to the two needles. What he felt inside couldn’t be described as a craving; that was too soft a word. The liquid looked so pure. He didn’t see a single particle floating in it, and Ruddy had told him no matter how much you heat it up, it was nearly impossible to get it to liquefy completely. Pharmaceutical grade meant it was created in a lab by people in white coats with degrees covering their walls, using the best equipment under the most ideal circumstances. He knew from friends that medical marijuana was far better than what could be found on the street. He could only imagine what pharmaceutical grade heroin was like.

The man clapped his hands together. One time. Hard. Loud.

Clap!

Andy’s head twisted back around in one quick motion, and he instantly regretted it. The headache from lack of water had only grown worse, and the sudden movement felt like a brick slamming into his temple. The pain behind his eyes was even worse. He pinched them shut and waited for it to return to a dull throb before opening them again.

“Dehydration appears to have gotten a strong foothold. Are you hallucinating yet?” He glanced at the monitor over Andy’s shoulder. “Your heart rate is one-thirteen, and blood pressure has dropped off further.” He stood and checked the ropes securing Andy to the chair, tightening up each of them. “It’s important you remain immobile. I’d hate to see you injure yourself when the seizures start.”

Andy’s tongue rolled over his dry, cracked lips. “Let me have a little bit of water. Just a little.”

The man eyed him for a moment before reaching for the glass. “This water?”

Condensation had formed on the sides. It dripped and puddled on the man’s hand. His skin glistened.

Andy nodded. Slow this time, mindful of the headache.

The man returned the glass to the table. Closer to Andy than it had been before, but still out of reach. “Not yet.”

“You fucking bastard.”

He took a moment to slide his fingertip down the length of each needle. He repositioned them so they were aligned perfectly straight with the bit of the drill, then returned to his chair. “You asked what was in the second needle.”

“I don’t give a shit what’s in either needle. I’m done with your little game until you let me have some water!”

“As I told you, one needle contains pharmaceutical grade heroin. No doubt the best high you will ever experience. The second needle contains a lethal dose of fentanyl, the drug I mentioned with respect to your mother.” He said all this calmly, his voice clinical in its flatness. “Obviously, I won’t tell you which is which. There’s no fun in that. You may have that entire glass of water after you select which needle I will inject into your vein. Your arm this time. No need to hide this one.”

“I won’t do that.”

“No? The sweat on your brow says otherwise. The way your eyes keep dancing over those needles and the water says otherwise.” He nodded at the display behind Andy’s shoulder. “Even your vitals betray you. Every time I say the words heroin or water, there’s a visible spike in your heart rate. You can claim abstinence as long as you’d like, but we both know how bad you want the items on that table. We both know you’ll eventually give in to your urges. When is the real question. But even there, we have all the time.”

​22

​ANSON

We followed Twill and the man she called Stash through a maze of hallways and up a short flight of stairs to a small room with a peaked ceiling. The walls were lined with shelves crammed with random medical supplies, bedsheets, towels, gallons of water, and other assorted liquids. A large metal cabinet with two locks had “Authorized Personnel Only” written on masking tape across the front of the door—probably meds. There were three beds, two of which were occupied. An elderly man and—

“Holy shit, it’s him,” Paul blurted out.

Stocks and Welderman had beaten the Kid to within an inch of his life back at the farmhouse. The girls were supposed to take him to the hospital on their way out of town, but that plan had clearly fallen apart. He’d been beaten again, probably when they got caught—maybe by Van Man, Sam Porter, or whoever had found them before they could get away. The wounds on his face made him nearly unrecognizable, swollen to the point of deformity. I didn’t realize he was even awake until I was hovering over him and caught his single, unbandaged eye rolling slowly through a thin slit. The other half of his face was completely covered. When he saw me, his mouth dropped open loosely, but no words escaped—only a short, rattly breath.

Vincent got one look at him and turned on Stash. “Why the hell is he here? He needs to be in a hospital!”

“We took him from the hospital.”

“You what?”

Stash went to the end of the bed and pulled up the corner of the wool blanket and sheet covering the Kid. There was a yellow band around his ankle. “This means he’s marked.”

We all stared at him.

“Tagged. Property of the Genovese crime family.”

Stash said this like we should know what he was talking about. When none of us said anything, he went on.

“He’s been purchased. The Genovese family runs all the trafficking in New York, Jersey, Chicago; they even have a foothold on the West Coast.” He tore the band from the Kid’s leg and held it up. “They have doctors on the payroll. This means the hospital was supposed to treat him off the books. Hold him until he was well enough for transport, then they’d pick him up and ship him.”

“Ship him where?” I asked. “Guyon?”

It was Stash’s turn to look confused. “Guyon? I don’t know what that is.” He tossed the yellow band into a trash can on the opposite side of the room. “We have people who watch for this sort of thing at all the area hospitals. When we find people who have been tagged, we do what we can to get them out. Bring them here. Hopefully help them disappear when their condition improves.”

A woman appeared in the doorway wearing a worn white lab coat, an IV bag in her hand. When she saw all of us, she frowned. “You need to clear out of here. He needs rest, and I need to work.” Hanging the bag on a hook affixed to the wall behind the Kid’s bed, she connected the attached tube to a needle already in the Kid’s wrist and secured it with white tape, then she twisted a valve and studied the line until she was satisfied the liquid was flowing.

“How bad is he?” I asked.

“Moderate concussion. Three broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and his right shoulder was dislocated. He has severe bruising over 90 percent of his body. The men who did this, they kicked him and stomped on him. He’s frankly lucky to be alive.” The right side of his face was completely bandaged, and she brushed it with the tip of her finger. “His right eye gives me the greatest concern. The lacrimal bone was fractured and his retina detached. The hospital repaired everything, which is good because we don’t have the resources here for that. At this point, he needs time to recover. Most will heal. He may or may not lose the use of his right eye; it’s too early to tell.”

Vincent’s hands curled into fists. He looked ready to punch a hole through the wall. “Those fuckers. He’s a goddamn kid.”

He looked so small in that bed.

I leaned close. “Can you hear me?”

From behind swollen lids, his left eye shifted toward me. His pupil was horribly dilated, and the part that normally was white was this deep crimson. The muscles of his blackened cheek tightened and he let out a soft grunt.

“You’re out,” I told him. “You’re safe now.”

If that registered with him, I couldn’t tell. The deep pool of his pupil fixed on me and didn’t move.

“Where are the girls? Did they get away?”

His head shook, albeit slightly. His lips flexed a few times, but he had no words.

Vincent drew closer. “Do you know where they are?”

Again, the light shake of his head.

“Are they alive?”

Nothing then. No response at all.

Vincent and I exchanged a look. Paul had slowly stepped back and was looking down at the floor. He shuffled his feet slightly and sniffled, but said nothing.

The Kid’s index finger slowly stretched out and found my wrist. When I looked back at him, he managed a single word in a wet exhale that punched me in the gut. “Weasel?”

He didn’t know.

He’d been back at the farmhouse when Weasel ran into that alley. When that cop . . .

I heard the gunshot then, this sharp crack in the back of my head.

Had Weasel heard the shot that killed him?

Weasel was the Kid’s best friend, and he didn’t know he was dead.

Now’s not the time, Champ. Best you give him a day or two before you lay all that on him. By the looks of him, he may never have to hear about all that. By this time tomorrow, he might be taking the long sleep.

I nearly told Father to shut up, but caught myself. It didn’t matter; he’d gone quiet again.

The Kid was quiet, too. His eye drifted shut, and his breathing fell into a deep rhythm. The woman in the white coat had injected something into his IV line.

“He needs to sleep,” she told us. “You can try talking to him again in the morning.” She nodded toward the door. “Everyone out.”

​23

​ANSON

Back down the steps in the main hallway, Stash asked, “What happened to him?”

As I quickly told him, Paul filled in the few parts I missed, his voice broken, clearly still thinking about the Kid. Vincent paced the hall like a bull in a cage. All hot breath and flared nostrils.

When we finished, Stash let out a long sigh. “Well, he’s here now. He’s safe and in good hands.” He smiled at the woman beside him. “Meagan here graduated at the top of her class from Cornell and is on staff at MUSC; she’s also my ex-wife. There is nobody in the Quick I trust more.”

Paul’s face flushed with confusion. “You’re a real doctor? Aren’t you . . . ?”

“Homeless?” she quickly replied before rubbing Stash’s shoulder. “Not anymore, thanks to this man.”

“Your ex-husband,” I said flatly, as confused as Paul.

“It’s a long story,” she replied.

“A long story for another day,” Twill said, eyeing Stash. “We need to talk about Emily.”

Stash’s face went slack. “Ruddy already told me. I’m so sorry. I know she was a friend. She seemed like a good kid.”

Emily.

The girl in the morgue.

So much had happened, I’d nearly forgotten.

“You knew how she died,” I said to Twill. “You knew about the hole in the back of her head.”

Stash and Twill locked eyes for a moment; a million silent words seemed to pass between them. “We’ll talk tomorrow, I promise. There’s something else I need to attend to right now.” He nodded at the rest of us. “Welcome to the Quick, gentlemen.”

When he was gone, I asked her again. “How did you know?”

Something flashed behind her eyes—anger? Frustration? I couldn’t tell. She only looked at me for the longest time. Finally, she said, “I’ll show you,” and started down the hall in the opposite of the direction Stash had gone.

​24

​ANSON

Twill led us to a large space next to the kitchen. Filled with mismatched tables and chairs, it was some kind of communal cafeteria, deserted at this time of night. When Paul yawned, I glanced at a clock on the far wall and realized it was after ten. We hadn’t stopped moving, and like Paul, it was catching up to me. I was about to suggest picking this back up in the morning when I saw the wall.

The entire right wall of the cafeteria was covered with photographs, articles of clothing, newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and cards—the plaster wall itself was barely visible behind it all.

“This dates back to the mid-1900s,” Twill told us. “To the first people who stayed up here.”

“What is it?” Vincent asked.

It’s a shrine, isn’t it, Champ? Some kind of memorial to the dead. The missing. All those who came here and disappeared without fanfare or notice soon after? This is where the nearly invisible people of the world went to vanish entirely. A final stop on the path to obscurity. Father paused for a moment, considering that realization. How long do you think you’ll need to hang around before you end up on that wall? Not much longer, I’d bet. Feels like you’re already knocking on that door.

“This is where we say goodbye to those we’ve lost,” Twill told us in a quiet voice.

From her pocket, she removed a silver bracelet. She studied it for several moments, then went to the far right corner of the wall and used a thumbtack to secure it in place. Then, using a marker she found on a nearby table, she wrote the name “Emily” on a piece of tape and attached it to the wall next to the bracelet.

When Twill stepped back, she did so in silence. Her head hung low. Paul, Vincent, and I said nothing either. This was a private moment, and we knew better than to interrupt.

Maybe you should put your girlfriend’s locket up on that wall? Tie a bow around that box, too? There’s something to be said for closure. God knows there were many times I should have put something of Mother’s up on the proverbial wall and walked away. I bet things would have worked out a little differently for me if I had. Hindsight, and all that. Maybe we’d be fishing right now, you and me. You know, out at our lake.

I felt the metal of Libby’s locket under my shirt against my chest and considered taking it out, maybe putting it up on that wall like Father suggested, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t know Libby was dead. Not for sure. I’d like to say something in my heart told me she was alive, had to be, that I could feel her presence burning there, but I couldn’t. I just wasn’t wired that way. I did know I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not yet. I patted her locket through my shirt, but left it where it was. No doubt Paul and Vincent were having similar thoughts about Kristina and Tegan.

Twill broke the silence when she told me, “You asked how I knew about the hole in the back of Emily’s head.” Reaching up and to her right, she tapped the photograph of a teenage boy in an orange and black ball cap and Charleston Battery tee-shirt. He was smiling at the camera. “This is Brendan, but most of us called him Tut. He disappeared about a week after I got here. His body was found two weeks later near the waterfront with the same hole in the back of his head. And this one”—she pointed at a girl with raven black hair in tight braids—“is Ebby. Ebby vanished the same day they found Brendan. The police found her last Tuesday, right outside the market, not far from where we’re standing. She was in an alley, her back up against the wall. Nearly identical hole. We think this guy keeps them alive for a few days, maybe as much as a week. Then when he’s done . . .” She made a gun from her thumb and index finger and mimicked a shot to the back of the head.

I thought of the hole in the back of Emily’s head. “That wasn’t a gunshot.”

She didn’t look at me; her gaze was fixed on the wall. “I was told it was from a .22.”

“Told by who?”

“Stash said that’s what the police told him.”

I shook my head. “For a gun to make a small hole like that, the barrel has to be pressed tight against the skull. If it’s even an inch away, the hole is bigger. When you press a gun hard against the skull and fire, it leaves a burn mark. Always. In the hair, the skin . . . always. Your friend didn’t have a burn mark. If I had to guess, that was from a drill.”

She pursed her lips and frowned. “And you’re basing that on all your years as a forensic scientist? You couldn’t even figure out what killed her until I told you.”

“Well, it’s not a gun,” I insisted. “I don’t know why the police would say that. They know better.”

Why are you wasting your time with this, Champ?

Twill stared at me again, and her gaze dug into me like it had back at the morgue. “Vincent, you trust this guy, right?”

“Anson?” Vincent shrugged. “He’s weird as fuck, but he’s smart. He saved our asses a few times. Yeah, I trust him.”

She considered this for a moment, then pulled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and handed it to me. The same one she’d stashed when we were in the morgue. “That’s the autopsy report for Emily. I grabbed it right before you guys came in.”

I frowned, unfolding the page. “The medical examiner hadn’t started her autopsy yet. How could there be a report?”

In my mind’s eye, I could see Emily on that metal table, dotted lines on her chest and torso detailing where the incisions would be made when she was autopsied. Twill had gotten to the ME before he could start.

She nodded at the page. “Look at the cause of death.”

And there it was, written in neat, blocky letters—heroin overdose. That made no sense. There was no blood analysis attached; I supposed he might have run one and planned to attach it. I hadn’t seen any needle marks, though. I’d looked for those. And there was no mention of the hole in her head.

“Emily didn’t do drugs. Ever. The medical examiner listed drug overdoses as the cause of death on Brendan and Ebby, too. Stash found it in the newspaper.”

“So he lied.”

“He covered up,” Twill said. “For someone. Whoever really killed them.”

I was about to ask if she asked the medical examiner who he’d covered up for, then the image of the ME in the morgue drawer flashed into my mind, his chest riddled with stab wounds from Twill’s scalpel. Yeah, she’d asked. Same way Mother would have asked.

I found myself looking up at the wall. “Do you think there’s more?”

“Probably.”

Vincent blew out a breath and started for the door. “I don’t want any part of this. I need a shower, then I’m going to bed.”

Behind us, Paul had fallen asleep at one of the tables.

Twill sighed. “He’s right. Let’s get you guys settled. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

​25

​ANDY

Andy had pinched his eyes shut for what he thought was a few seconds, maybe a minute, but when he opened them, he suspected more time had passed than he first believed. The chair opposite him was empty; the man was gone. So was the glass of water. He was alone in the room with only the rabbit in the glass bowl and the remaining items on the table. The rabbit had settled in for a nap. It rested against the side of the glass, its breathing slow and deep. Andy’s breathing was anything but slow and deep—every time he drew in air, it felt like he came up short. Like he was at the top of some mountain and the air was thin, lacking the oxygen his body craved. Those empty breaths only made him want more.

Is this what it feels like to drown?

The idea of drowning made him think of the missing water, and thinking about the missing water glass made him think of the heroin, and then he was looking at it. Once he was looking at the heroin, he couldn’t look away. Gooseflesh popped across his skin, every inch, like his pores were reaching for those needles. If he said yes, it wasn’t like he slipped, right? This guy wasn’t giving him a choice—he needed water or he’d die. If he had to do the heroin to get to that water, so be it. He’d bring the water glass back if Andy agreed to do the heroin, right? Nobody would fault him for that. How could they? And there was no way one of those needles was really loaded up with fentanyl. No way. That was more mind fuckery on the part of his host. The man was just screwing with him; he wouldn’t kill him. Even if one of the needles did contain fentanyl, there’s no way he’d inject him; that would be murder. This guy didn’t have it in him, did he? A rabbit was one thing, but he didn’t even kill the rabbit; he only used the rabbit to scare him. This guy was all smoke and mirrors and assorted bullshit. He was no killer. Andy had run into tougher people standing behind the QuickMart on Third after midnight.

So what if he got high?

Why did this jerk-off even give a shit?

Andy heard a phone ring.

Not a phone somewhere in the room, but a phone in his head. An honest-to-God ringing line in his head, and Andy’s first and only thought was that the hallucinations had started. Why a phone? He had no idea, but there it was. Two rings, three, four, then a voice as the call was answered—

“Hello?”

Two things clicked for Andy at that moment. The ringing wasn’t in his head; it was coming from a Bluetooth headset the man had somehow placed in his ear when he was unconscious. The second was the voice—he knew that voice.

“Moms?”

“Andy? I don’t . . .”

She sounded as confused as he was. He hadn’t talked to her in what, a year? A year and a half? Not since she shacked up with that asshole, Rodney. Not since Andy had run away. Moms always used burner phones, so her number changed from week to week. Where she slept changed just as fast. He had no idea how to reach her, so how—

“Andy, I’m in some real trouble here. This guy . . . I don’t know about this guy . . . he said if I don’t shoot up, he’s going to kill you. Where are you? Tell me you’re safe . . .”

A shot of adrenaline passed through Andy. His body jerked up, tried to sit up straight, but couldn’t with the ropes holding him back.

“Where are you, Moms?”

“I think it’s the Hillside Motel out on 94, but I’m not sure. He knocked me out somehow, and I woke up here. The wallpaper looks familiar, though. Those ugly-ass paintings of sailboats, too. I ain’t ever seen those anywhere but the Hillside.”

“Get out of there!”

Andy didn’t mean to shout. He didn’t want to scare her, and Moms scared easily. When she did, she sometimes froze.

“I can’t, baby. He’s got me tied up.”

She sniffed, and Andy knew she’d been crying. She was trying to hold it back now, but he could tell.

“Is he there right now?”

“I think he’s standing behind me, pretending he ain’t, but I can hear him breathing.”

That’s when Andy heard something behind him, too. A quick shuffle of feet on the carpet, then silence.

What the fuck? Are there two of them? One here, one there?

Andy jerked at the ropes again, put his entire body into it. The heavy chair bounced, but only barely. There was a thump as the back legs left the ground and came back down. He hadn’t moved enough to see behind him. He’d barely moved at all.

“Quit dicking around and get out here where I can see you!”

Andy meant the words to come out with defiance, but instead, they were weak and thin. He nearly coughed; his throat was so dry, and shouting only made his headache worse.

“Where are you, Andy? Who you talking to?”

Andy tried to get a better look at the room. Could he be at the Hillside too? Not a house or an office, but maybe just a different room at the Hillside? Was this creep going back and forth between rooms?

Wait.

One of the ropes had come loose.

His right hand.

There was some play that hadn’t been there before. He jerked at it again and felt it give a little more.

“He’s got two needles here and said I have to pick one.”

“Don’t do either of them, Moms! One of them is poison! It’ll kill you!” Andy pulled harder at the rope, felt it dig into his wrist and forearm, but he was nearly free.

“He said . . . he said if I don’t pick one, he’ll kill you.”

“Moms, don’t!”

“He said it’s my payback for sending your father away. Not ‘payback.’ He used another word. ‘Pence,’ maybe? For doing smack when I was pregnant. He said I have to do this.”

Penance. Not pence.

Andy wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did.

Andy only knew what penance was because he had hooked up with this John once who was knee-deep in the program and was working on that step about making amends. He kept babbling about how it should be ‘penance,’ not ‘amends,’ like Andy gave a shit either way. Andy had finished what he needed to do and gotten out of that car as fast as he could. Ran a good three blocks before he even looked back over his shoulder to make sure the annoying fuck wasn’t behind him.

“Andy? He says I have ten seconds to pick.”

Andy yanked at the rope binding his right hand. The knot slipped slightly and brushed against his fingertips. He stretched to reach it while twisting his head and shouting over his shoulder at the man behind him. “Don’t hurt her! She hasn’t done shit to you! Tell whoever you got with her to back the fuck off!”

There was no response to that.

The man said nothing.

No shuffling or breathing, either.

Was he even back there? Maybe Andy was at the Hillside in some room near his Moms, and this guy was going back and forth.

When he heard the man’s voice again, it wasn’t coming from behind him, but instead, it came from the Bluetooth headset in his ear. “She can’t hear me right now, Andy. Only you. Just you. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Unlike your needles, both of hers contain fentanyl. Also, unlike you, she clearly wants to do them. She’s not tied up to keep her from leaving. She’s tied up to keep her from shooting up. I had to wrestle her into that chair and secure her hands. If I untie her, she’ll go for the needles. I’ve already tied the rubber around her arm. I did that earlier. She won’t have any trouble finding a good vein. Not that it would matter.”

“Don’t hurt her! I’ll do it!”

“It’s too late for that, Andy. I gave you a chance. That’s why the water is gone. That’s why I felt the need to involve your mother. And let’s be honest, the world will be a better place without her, right? She doesn’t contribute. She doesn’t better society. She’s a drain. Your mother is only happy when she’s high, so we can give her that—you and I—one last time. What’s the harm in giving her exactly what she wants? Don’t you want to make your mother happy, Andy?”

Andy jerked at the rope again and his right hand came free. He expected the man to grab him from behind, stop him, but he didn’t. With the ropes around his torso, he still couldn’t turn enough to see him, but Andy didn’t try; instead, he went to work getting his left arm free.

“Andy, my ropes came loose. He said if I don’t shoot up right now, he’ll kill you. I have to, baby. I have to do it . . .”

“Moms, don’t!” Andy got his left arm free, and the rope around his torso went slack. He grabbed one of the needles from the table and flicked off the plastic cap. “I picked one, see! I picked one! I’ll do it! Don’t hurt her!”

As he spun around, Andy jabbed the needle into his upper arm. He forced the plunger down. He felt the warm liquid enter his body. He did all this in a millisecond as he spun around. It wasn’t until the needle was empty that he realized his mistake. The needle was empty, and he saw what was behind him.

When he saw what was behind him, what had been behind him the entire time, he understood—none of it mattered.

​26

​ANSON

Libby’s hair smelled of violets and lavender and was still slightly damp from the shower. I traced my fingers down the length of her arm until they found her hand and gently gripped it, wrapped in the warmth of her.

She let out a soft sigh. “I wish we could stay like this forever.”

I did too, and I told her so.

We were in the hayloft of the barn. In the spot I’d come to think of as our corner. The musty blanket draped over us. We met out here most nights, telling no one for fear of Ms. Finicky finding out. Or worse—Vincent or one of the older kids who would surely give us trouble.

“I thought about running away,” Libby said softly. “First when I was back at Camden, then when they brought me here. I figured I’d heal up as best I could and sneak off in the middle of the night. Originally, I had given myself two weeks. That would be tonight. The night I’d go.” She traced her finger through the dust and drew a lazy figure eight.

Camden was a treatment center not far from the farmhouse. Although Libby and I had both been there at the same time, we hadn’t met. I only knew her from the crying. She cried most nights, loud enough for all of us to hear. I was glad we were no longer in that place, glad we were both here. The idea of Libby leaving made my heart hurt. “I’d go with you,” I told her.

She squeezed my hand. “I know you would.”

“Why didn’t you run away . . . before?”

I didn’t have to say more; she knew what I meant. At her last foster home, her stepfather had taken to beating her. Sometimes he did worse things, but we didn’t talk about that. I told her if she wanted to tell me, she could, and she said she would when she was ready. She wasn’t ready. Her stepfather beat her and did worse things while her stepmother sometimes watched, sometimes left them alone, but never did anything to stop. There were four other stepchildren in the house, but Libby was their favorite. Most nights, it was Libby who got their attention. Although Libby hadn’t told me exactly what the man did to her, she did say she preferred he did it to her over the other girls because she was the oldest, and as long as he was with her, the others were spared. I don’t think he spared the others every night, just most. She couldn’t run away and leave the other girls alone with him. She had no choice but to stay. At least, until that final night.

“He’d never hurt me so bad,” she said softly. “Of all the other times, never that bad. I don’t remember much of it, and I guess that’s a good thing. I remember him leaving my room . . . after. He closed my door ever so quietly, and I remember lying there. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I hurt so bad. I hurt all over. I don’t know how much time went by, but at some point, my stepmother came in with a bowl of warm water and a washcloth and tried to clean me up. Even that’s a blur. She must have realized what he did was worse, far worse, than any other time, because she called the ambulance. She’d never done that before. And that was the end. I’m sure she knew that. There was no hiding what he’d done. No disguising it. I caught bits of the paramedics whispering. I saw a doctor and one of the nurses talking to the police at the ER. I knew the other girls would be safe after that. They’d be taken away to new homes. I told myself they’d go to better homes. At least, I hoped for that. Particularly for Barbara. She was growing into such a beautiful woman. I could see the person she’d become. A man like that . . . if he got the chance to do to her what he did to me . . . she wasn’t as strong as I was. I don’t think she’d survive that. She’d . . .”

Libby pressed her face into my shoulder and cried. She cried for a long time, and all I could do was hold her, tell her I’d never let anyone else hurt her. Never again.

“If I’d run away from the house,” she finally said, “I never would have met you. Everything happens for a reason. Even the bad stuff.”

​27

​ANSON

When my eyes snapped open, my head was down on one of the tables in the cafeteria. I had no idea how I’d gotten there. We’d showered. For modesty’s sake, Twill had used a stall on the far end of the coed bathroom, away from our eyes. (Not for lack of trying on Paul’s part—his neck would probably hurt for a week from craning his head.) We’d dressed in night clothes pilfered from a storage room next door, then settled into our beds. I remembered falling asleep. I didn’t remember returning to the cafeteria. My internal clock told me it was a little after four in the morning, and a glance at the clock on the wall confirmed it.

That’s when I saw the memorial wall.

Red yarn started at Emily’s bracelet, weaved to the photograph of Ebby, then up to Brendan. It didn’t stop there, though; it continued up through the wall, zigzagging across the photographs, newspaper clippings, and other items tacked up in remembrance of each missing person. As I stepped closer, I realized the string traveled in chronological order, working backward through time. How that was determined, I could only speculate. The newspaper clippings were dated; some of the photographs too, but not all. I traced the path with my fingertip, and when I couldn’t reach, I pulled a chair over. I followed the yarn from start to finish, scanning the newspaper text.

“Body found on Folly Beach.”

“Body found in a submerged car near Johns Island.”

“Body found off Toogoodoo Road.”

Body after body.

Victim after victim.

But I couldn’t be sure of that. Aside from the yarn, nothing connected them. None of the articles mentioned holes in the skull. Some of the deaths were listed as accidental. Not all, though.

How can you be sure any are accidental?

That wasn’t Father’s voice, but my own mind pointing out a simple fact. Just because someone says something is doesn’t make it so.

When I reached the end of the string in the top left corner of the wall, I could barely reach it, even with the chair. I didn’t see the remaining ball of yarn until I got back down. It was on the floor under the table where I had woken.

You don’t remember doing it, do you, Champ?

I looked back up at the wall.

You don’t remember reading all those stories? Studying all the items. The pictures. Piecing things together? Puzzling it out? That happened to Mother sometimes, too. Just now, when you went over the wall, did you feel déjà vu? A little been there, done that? I know you did. Because Mother always did, too. Like mother, like son, I always say.

Father had never said that.

Not once.

I had no memory of putting up the string. I had no idea how long that had taken. It came down in under three minutes, though. I was back in my bed in less than five.

​THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1999

​28

​ANSON

I woke to Paul shaking me, his hair floppy and uncombed. “Hey, get up. Something’s happening.”

It took a moment before I realized where I was. For one brief second, I thought we were back in our bunks at Finicky’s, but unlike Finicky’s, no light streamed through the windows. I didn’t hear the clatter of the girls downstairs or Vincent down the hall. The air was different, too. The air at the farmhouse had been looser, somehow—cooler. The air here felt thick, trapped. Like air kept in a bottle.

Paul snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. “Get with it, Bishop. You still got one foot in la-la land.” He threw some clothes at me from the carefully folded stack I had pilfered last night from the same storage room where we’d found pajamas.

“What’s going on?”

“Twill came and got Vincent a few minutes ago, all quiet like, but she looked scared. I didn’t think that girl did scared. Hurry up, get dressed.”

I tugged into the t-shirt, jeans, and my tennis shoes, and chased after him down the hall. We took the steps to the first floor quickly, falling in line behind a few other people we didn’t know heading in the same direction. They gave us a hurried glance, but said nothing. There was a general buzz in the air, something heavy, and whatever it was, word spread fast. From the market downstairs, we spotted the back of Stash’s head as he rounded a table covered in junk jewelry. He pushed through one of the exterior doors marked “Emergency Exit Only” with others following behind him. I expected an alarm to sound, but none did. When Paul and I went through the same door, I saw why—the wires on the sensor up top had been clipped and twisted together. Father told me once if you did that, you bypassed the circuit and the system registered the door as closed even when it wasn’t. He’d also taught me how to fool those sensors with a pair of magnets.

We were in some back alley with a loading dock and a bunch of cops.

“Shit.” Paul froze at the sight of them and I nearly ran into his back.

They didn’t see us. They were too busy putting up crime scene tape while attempting to hold back the other twenty or so people who got out there before us. I shrunk back anyway, tucking behind Pudge, who was standing so still, he might have been a wall. He towered over the rest of the crowd.

Paul sidled up on the other side of him. “Hey, Pudge, what happened? Can you see?”

The big kid looked around for a second, bewildered, like he wasn’t sure who spoke to him, then he spotted Paul cowering down below. This look crossed his face, like he wasn’t sure if he should pet him or swat him away. He did neither and instead kept watching the police as he mumbled, “Another body. Looks like a boy this time.”

“Somebody said it’s Andy.”

This came from an older woman to my right. Her frizzy gray hair was pulled back and tied in a loose knot over her left shoulder. She wore a flowered dress and well-worn pink sandals.

“Who’s Andy?” Paul asked.

“Gutter rat,” the woman said. “Been missing for two nights, from what I heard.”

Pudge let out a soft grunt. “Andy’s my friend.”

“I want to get closer,” I told Paul, then I slipped out from behind Pudge and started through the crowd before he could object, because I knew he’d object.

No eye contact, Champ. Casual movement. No faster than those around you, no slower. People are predators at heart; they pick up on the slightest movement that doesn’t belong. As long as you belong, you blend, and if you blend, you can vanish in a crowd. Eye contact is key, though—avoid that. You lock eyes with the wrong person, someone on the opposite side of that crime scene tape trained to watch for anomalies, and you might as well jump up and down waving your hands. There’s no unringing that bell once it chimes. If there’s a body up on that loading dock—and I’ve got no reason to believe there isn’t—the police expect whoever put that body there to be in the crowd watching. Keep your head down so they don’t get a good shot of you in the pictures, because you can bet they’ve got someone taking photos of the whole crowd right now. You end up in just one of those photos and there’s no telling who might see it—who might come looking for you. There’s something else you’ll want to think about—all that string you laid out on the wall last night, all those victims? The person responsible might be standing right next to you. They’re surely somewhere in that crowd. Think you can spot them? I know I could. Mother, too. Just one of the many reasons I loved that woman.

Father was still going on when I found a small opening on the right side of the loading dock, only two rows back from the tape. Close, I know, but I wanted to be close. I wanted to see. I wanted to take it all in.

There was a body, and he was, in fact, young.

“Andy,” Pudge had said.

“A gutter rat,” the old woman had called him.

Andy the Gutter Rat was sitting prone. His back was slumped against the brick wall to the side of the large metal loading dock door, his legs stretched out before him. Although his eyes were open, they saw nothing. His pupils were dilated wide and black, covered in a thin milky film. His lips were parted slightly, caught in an exhale that would never end. His left arm was folded awkwardly behind him while his right reached straight out. The sleeve of his plaid shirt was rolled up, and a rubber tube was twisted loosely around his bicep. A needle stuck out from just below the fold of his elbow.

Several people crouched around him in CSU windbreakers, their gloved hands carefully collecting samples and photographing Andy’s body from all angles. There was a woman, too. Maybe early thirties. Some sort of detective. She wore a gray pantsuit. Her chestnut hair in a bun. Several strands had broken free, and she blew them from her face without touching them. I watched as she gently took Andy’s head and leaned him forward. I had no doubt she was looking for a hole at the base of his skull like the one I’d seen on Emily, like the one on the others. It was obvious when she found it—her eyes narrowed and she tilted Andy ever so slightly to get a better look, but then she did something I didn’t understand. She leaned him back against the wall with no mention of what she found to the CSU techs. Instead, she straightened up and dismissed them. I don’t know what she said—I couldn’t hear her—but they immediately stopped whatever they were doing and walked off. A moment later, two came back with a body bag and got Andy inside. Zipped it up. All while she watched. None of that was right, of course. Police detectives don’t bag bodies, and neither do crime scene techs—that was a task left to the medical examiner’s office after they examined the body on site, and as best I could tell, the medical examiner hadn’t arrived yet.

I was thinking about this when I realized her gaze had fixed on me.

I didn’t mean to look back. Lock eyes with her. I should have turned away and vanished in the crowd, but I didn’t. I looked directly at her.

On some level, I’m sure Father let out a disappointed groan. I didn’t hear him, though. I had bigger problems.

Someone grabbed my shirt and jerked me back.

​29

​ANSON

“​What the fuck, Anson?” Vincent muttered in my ear. “You trying to get us all busted?”

He pulled me back through the crowd of people so fast that I stumbled and nearly lost one of my shoes. Even if I had, he wouldn’t have noticed. He would have dragged me along anyway, like yesterday’s trash. The detective on the loading dock watched all of this, her eyes never leaving me, not until Vincent jerked me around a corner and slammed me up against the brick wall. “You may not give a shit about going back, but there’s no way in hell I will, so if you plan on making it easy for them to find you, you best pack your shit and get far away from here.”

That might be the first sensible thing that boy has ever said, Champ. Pack a bag and go. Haven’t I been telling you the same thing? And that woman? She’s trouble. She got a good gander at you. You don’t want to run into her again.

Vincent twisted his fist around the collar of my t-shirt and nearly lifted me off the ground. “You hearing me?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I just wanted to—”

“Whatever is happening here is none of our goddamn business,” Vincent fumed. “You think this is unique?” He glanced up at the market, at the Quick up above. “You live this life and it catches up to you. Doesn’t matter where you are. The streets will kill you. We’re here long enough to get a handle on where they took the girls, then we’re out. That’s it. Don’t get wrapped up in this local nonsense; it has nothing to do with us.”

“That detective pretended that kid didn’t have a hole in the back of his head, and you know he did. Why would she do that?”

The moment I said it, I knew I’d made a mistake. I expected Father to remind me what happens when you poke a bear, but even he said nothing.

Vincent’s face grew bright red. He looked like he might kill me right there. He glared at me for the longest time, then released my collar. “Let it go, you dumb shit. If you really care about finding Libby, you need to keep your head in the game.”

When he stepped away from me, I realized Twill had come up behind him. She’d heard everything. I expected her to blow up at Vincent, but instead, she looked past him to me. “Did you actually see a hole in Andy’s head?”

“Christ,” Vincent said with a frustrated breath. “The two of you . . .”

He stomped off, mumbling to himself. I had no idea where Paul went.

“He was a real ass back at Finicky’s,” Twill said. “It’s nice to see he’s changed.”

Best I could tell, Vincent was still an ass and would continue to be an ass. I must have appeared confused, because Twill shifted her weight to her back foot and rolled her eyes at me. “That’s a joke, Anson. Vincent said you were an emotionless robot. I guess he wasn’t kidding.”

“Vincent has enough emotion for all of us.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

I looked down at my shoes. “He was right to be mad. That detective saw me.”

“The woman?”

I nodded.

“Detective Gracie Moss.”

“You know her?”

Twill was still staring off in the direction Vincent had gone, and when she answered, I got the feeling only part of her was in the conversation; the other half had left with Vincent. “Not yet,” she finally said. “But I’m working on it.”

From the pocket of her jeans, she produced a slim brown leather wallet and showed me the driver’s license. The detective’s driver’s license.

“You lifted her wallet?”

Twill shrugged. “This is a dangerous part of town. She really oughta be more careful.”

Flipping through the contents, she found several credit cards and sixty-three dollars in cash. Twill shoved the money and cards into her pocket and tossed the wallet and ID into a nearby dumpster before twisting on her heel and starting back down the alley. “Come on. You know you want to see it . . .”

“See what?”

“The place where Andy was taken.”

​30

​ANSON

Twill was a bit of an artist. I could think of no other way to describe the way she moved. She passed through the crowds of tourists with the fluidity of water. Unnoticed. Invisible. During our short walk, she swiped at least two more wallets, quickly rifled through the contents, and discarded what she didn’t want, all without missing a step. Nobody noticed. Nobody had a clue. She’d cleaned herself up, too. Gone were the filthy skirt and tank top, replaced with a clingy teal shirt and white shorts. She wore just the hint of makeup, and her blond hair bounced lazily off her tanned shoulders. She had this carefree look about her. A pretty teenage girl strolling the streets of Charleston. Only her eyes betrayed her.

I’d fallen several steps behind her, and when she turned and glanced at me, I saw it. A look I knew. One I had seen in Mother’s face many times. Never in Father’s; he was too good at hiding it, but I saw it in mine. I sometimes recognized it in others. Twill was on a hunt. She was an animal with a scent. Any successful predator knew how to hide, how to blend. Camouflage. Twill smiled. She studied the historical buildings as if seeing them for the first time, even though she probably had every line memorized by now. Behind that mask, her mind was churning. She was working a problem. She was puzzling it out. I realized something else, too. She wasn’t taking me to the place where Andy had vanished because she wanted to see it for herself, or even because she wanted me to see it. I was pretty sure she had already been there today. She was taking me because she wanted to see me see it. She was hoping I’d notice something she hadn’t. Thinking that, knowing that, made me think of the memorial wall and all that red string. Had she somehow seen me do that and not said anything?

Was that why I was here?

The string had ended with Emily.

Andy came after.

Pieces.

Parts.

She wanted me to connect them because she hadn’t been able to. She knew about the holes in the back of their heads, but that wasn’t enough to make sense of what was happening. If it were, she wouldn’t need me.

Twill stopped so abruptly I nearly ran into her back.

Without turning, she said flatly, “I slept with Vincent. More than once. I think you should know that.”

Although she wasn’t looking at me, my face flushed. Silly to be embarrassed by such a bold statement, but there it was. This news wasn’t even a surprise; on some level, I already knew. It clicked back at the morgue. I’m not sure why it even mattered. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me now.

Twill turned and faced me. “It didn’t mean anything. It just happened.”

And there it was. The spark of a lie behind her green eyes. It had meant something, at least to her.

Her gaze dropped to the ground. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him find . . .”

She let the sentence linger until I said Kristina’s name. Like she didn’t know it or remember it.

“Kristina, right.”

Only, that was a lie too. She knew Kristina’s name. Lies, even omissions, they create these subtle changes in the facial muscles, body movements. One of my earliest lessons with Father had been how to spot those tells. I knew Twill was lying; what I didn’t understand was why.

There was a bottle cap on the sidewalk, and she nudged it with the tip of her white tennis shoe. “I understand why he’d want to find her. Why all of you would want to find them. You lost someone too, right? They’re your friends. You want to do right by them. Well, Emily, Andy, and the others were my friends . . .”

She let that last sentence linger like it was some sort of explanation, and I suppose it was. But it felt like a half-truth. Like she was holding something back. She continued down the sidewalk without further explanation, and I went after her.

​31

​ANSON

The corner of Martin and Belmont was nothing special—just another intersection to anyone passing by. A pharmacy. A liquor store. A small homeless embankment with several tents and sleeping bags beneath the awning of a long-shuttered dry cleaner’s drive-through. For those driving by, it wasn’t something looked at; it was something eyes subconsciously averted, trying not to see. Twill stood still for a moment, taking it all in, then she produced a piece of red chalk from the back pocket of her shorts and drew a symbol on the brick wall beneath the awning.

Ø

A circle with a diagonal line across the center.

“What is that?”

“A warning.” Twill slipped the chalk back in her pocket. “It lets others know that one of our own was taken and killed from here. If anyone sees or hears anything, they’ll know to take it back to the Quick and let the rest of us know.”

I took a step closer and pointed at the tents and sleeping bags. “Andy didn’t live at the Quick?”

“He did sometimes, when he wasn’t using. Those other times, he’d stay out here. He knew better than to let Stash see him like that. Stash is like a bloodhound for drugs—he can smell it on someone days later. There’s no hiding it from him, so most people just stay away. They all know better.”

The fact that she said “they” instead of “we” was telling. After seeing her rage back at the hospital, I assumed Twill did drugs. I never had and I never would, but I was quickly learning it was common for those caught up in the system or living on the streets. Some of these people saw it as a coping mechanism no different than eating or sleeping. Twill was telling me she wasn’t one of those people.

“I thought Andy would keep it clean. He was when I first met him. He slipped a few weeks ago and never climbed back out.” She pointed at an orange tent about midway back. “That one’s his.”

Twill stepped over an occupied sleeping bag and motioned for me to do the same, holding her index finger over her mouth so I’d do it quietly. At the tent, she pulled back the flap and slipped inside. I followed after her.

A Coleman lantern was propped up on a milk crate. Twill switched it on, casting a yellow glow over the tent’s interior. There wasn’t much to see—another sleeping bag bunched up in the corner. A backpack stuffed with clothes. A thick paperback copy of Stephen King’s The Stand. Twill picked up the book and thumbed the tattered pages. “He said he’s read this like twenty times. He gets to the end and just starts over. He once told me that people are on a never-ending journey. We think we have a destination in mind, some sort of endgame, but there really isn’t. You get there, and something else comes up. Then something else. He said he never realized that until he read this book. He said happiness isn’t a destination—it’s the journey.” She went quiet for a moment, then put the book aside and dumped out the contents of the backpack. Nothing but dirty clothes.

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“We’ll know it when we find it.” He had a few pairs of jeans. She systematically rooted through the pockets, making no apologies for taking the few crumpled bills she found.

I searched the sleeping bag and found nothing. Aside from a pencil next to the lantern, a rusty letter opener, and a couple of losing scratch-off lottery tickets, there was nothing else inside the tent.

I sat back on my heels. “He wasn’t taken from this tent, right? This is just where he was living? I’m not sure what you expect to find in here.”

Twill was shoving Andy’s clothes back into his bag. “I was hoping to find some chips.”

“Chips?”

Twill stopped and gave me this look, then she reached into the pocket of her shorts and took out several small pieces of paper containing names and phone numbers held together with a paperclip. “That’s what we call these.”

“Your clients.”

“Yeah.” She shoved the note back in her pocket. “If you want . . . clients . . . you basically have three choices around here. You can go through Lou back at the Quick—they’ll put your picture out there, and they weed out the crazies, most of the time. They take a percentage for all that, but it’s worth it, if you ask me. Option Two: You work with a pimp on the streets who offers some of those services, but not quite as organized. Option Three: You go alone. If we find his chips, we’ll know who saw him last.”

She spoke of this as if it were a regular job. Like she sold burgers or freelanced as a hairstylist. I tried not to think about what she was really doing. I couldn’t fault her for it—she was only trying to survive, but I didn’t want to think of her doing . . . that. Not with people she cared nothing about. Not for money.

“So, what did Andy do to get clients?”

“When he was clean, he ran everything through the Quick.” She bit her lower lip. “When he was using, he sometimes went off on his own to try and bring in more money. He’d work the corner.”

I glanced back out the tent flap. “That corner?”

Twill nodded.

​32

​ANSON

Whoever was in the sleeping bag hadn’t moved. Twill and I quietly stepped over and went back to the sidewalk. The rest of the camp appeared abandoned. If Andy had been working this particular corner, I expected to find others doing the same, but if they were there, I didn’t see them. The handful of people who walked by ignored us just as the cars did.

Twill must have known what I was looking for. “Any regulars out here would have heard what happened and gone somewhere else today. They’ll stay away for a little while. The symbol I left will help with that, but sooner or later, they’ll be back, and it will be business as usual.”

I looked up and down the street. “So he would just stand out here?”

Twill nodded. “Someone likes him, they pull up to the curb. There’s a quick negotiation on terms, and Andy would either go with them or back off if he got a bad vibe.”

“He wouldn’t take them to the tent?”

“You never take them home,” Twill stated flatly. “You don’t want them to know where you live. Either do it in the car or on one of these side streets, or go to a hotel. When you’re working the streets, it’s all about the numbers. Keep things moving fast. Line your pockets. Stay visible as much as possible. Stay safe.”

Nothing about any of that seemed safe.

I inched closer to the curb.

“You’re not careful and someone is going to think you’re working.”

“It’s ten in the morning.”

Twill shrugged. “Pervs know no clock.”

Turning slowly, I studied the storefronts. Most were still closed. The pharmacy opened at eleven, and the liquor store didn’t open until twelve. The dry cleaner housing the homeless encampment had been vacant for a while. There were political flyers from an election two years earlier in the windows.

“Anson?”

When I looked back at her, Twill was pointing at the door above the liquor store. Nestled in the corner, barely visible under the awning, was a security camera. A red light indicated it was working, and it appeared to have a full view of the corner, the street, and me.

Oh, you didn’t look for cameras when you first got there, did you? How many times have I told you to understand your surroundings before stepping through a door? When the cops find this place, and you know they will, they’re going to find you standing there on the corner right after rifling through a dead kid’s tent. Your friend stole his money. How is all that going to look? Better get thinking on an explanation.

“There’s a good chance whoever Andy left with is on that camera,” I said quietly.

I meant the words as a rebuttal to Father, but it was Twill who responded. “They open in two hours. Should we wait?”

“They’re not going to give the footage to a couple of kids.” Looking back up and down the sidewalk, I stepped closer to the door. The lock was a MediSteel. A big and bulky deadbolt, the surface was scratched with years of use. “Andy had a letter opener in his tent. Can you get it for me?”

“You can’t be serious?”

I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t serious. I guess she realized that, because she let out a soft huff and made her way back toward Andy’s tent. While she was gone, I reached up and redirected the camera in the opposite direction, careful not to touch it in a way that would leave fingerprints.

Twill returned and handed me the letter opener. “He carried that for protection. He told me you get busted with a knife and it’s a concealed weapon. A letter opener stabs just as good and can’t get you a record.”

I took the letter opener from her and checked the heft. It was cheap metal, but sturdy—it would work. “Can I have your paperclip, too?”

When she handed the clip to me, she turned back to the street. “Get ready to run. I get the feeling what you’re about to do will lead to running.”

The paperclip wasn’t as good as the lock pick kit Father had given me for my twelfth birthday. It took me nearly two minutes to work it through all the tumblers, but the last one finally clicked into place. I slipped the letter opener into the keyhole and carefully twisted both. The bolt slipped back and released. It was old, but well-maintained.

“Wait out here,” I told Twill. “Anyone comes, pound on the door.”

​33

​AMANDA

“​Amanda, dear, can you hear me? It’s time to wake up . . .”

The voice was muffled.

Distant.

As if shouted from the opposite end of a long tunnel lined with foam.

The first time Amanda heard it, she thought it came from Mr. Carmichael, her cheer instructor back at Douglas High. The second time she heard it, she realized that made no sense. She’d run away midway through her sophomore year, and that was a few weeks ago. Mr. Carmichael didn’t know where to find her; nobody did. That was the whole point of running away. To lose yourself. To get lost from others. To find your true self, not the self others wanted you to be.

For as long as she could remember, Amanda wanted to be an actress. Not the kind on television, but the kind you find on the big screen down at the Cineplex. Ten feet tall and larger than life. The kind talked about around the dinner table and photographed in gorgeous gowns on red carpets all over the world, surrounded by equally gorgeous and famous men, with gawking fans held at bay behind velvet ropes. Perfect hair. Perfect makeup. A body toned by personal trainers and dietitians.

Nobody famous ever came from Midbo, Florida.

A fact made painfully obvious with a single glance down the two-lane road passing through the center of town. At the businesses all in various stages of death. At the people trudging along the sidewalks wearing their best hand-me-downs. By the time she was in elementary school, Amanda knew if she wanted to become an actress, she’d have to get out of Midbo. By middle school, she had saved up nearly six hundred dollars and had a solid plan. During her sophomore year of high school, the weekend of the Homecoming Dance, Amanda left a note on the kitchen counter, stole her stepfather’s pickup, and hit the road, taking nothing but the truck, her money, and a duffel stuffed with clothes and her best makeup. She’d start in New York, and once she conquered Broadway, she’d head west to California to start her real career. She didn’t expect to get famous right away—nobody did—but with Broadway behind her, arriving with experience, she’d have a leg up over anyone she might have to compete against.

Amanda had been the prettiest girl in Midbo.

She’d be the prettiest girl in New York.

And she’d be the prettiest girl to land in Hollywood since Judy Garland.

She could sing.

She could dance.

This wasn’t simply a desire.

This was destiny.

Amanda planned to take over the world.

She got as far north as Savannah, Georgia, before things started to go wrong.

Amanda had made it a point to stay in cheaper motels. Not the really bad ones between major cities right off the highway exits, but the classier ones. The ones that offered free HBO and sometimes had a pool. Sometimes they even offered a complimentary breakfast, which was perfect, considering that she had to stretch every dollar. Amanda had been in the small dining room of just such a motel when someone stole her stolen truck. The keys were in her pocket, so she had no idea how they stole it. When she first went out to the parking lot and didn’t see it, she thought maybe she’d just forgotten where she parked. She circled the motel lot three times, hoping to stumble into the truck somewhere else, but she didn’t. And each time she passed that initial parking space, she became more certain that was exactly where she’d left it. The truck was gone.

Amanda had always been a glass half full person, so she sucked in a deep breath, put a smile on her face, and told herself she still had her duffel and she still had her money. Well, down two hundred since she left Midbo after gas, food, and lodging so far, but she still had some money. A little over four hundred. That was more than enough to get her where she needed to go. She’d once read that Madonna arrived in New York with only ten dollars in her pocket, and look at her. She’d have way more than that when she reached the city.

Three semis were gassing up at the pumps. Amanda studied the drivers and settled on an older man, probably late sixties, early seventies, with a nice smile and a “Honk for Jesus” bumper sticker on the back of his rig. Amanda asked if he could take her north; he said he could, and that was that. His name was Jerry.

About forty miles outside Savannah, on a stretch of highway lacking so much as another vehicle for nearly an hour, Jerry pulled his rig to a stop on the shoulder, turned on his flashers, and offered Amanda a proposition. He told her if she wanted to go any further, she’d have to suck his dick. If she didn’t want to do that, she’d have to pay him for the gas he burned taking her this far and get out here. Amanda had no idea where “here” was, and she wasn’t about to do that, not with him, some guy she didn’t even know. She wouldn’t even suck Billy Hayworth’s dick back in Midbo behind the Walmart, and she thought he was cute. Jerry was old and smelled like rubbing alcohol. Amanda politely said no thank you and asked Jerry how much she owed him. When he saw the wad of bills she pulled out of her pocket, he punched her square in the jaw with a solid right hook.

Amanda blacked out.

When she woke, she was on the side of the road, her throbbing head resting on her duffel bag. All her money gone. Jerry hadn’t just taken gas money; he took every cent she had and left her there. The sun was starting to go down, it was getting cold, and Amanda was hungry.

Several cars drove by; nobody stopped. Not until a guy in a brown Mazda. He told her he’d take her as far as Charleston, but she’d have to do something for him. This time, Amanda did it.

“Amanda, dear? Can you hear me? You really need to wake up.”

The voice from earlier.

The one in the tunnel who sounded like Mr. Carmichael.

When Amanda’s eyes fluttered open, she realized it wasn’t Mr. Carmichael.

When she saw where she was, her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t scream—something was in her throat.

​34

​ANSON

“​So you broke in and stole the security camera tape?” Stash frowned at us from behind an ancient, battered desk in the small room that served as his office. “Twill, you know I can’t condone that type of behavior. I’m still trying to make that mess at the hospital go away. Do you know the police have come by here three times looking for you?” His wary eyes held on her for a moment, then shifted over to me. “All of you,” he added.

I slumped a little lower in my seat. Maybe Father was right. Maybe it was time I left.

Twill did not back down. “If we don’t figure out who’s doing this, do you seriously think the cops will? They don’t care about any of us. They’ll conduct some half-assed investigation and drop it in a few days. The second the press loses interest, they’re gone. That’s if Andy’s death even makes the news.”

Stash glanced down at the screen of his laptop for a brief moment before closing the lid. “Where’s this tape now?”

“My friend Paul has it.”

“He’s with Ruddy,” Twill added. “They needed some special machine to play it, and Ruddy said the one they use at the parking lot would work.”

Stash went quiet for a very long time. Finally, he said, “I don’t want any more of this. The Quick exists—the Quick has been allowed to exist—because we stay under the radar of the local authorities. For the most part, they consider our indiscretions to be victimless. As long as nobody is getting hurt, they turn a blind eye. Something like this, though? Breaking into a business? That fires up the locals.”

“Nobody knows it was us,” Twill told him. “Nobody saw us.”

“That you know of.”

“Nobody saw us,” she repeated, firmer this time.

“We didn’t take anything, either,” I said. “Just the tape.”

Stash shook his head and let out a frustrated laugh. “Maybe you should have—did you consider that? If a couple of bottles go missing along with the security tape, it looks like someone broke in to steal alcohol. How do you think it looks when the only thing missing is the security tape? Cops get wind of that, and they’ll think whoever killed Andy grabbed the tape.”

I hadn’t thought of that. He was right, of course, but there was nothing we could do about it now. “I doubt the owner will even report it.”

“You’d better hope you’re right.”

In the chair beside me, Twill’s leg started to bounce. She did that when she got restless. She wanted out of this room. I did too.

Finally, Stash let out a long sigh. “Don’t tell anyone else about this. Let’s hope it all just blows over.” He faced me with a forced smile. “Your friend’s awake. You can see if him if you’d like. Vincent’s in with him now.”

​35

​ANSON

Outside Stash’s office, Twill said she had to go talk to Lou and would see me later. Talking to Lou meant he was likely to slip her another stack of napkins with the names and phone numbers of clients on them—chips, as she called them. I didn’t want to think about that. It reminded me of the nights at Finicky’s when Libby and the other girls would get dressed up and leave with Detectives Welderman and Stocks. When they’d go to that hotel. Chips. That’s all that was, too. Only they had no choice. If you didn’t go with Welderman and Stocks, somebody got hurt. Nobody was twisting Twill’s arm.

I forced all that out of my head as I climbed the short flight of stairs to the small room up top housing the Quick’s makeshift infirmary. Stash’s ex-wife, Meagan, was there. Vincent was in a chair next to the Kid’s bed. The other two beds were empty. I wondered where the old man went.

The Kid was sitting up. Well, he was propped up with a lot of pillows. Most of his head was still covered in bandages, but his single visible eye was open, and when he saw me come through the door, his mouth curled into a crooked smile. “Anson!”

“Hey, Kid.”

“Ten more minutes, then he needs to get some rest,” Meagan told us before stepping out of the room.

I gently nudged the door closed and went to the side of the bed.

Vincent was picking at some loose skin near the nail of his index finger. “Dislocated shoulder. Ruptured spleen. Concussion. Three broken ribs . . . I was just telling him, bouncing back from that might just make him tougher than me. Might.” Vincent tried to wink, which may have been the most awkward thing I’d ever seen because his eye only half closed. Vincent didn’t do sympathy. He certainly didn’t do humor. I hoped never to see him wink at me again.

The Kid tried to smile again, but it was more of a wince. “I’m sorry I mucked up the plan, Anson. Welderman searched us. He never did that before. I think he knew something was wrong the second our tire went flat.”

I thought back on that night. Vincent had let some of the air out of Welderman’s tires right before they left Finicky’s for the hotel with Weasel and the Kid. The hope was that the rim would tear up the tire and they’d go to the local auto supply store near the hotel to get a replacement rather than use the donut spare Welderman kept in the trunk. The Kid had money and a note with a list of parts we needed to repair an old truck we found in the barn. He was supposed to slip the note and cash to whoever was working at the store, but Welderman had found the note and money. The entire plan fell apart. When they confronted us back at Finicky’s, we got lucky and managed to overpower them. We killed Welderman and Stocks, but not before Van Man managed to take off with Weasel. We tied up Finicky and told the girls to meet us at my old house in Simpsonville. When we got there, we found Finicky’s car, but Libby, Tegan, Kristina, and the Kid were gone. The bodies of Welderman and Stocks were in the front seat. Stocks had that note pinned to his chest, signed by Sam Porter:

“You’ve got an hour to take out the trash before I call the locals. Forget the girls. Don’t follow.”

My hands curled into fists at just the thought of that note. I sat on the empty bed to the Kid’s left and straightened my fingers. “What happened in Simpsonville?”

“We never got to Simpsonville. We barely got away from Finicky’s place. There was a police blockade less than a mile down the road. Tegan was driving. Libby was up front with her. Kristina was in back with me. I was lying on the seat under a blanket Libby had found, barely conscious. Libby told Tegan to run through the barricade, but she didn’t. She hid the gun under her seat and stopped the car. Someone yelled, told everyone to get out slowly, but they didn’t give anyone a chance. The second Tegan had the car in park, they yanked the doors open and dragged the girls from the front. I only caught bits and pieces of that. Kristina managed to get to the gun, but then her door was yanked open, too. I felt her slip the gun to me under the blanket as they were pulling her out. Something about feeling the cold metal of the gun in my hand, that woke me up. Pain or not.”

He paused for a second and started to reach for a glass of water with a straw on the table next to him. I got it for him and helped him take a drink before replacing the glass.

“Thanks.” The Kid dabbed the corner of his mouth with his sheet, and when he leaned back, Vincent helped him adjust a few of the pillows. When he was situated again, he went on. “I don’t think they saw me, not at first. Or maybe they knew I was in bad shape and didn’t think I was a threat. I don’t know. Either way, I stayed down, under the blanket. I kept my eyes closed. I got my fingers good and tight around that gun and tried to figure out what was going on by the sounds. Someone was crying—I think it was Kristina. There was a slap. A loud one. Then some quiet. I didn’t recognize any of the voices. I don’t think Van Man was there. If he was, I didn’t hear him.”

“Did you hear anyone use names?” Vincent asked. “What about the name Sam Porter?”

He thought about that for a long moment. “I heard someone say the name Porter, but not because he was there—more like they were talking about him. Maybe they were waiting for him, or they planned to take us to him, something like that. It’s hard to say. Things got real quiet then, almost too quiet. I was about to sit up when someone grabbed me by my ankles and pulled me from the car. I . . .”

His voice trailed off, and his eye grew glossy.

“You what?” Vincent pressed.

The Kid swallowed. “It was a cop. They all were. But they were bad cops, right? All of them? Just like those detectives?”

Vincent nodded. “I’m sure they were.”

“I . . . I shot him,” the Kid said softly. “Through the blanket. When he pulled me from the car, I was on the ground, lying down. I just pointed the gun up at him and pulled the trigger. I’m not sure how many times. I just kept firing until it was empty. Maybe even after—I just kept pulling the trigger. He fell, and a second later, the others were on me—kicking and stomping. They kept going until I blacked out. I didn’t wake up again until I was in the hospital.”

“So you don’t know where they took the girls?”

His gaze fell to the floor.

Vincent leaned closer. “Kid?”

When he looked back up, his single eye was filled with something like fear or hate. I couldn’t quite tell, but I think he was frightened. “Van Man was there at the hospital. Not the whole time; just once. Part of me thought I dreamt it. He was standing in my room, looking down at me.”

“Did he say anything?” I asked.

The Kid nodded slowly. “He told me I killed his friend, and now he had to kill one of mine. He said he didn’t want to, but fair is fair. I told him to kill me. Then he said, ‘No, that wouldn’t hurt enough.’ He would take someone I love and he’d make sure she knew she was dying because of me.” The Kid let out a slow breath and settled back against his pillow. He looked exhausted.

Vincent and I exchanged a look, then Vincent said, “She?”

The Kid nodded.

“He was lying,” I told them both. “They’d never kill one of the girls.”

I didn’t sound very convincing, though. I’m not sure I even believed it.

What little I could see of the Kid’s skin had gone pale. “He said he didn’t want to kill one of my friends, but I could tell he did. He almost looked . . . hungry when he said it. Like he hadn’t eaten in weeks and someone just put a steak in front of him.”

Vincent sat back in his chair and kneaded his fingers together into a twisted knot. “We need to find that bastard.”

“We don’t even know his name.” I frowned. “And the license plate on the van was different every time I saw it. There was K5J34E, JHR591, BB3C91, and a few others. Probably all stolen.”

“You remember all that?”

I nodded.

I expected him to call me a freak again, or some other name, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Do you think Paul could draw him? We could show the picture to Stash and some of the others. Maybe someone at the Quick knows who he is.”

Before I could answer, there was a knock at the door. Meagan poked her head through the opening. “That’s time, gentlemen. Your friend needs to rest. You can come back in a few hours.” She glanced over at me. “Anson, I was told they want you down at the parking lot, in Ruddy’s shack.”

​36

​AMANDA

The man hovered over Amanda in a white lab coat over a crisp, pale blue shirt and a red tie. A stethoscope dangled from his neck. When he bent over, his glasses slid slightly down his pudgy nose, and he pushed them back up with the tip of his finger. The badge on his lapel read, “Dr. Gendal.”

“I’m glad to see you’re finally with us again, Amanda. You gave us all a good scare.”

Amanda tried to move her head, but she couldn’t. It felt like she was strapped down, immobilized somehow. Maybe a band over her forehead? She couldn’t be sure, but that’s what it felt like. Her arms and legs were secured too, and from what little Amanda could see, she was in some kind of hospital bed. The air was cold and crisp, filled with soft whirs and beeps. There was a window on the opposite side of the room, but the heavy drapes were drawn. Sunlight lined the edges. A table against the wall to her right had several bouquets of flowers. There were some get well cards, too.

When Amanda tried to talk, she realized there was something in her throat. She could see a faint outline of something white protruding from her mouth, but it was hard to get a good look at it. There was a moment when she thought she was choking, but the doctor quickly explained.

“You have a breathing tube in,” he told her. “It was necessary after the surgery. I can remove it now if you feel up for it. It will be slightly uncomfortable, but fast. Would you like me to do that?”

Amanda muffled an unintelligible response, and the doctor smiled sympathetically.

“If you’d like me to remove the tube now, blink twice. If you’d rather I wait and do it later, blink once.”

Amanda pinched her eyes shut, opened them, and blinked again. Two deliberate blinks. She didn’t want him to misunderstand. If the tube could come out, she wanted it gone.

“Okay, then,” he said with another smile.

From a box mounted to the wall, he retrieved a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on, then he leaned back over her and gripped the tube with one hand while placing his other hand on her forehead. “Okay, I’m going to count to three, then I’m going to pull it out. I have to warn you, it’s longer than it may seem. I promise, I’ll go as quickly as possible. Ready?”

Amanda blinked twice again.

“Good girl,” Dr. Gendal said. “Here we go—one, two, three!”

He pulled hard on the tube, and Amanda felt a rough scrape against the inside of her throat. She thought she could feel it in her stomach, but it couldn’t possibly be that long, right? He pulled some, then he pulled some more. He adjusted his grip and pulled again. As promised, he did it quickly, but it felt like it took a lifetime. When the last of the tube left her throat and her mouth, Amanda felt like she’d continuously thrown up—one long, never-ending pukefest, like that time Rory Sniggle got her drinking vanilla-flavored vodka and the two of them finished off most of the bottle before her body promptly ejected it.

The tube came out.

Amanda’s body vomited it out.

Amanda choked.

She coughed.

She sucked in a breath and coughed some more. Her eyes glazed over with tears, but not before she managed to glimpse the doctor bringing a cup of water with a straw to her lips. “Drink,” he told her. “Drink. You’ll feel better.”

Amanda drank, and she did feel better.

It was all over in under a minute.

“Thank you,” Amanda managed. Her throat felt like raw sandpaper.

“Let me get this off of you, too.” He reached around the side of her head, unfastened the band from her forehead, and dropped it to the side. “With breathing tubes, we always find it best to immobilize the patient’s head.”

That made sense. Amanda could only imagine what would happen if she had twisted her head in her sleep with that tube in her. She might have choked for real. She remembered her arms then, her legs, and gave those bindings a gentle tug. “Can these come off, too?”

“Soon,” he told her. “You were thrashing around quite a bit in your sleep, and I can’t risk you hurting yourself. Your stitches are still fresh. I’d hate for you to tear them and open a fresh wound.”

Stitches?

Why had she needed stitches?

Amanda tried to remember where she’d been, but her mind was a fuzzy mess. She remembered leaving Midbo. She remembered the stolen truck and Jerry. Remembered getting to Charleston, but things after that were missing. Like someone had erased the tape. She’d seen a movie once where that happened. This woman was in a car accident and couldn’t remember what happened. Is that—

“Was I in an accident?”

This seemed to puzzle the doctor. His head tilted slightly to the side. “An accident? Oh, heavens no. I removed your kidney. That’s why you’re here.”

“My . . .”

Amanda felt the blood leave her face, and she felt something else too, something she hadn’t felt only a moment earlier. A deep pain in her lower left flank.

The doctor’s face melted into a wash of concern. He carefully pulled back the sheets covering Amanda, then tugged up the thin gown draped over her body. She was naked under the gown and felt embarrassed and exposed, but the doctor didn’t so much as glance at her private parts. Instead, he gently ran his finger over a raised incision that started near her belly button and ran toward her back, following the lines of her thigh. “I’m not sure how well you can see this, but the procedure went splendidly. The incision should heal nicely.”

Amanda struggled to find the words. “What happened? Why did you have to remove my kidney?”

The doctor only smiled.

​37

​ANSON

I found Paul and Ruddy hovering around a small television in the cramped guard shack in the parking lot outside the Market. The brown minivan we’d stolen back at the hospital was long gone, and I had yet to meet the man named Paco who apparently disposed of it.

Ruddy’s red braids were tied up in a ponytail at the back of his head. The silver nose hoop was gone, and I was thankful for that. I had a hard time talking to him without staring at it. He had one hand in a bag of chips, while the other was working the controls on the parking lot’s video recorder. When he saw me, he gave me a crooked grin. “Ah, there’s Twill’s boyfriend.”

“Twill’s . . .” I stammered. “I’m not her boyfriend.”

From the stool beside him, Paul rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Romeo. The two of you got the whole place talking with your sneaking off and whatnot.”

Ruddy nodded. “It’s the whatnots that get you. I hear she’s good at whatnots.”

I’d spent enough time with Paul to know when he was trying to get a rise out of me, and this clicked as one of those times. He’d managed to rope in Ruddy, too. I wasn’t about to take the bait, so I pointed at the television and changed the subject. “What did you find?”

Paul held the palm of his hand out to Ruddy. “I told you he’d go with denial. Pay up.”

Ruddy scooped some chips from the bag and dropped them in Paul’s hand. “Twill is a stone-cold smoking hot babe with skills. Wouldn’t catch me hiding, I’d own that, but whatever.”

“True dat,” Paul said.

Paul had never said “true dat” in his entire life. Ruddy was rubbing off on him.

“What did you find?” I repeated, a little firmer this time.

“Okay,” Ruddy said. “All business. I get it.” He twisted back around to the television, pressed rewind on the recorder, and watched the timestamp in the bottom right. When it reached whatever he was searching for, he clicked the stop button. “Before I show you this, there are a few things you need to know. One VHS tape holds about thirty-two hours of footage. When it reaches the end, it rewinds and records over whatever was already on there.”

I didn’t have to do the math to know that was a problem. Andy had been missing for several days before his body turned up—well over thirty-two hours. “So even if he was taken from that corner, the footage is gone.”

“Yeah. I’m guessing you and your new girlfriend got your thief on about a day too late.”

My stomach sank. “So we’ve got nothing.”

The grin returned to Ruddy’s face. “Oh, you got something. Just not the something you expected.”

As Ruddy clicked play, Paul tapped out a drumroll with his index fingers on the shelf at his side.

The television monitor lit up with a clear shot of the street and sidewalk. It caught some of the homeless camp underneath the dry cleaner’s awning, but not all. I could make out the corner of Andy’s tent, but not the flap leading inside.

“Watch the street,” Paul instructed.

I leaned in closer. The timestamp read 1:38 in the morning. There was some traffic, but not much. The sidewalk appeared to be deserted, then someone walked across the frame. A girl, maybe sixteen. She wore a white button-down shirt, a jean skirt, and black heels. Her shirt was tied at the bottom, revealing her bare midriff. She crossed from one side of the camera’s view to the other and vanished from the sidewalk. A moment later, she was back, walking in the opposite direction. I was still very new to this world, but I recognized a working girl.

“Any idea who she is?”

Ruddy tapped pause. “I know all the girls who work through the Quick and I’ve never seen her. I’m guessing she’s new in town. She’s far too pretty to be walking the streets. She should be with one of the escort services. The fact that she is walking the streets tells me she hasn’t been here long enough to learn the players.” He pressed play again.

“Here we go,” Paul said softly.

A moment later, a black SUV pulled to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk. The vehicle’s hazard lights started to flash. An average-sized man got out of the driver’s side door on the far side of the SUV and came around to the back. He was wearing a dark baseball cap, darker sweatshirt, and jeans. The cap was pulled low, blocking views of his face. His hair was tucked under; I couldn’t even make out the color. This guy knew how to hide. He opened the SUV’s back door, reached inside, and pulled out a large bundle. It took me a moment to realize it was a sleeping bag, and judging by the size and apparent weight of it, someone was inside. He positioned the heavy bundle on his shoulder, walked it across the sidewalk, and set it down in the homeless encampment, right outside the flap to Andy’s tent.

“Holy . . .” The word slipped from my lips, but I cut it off before I uttered what wanted to come out next—the kind of word Father would scold me for using.

Ruddy paused the tape again. “Crazy, right?”

My heart was racing. “Twill and I stepped right over that sleeping bag when we went to search Andy’s tent. We could tell someone was in it, but I just assumed they were sleeping.”

“I don’t think they’re sleeping,” Paul said. “That looked a lot like dead weight.”

I suppose whoever was in the bag could have been drugged, but thinking back on it, I didn’t notice any movement. No sounds. If there had been life in that bag, I didn’t notice it. We were watching someone dump a body.

“There’s more,” Ruddy said, clicking play again.

What happened next happened quickly. The man returned to the back of the SUV and stood there for a second. The girl returned. She walked up to him, and he said something to her. She nodded and pointed in the opposite direction down the street, like she was giving him directions to something or someplace. The man’s hand shot out, grabbed her by the back of the head, and slammed her hard against the frame of the SUV. Before she could collapse, he had his arms around her, and in one fluid motion, she was in the back of the SUV. He closed the door, quickly went around to the driver’s side, and got in. A second later, the SUV sped away.

Ruddy clicked stop.

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah,” Paul echoed. “Because of the angle, you can’t see the license plate. We think it’s a Toyota Highlander. Oh, and I made this.”

Paul handed me a sketch of the girl.

It was damn good.

“I was thinking we could show that around the Quick. Maybe someone knows who she is.”

“Good idea.” I pocketed the drawing. “That reminds me. Do you think you can draw Van Man? Maybe we can figure out who he is, too.”

“One step ahead of you, bro.” He plucked a sketchpad from the shelf at his side and began flipping back through the pages. Although he’d just started the pad when we arrived at the Quick, he already had several dozen new images for his comic, The Misadventures of Maybelle Markel. He thumbed by those and found a nearly perfect likeness of Van Man. “I drew it yesterday. I planned to show it to Stash.” He tore the page out and handed it to me. “Probably better you or Vincent give it to him. I don’t think he likes me much.”

“Why not?”

Paul’s face flushed red. “There was a coed bathroom incident.”

Ruddy suppressed a smile. “Apparently, Paul spent an unusual amount of time in the showers yesterday and a couple of the girls lodged complaints.”

“I’m a clean, hygienic person. I make no apologies for the amount of time necessary to remain in such a state.”

“You’re a pervert who got caught getting your perv on.” Ruddy clicked eject on the recorder and handed me the tape. “You need to give this to Stash, too.”

​38

​ANSON

When I couldn’t find Stash in the market or anywhere in the Quick, I knocked on his office door and found that room empty, too. His desk lamp was on. A steaming cup of coffee sat next to his laptop. The air held the tingle of someone gone, but not long ago. As if the dust had been disturbed by their exit and had yet to settle.

It’s not right to pry.

Father had taught me that.

I had no intention of prying.

But the laptop was on his desk, and I caught a glimpse of the screen from the open doorway. Had the image on that screen been anything other than what it was, I would have turned and walked away. Maybe I would have waited out in the hallway, because how far could he have gone? In my fifteen years on the planet, I had yet to see an adult abandon a perfectly good cup of coffee.

It was the image, though.

That’s what grabbed me.

Because it was an image of me.

Before I could consider just how wrong it was to do so, I stepped into his office, went right up to his desk, and turned the screen to get a better look.

A paused video.

Best I could tell, a camera was mounted in some high corner of the cafeteria. It captured most of the room, including the memorial wall, and on the screen, that’s where I stood. More accurately, I stood on a chair facing the memorial wall, a ball of red yarn in one hand while my other hand fastened the yarn to a photograph near the center. My face was turned away from the camera, not visible, and I was grateful for that, because I had no memory of getting up on that chair or placing the string, and I’m not sure I could stomach seeing my face as I did it. When I woke in the cafeteria, the tableau had been complete—red string intertwined through all the images, newspaper articles, and memorabilia on the wall, following some kind of order my waking brain did not understand, but somehow, my subconscious had. A puzzled-out history of the disappearances from the Quick dating back decades.

Looking upon it now, seeing myself standing there, brought the same shiver down my spine I had felt when I woke there looking up at it with no memory of completing the work and no grasp of the amount of time I had lost in doing so.

“I’ve watched it four times now,” Stash said from behind me. “And I still can’t make heads or tails of how you did it. Half of those have no dates or anything else to signify order. Yet, somehow, best I can tell, you got it right.”

I hadn’t heard him return, and given the chance, I’m sure Father would have scolded me for not paying better attention to my surroundings, but he didn’t get the chance. My mind was ablaze with noise, with thoughts; there simply was no room for him to shout at me from his milk crate.

I tried not to look surprised as I faced Stash, and I’m sure I failed miserably. “I didn’t . . .”

The words simply trailed off because there was no proper ending to that sentence.

I didn’t do it.

I didn’t mean to intrude.

I didn’t overstep, did I?

I didn’t tell anyone.

I didn’t kill them.

It was that last one that stuck in my head. Because there was no way I could have killed them. I didn’t know any of those people, and I’d never been to the Quick before. Until the fire at my home and the loss of Mother and Father, I had never left Simpsonville. I couldn’t have killed them, but that was it, wasn’t it? In my mind’s eye, when I’d gone to that dark place and something else took over and hung that string, that was how I came upon the order. I didn’t see the things on that wall through my own eyes—I saw them through the eyes of a killer, and the killer remembered exactly what order the victims belonged in.

“I should go,” I said softly. And I wanted to, but Stash was standing in the middle of the door and didn’t look like he had any intention of letting me out just yet. His eyes remained fixed on me.

“As best I can tell, your string followed the timeline of the killings. Yet, you skipped many of the people up on that wall.”

“They weren’t all murdered,” I told him. “Most of the people up there left on their own.”

I had no idea how I could possibly know that, but I did. I knew it with the same certainty I knew my own name.

Stash stepped from the doorway with hesitancy, like he knew I might run and didn’t want to give me an opening. He cautiously went to his desk and twisted the laptop around. He pointed at a newspaper article near the top left corner of the wall. “That’s Leonard Brill. He was found stabbed behind the Market four years ago. Clearly murdered. Yet you skipped him with your string.”

“Because he wasn’t killed by the same person who killed Andy, Emily, and the others. He was killed by someone else.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

I had no answer. I simply knew it, and that wasn’t an answer. I pointed at one of the other ones bypassed by the red string. “Just like that one was a mugging gone wrong, or this poor girl, she was raped and strangled, but that was a crime of opportunity; it’s not part of these others, either. Probably killed by some drunk tourist.”

“That’s Kendall Swinton,” Stash said. “They never caught the person responsible.”

He clicked play on the laptop, and the video came to life. If there was sound, the volume was off. I was surprised by how quickly I moved. There was no hesitancy as I placed the string. I simply moved from one person to the next, connecting the invisible dots.

“You have some kind of gift, Anson. I’m not sure how else to describe it.” He sat on the corner of his desk. “You see it, don’t you? Some kind of pattern. I don’t believe in the supernatural. I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at. What I do believe is that you’re able to somehow identify with the killer. Relate? Maybe that’s the right word. You see his last victim up on that wall, and somehow, you can tell who comes next. Who he’d choose next? Is that it? What does that say about you?” Stash pondered. “Does that mean that’s who you would choose next?”

I didn’t answer that question. I didn’t want to. It wasn’t because Stash had asked the question; it was because I didn’t want to know the answer. I suspected he was right, and that frightened me. Saying such out loud, admitting it. That would be too much.

I think you missed something, Champ. You glossed right over it with all this pitter-patter introspection. When it comes to the order of the murders, you were raised to understand. You were trained to understand. Honestly, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t see the pattern. I spotted it right away. But that’s not what you should be focused on right now; that’s the B story. You and I know why you see the pattern. Shouldn’t you be asking yourself how Stash knows the correct pattern?

With that, my breath caught in my throat. I swallowed it back down and hoped Stash didn’t notice. His eyes hadn’t left me. His mind was no doubt still caught on what he asked me. Then Father voiced the question hanging by a thread at the corner of my consciousness.

Do you think Stash knows who is next? I think he does, and I’m not sure I like the way he’s looking at you.

I backed up, and my legs bumped the seat of the chair behind me. I didn’t mean to do it. Showing fear of any kind was the sort of thing Father would scold me for, but I couldn’t help it. The videotape nearly dropped from my hand, and an image flashed behind my eyes—the man on the tape dressed in dark clothes, the man who dumped a body and smacked that girl’s head against the frame of the vehicle before abducting her. He was about Stash’s size, right? They were the exact same size.

“I need to go.”

I pushed past him and shot out the door before he could stop me. I half expected him to shout out my name, grab me, haul me back, but he did none of those things. I felt his eyes on me, though. Even as I left the Quick, I felt his eyes on me. Outside the market, too. And I couldn’t help but wonder—where else did he have cameras?

​39

​ANSON

The sun had dropped by the time I stopped walking. Charleston was known for its tepid climate, but any heat that might have built up during the course of the day had vanished, and I found myself shivering as I stood on the far end of Euclid Lane. If asked, I couldn’t tell you how long I had walked. I was certain it had been hours, but how many, I had no idea. I’d eaten nothing but a candy bar purchased from a corner QuickMart earlier, and my stomach was on the verge of gurgling again. I didn’t lose time—there was no blackout like with the wall back at the cafeteria—instead, my mind was occupied with thoughts of the people on that wall and the various means by which they connected to Stash and the Quick. I couldn’t possibly know the intricacies of that, not without research, but I could speculate. I imagined most of them arrived at the Quick in much the same way Vincent, Paul, the Kid, and I did. Stumbled into it by word of mouth. This safe haven hidden in plain sight. Introductions to Stash would have come in much the same way—a simple meeting sometime after arrival through whoever introduced the latest visitor to the Quick. Most likely a hurried introduction, as Stash always seemed to have someplace else he needed to be. Was that all it took? A simple shake of the hand, and Stash knew whether or not you’d be going up on that wall? Whether or not he’d do something that would put you up on that wall? Of course, that was all speculation. I had no proof he was responsible; there was only my gut. I expected Father to point that out to me, but he remained silent, and that too spoke volumes.

Euclid Lane.

When I closed my eyes, I saw it clearly.

Twill opening the wallet she lifted from the homicide detective hovering over Andy’s body. The quick flash of the detective’s driver’s license inside.

Gracie Moss. 57 Euclid Lane. Charleston.

I remained hidden at the far end of the street among a copse of willow trees until a late model dark green sedan pulled into the small but well-maintained bungalow at 57. Detective Moss climbed out with an armload of files and a large mobile phone perched precariously on her shoulder, held awkwardly by her tilted head. She spoke in an urgent but hushed tone, not loud enough for me to make out the words. A moment later, she vanished inside, and various lights came on, illuminating the interior.

My hand was in my empty pocket, reaching for the knife that should be there, but wasn’t. I hadn’t thought to pick up a replacement, but I made a mental note to do so. There were several stands within the market under the Quick that sold weapons. While it wouldn’t be my knife, it would be a knife, and that was better than nothing.

When certain I was alone, I left the trees and followed the sidewalk to the detective’s house. When I reached the row of hedges that separated her property from the neighbors, I ducked behind the bushes and followed them to her small but tidy backyard. There was no swing set. No toys. That told me she most likely didn’t have kids. I saw nothing that screamed husband, either. Aside from a few potted plants in much need of water, the yard contained nothing, and I got the distinct impression that the detective lived alone. When she parked, she pulled down the center of the driveway, leaving no room on either side for a second car. She was an attractive woman. After seeing her back at the alley, I couldn’t deny that. If she was alone, it was by choice. Probably some conscious decision to put career first, personal life second.

Her elongated shadow passed across sheer white curtains drawn over a back window. A moment later, another window with frosted glass came to life. Most likely a bathroom. I waited a few seconds, and when the light remained on, I went to the back door. Although it was locked, the window to the right of it was not. I raised it slowly, as quietly as I could, and slipped inside.

I found myself in a modest kitchen fitted with the usual appliances. The limited counter space was uncluttered with the exception of a day or two’s worth of mail stacked in the corner, and what appeared to be the contents of her pockets—coins, a few crumpled bills, an elastic hair tie, and a few copies of her business card. I scooped up one of the cards and pocketed it. To my right, a refrigerator hummed. An arched doorway led to the living room across from where I stood.

I closed my eyes and went perfectly still.

Listened.

If she was still on the phone, she was not speaking. I heard no movement. No squeaking of floorboards. No rifling of papers. There was only the refrigerator and the ticking of a clock somewhere else in the house.

Careful in my movement, I made my way to the living room.

The folders Detective Moss had carried in were stacked precariously on a dining room table along with dozens of others. Her purse was there too, and so was her gun, still in the holster. She apparently just shrugged it off. I suppose when you live alone, you can do such things as leave a gun in the middle of the room, but it still seemed odd to me. She’d discarded her shoes, too. They were in the middle of the floor, halfway to a narrow hall off the living room, most likely leading to her bedroom and the bathroom I’d seen from outside.

I heard the quick groan of pipes, then the sound of running water coming from that direction.

A shower.

I drew closer to the table and began thumbing through the folders. We were all there—Twill, Paul, Vincent, Ruddy, Stash, Pudge. The stack she’d brought in only added to the dozens already on that table—other residents of the Quick I recognized by photo if not by name. My folder was the third one down, and while there wasn’t much, there was enough. There was information on the fire in Simpsonville, the bodies found in my house, and limited information on both of my parents. Both were marked “deceased,” which caused my heart to thump. I recognized the photograph of me from one taken at Camden Treatment Center, where I was placed under the watchful eye of Dr. Joseph Oglesby before being moved to Finicky’s. Although Dr. Oglesby’s notes weren’t there, she’d written his name on the front of the folder, underlined it twice, and circled it. If she hadn’t reached out to him yet, she clearly intended to.

I went back to Stash’s folder.

His real name was Leonard Benson, forty-three years old. Apparently, he held a degree in socioeconomics from Stanford, but his last listed employment was with the call center for an insurance company in customer service—hardly his desired profession. He’d left there six years ago, and according to a printout from the IRS, he hadn’t filed taxes since. His file also contained a criminal record. He’d been arrested three years ago for assault. A bar fight at someplace called Hannigan’s, about half a mile from the Quick. According to the arresting officer’s report, Stash had spent the better half of an afternoon on a stool alternating between beer and whiskey, growing belligerent (officer’s word). When the bartender cut him off and eventually asked him to leave, Stash refused and made a grab for a bottle behind the counter. That prompted an altercation with the bartender, who was quickly joined by a bouncer and several patrons. They subdued Stash until police arrived. He was arrested, charged, and booked downtown. At some point, Stash told the arresting officer he was drinking because of a “marital disagreement” (again, the officer’s words). All must have been forgiven by morning, because Meagan posted bail. A judge ordered Stash to pay five hundred dollars in restitution and perform one hundred hours of community service. He did so at a homeless shelter not far from the Quick. There was also an arrest for shoplifting two years before the bar incident, and although the records weren’t in the file, a note in the top corner indicated a sealed juvenile record also existed. As with Dr. Oglesby’s name, Detective Moss had circled Meagan’s name on the arrest report. If she pulled a file on Meagan, I didn’t see it on the table anywhere.

A yellow Post-it note stuck out from Pudge’s file, and when I opened to the marked page, I found he had been arrested, too. Although he had been a juvenile, Detective Moss had somehow pulled the full report. The word “violent” was stamped across the top in red letters, and when I read on, I understood why. Pudge (real name Leroy Boyle) had nearly beaten his stepfather to death after the man punched Pudge’s mother in the gut. “Violent” was an understatement. Pudge had thrown the man from a second-story window, then went downstairs and repeatedly smashed the man’s head against the ground until four neighbors managed to pull him away. The fact that the man lived was a miracle. His stepfather spent two weeks in a drug-induced coma as doctors waited for the swelling to go down, then nearly a year in rehab. Although Pudge was charged criminally, a judge reduced the sentence and committed him to a psychiatric facility for treatment based on the professional analysis of—

When I read the name, I did a double-take and found myself reading it again:

Dr. Joseph Oglesby.

Pudge spent nearly a year at Camden, two years before I would walk through the door. I wondered if—

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The detective’s voice came from behind me, from that narrow hall, the shower still running somewhere deeper in the house.

​40

​ANSON

“​Turn,” Detective Moss said, drawing closer. “But keep it slow. Both hands above your head.”

At first, I made no effort to move. I kept my back to her. My eyes were on her holstered gun, just inches from my hand. I knew my way around guns; Father had taught me much about them. Her service weapon was a Glock 22. While such a gun didn’t have a safety and could be fired quickly, I’d never get it free from that holster fast enough, particularly if she also had another gun, and the tingling on the back of my neck told me she did.

“Turn around, dammit. I’m not going to tell you again.”

I did, but I didn’t raise my hands. Instead, my fingertips crawled across the table and inched closer to her service weapon.

Detective Moss stood at the mouth of the hall, fully clothed, the shower being a ruse. A snub nose .38 was in her outstretched hand, pointing at my chest. “There’s a pair of handcuffs in my purse. I want you to reach in slowly, take them out, and put them on.”

Again, I did no such thing. Instead, I raised my voice and said, “Vincent, don’t shoot her unless you have to!”

Vincent wasn’t in the house—he was nowhere near this house—but she didn’t know that. I could tell by the look washing over her face that she had no idea if I was alone or not. To her credit, she quickly regained her composure, and the hand holding the gun didn’t so much as twitch.

“You,” she said.

“Me.”

“If your hand gets any closer to my gun, I’ll tack on attempted homicide when I book you.”

“I’m leaving.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

I nodded toward the folders. “You really have no clue who is doing this, do you?”

Her eyes narrowed, dug into me. “Well, now I have at least one solid suspect.”

“You know I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“I know you were in the hospital when the medical examiner was killed. Security cameras put you on that floor.”

“I didn’t kill the medical examiner.”

That was true. Twill killed the medical examiner. I wasn’t about to volunteer that information, though. Twill seemed perfectly capable of getting in trouble without my help. “And if you’re half the detective I think you are, you know he was involved in the murders. Not directly, but helping to cover them up. Best I can tell, he’s falsifying the cause of death. Blaming it on overdoses when it’s not.”

If she was aware of that, she gave no indication. She said nothing.

“I didn’t know Andy,” I continued. “I didn’t know Emily, either. I never met them. We both know this has been going on a lot longer than I’ve been around. It couldn’t be me.”

Her eyes remained on me for a long time, silently burning into me. Finally, she said, “The red folder to the left of your hand. Open it.”

I saw the red folder on the table, but opening it meant moving away from the gun. She somehow knew I was considering that because she added, “It’s okay. If I try anything, your friend, Vincent, can shoot me, right?”

“Right,” I said, adding, “Watch her, Vincent,” for good measure.

The red folder contained several 8x10 photographs, along with a preliminary homicide report. The photographs were of a woman. If her eyes hadn’t been open, I might have thought she was sleeping, but they were open, thin slits filled with milky white. Her lips were tinged purple, slightly parted. She was lying in a partially open sleeping bag—one I recognized.

“You found her outside Andy’s tent, didn’t you?”

“Nicole Dickson. Thirty-five years old. She died of an overdose; heroin laced with fentanyl.”

“Did you find a hole in the back of her head?”

I don’t think she expected me to know about the hole, because for the first time, her stone face faltered for a moment before she answered. “We did.”

“Why is he doing that?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I think you want to.”

There was a slight twitch in her left eye; she didn’t look away, but I could tell she was weighing exactly what she was willing to tell me and what she wouldn’t. Then she said something I didn’t expect. “He’s drilling a hole and using some device to remove their brains. Some kind of pump.”

“Removing their . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. My brain was too busy trying to make sense of it. In my mind’s eye, I saw the hole in the back of Emily’s head. I was right about the drill, but why would someone remove the brain? Then Detective Moss said something else that threw me.

“The woman in the sleeping bag was Andy’s mother.”

“His mother?”

She nodded. “How do you know about the holes?”

“I saw the one on Emily,” I told her. “In the morgue.”

“Right before you killed him?”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Who did?”

I didn’t answer that.

Detective Moss pursed her lips for a second. “The medical examiner was told not to mention the hole in his reports or with the press. We held it back to help identify the killer. Nobody knows. Outside of investigating officers, you’re the first to mention it to me.” The hand holding her gun stiffened. “That doesn’t exactly scream innocent.”

Not just me.

Twill knew.

Stash knew.

Who else?

Then I realized something else. “So the medical examiner wasn’t falsifying his reports—he was following your instructions?”

Detective Moss nodded.

That meant Twill killed an innocent man. I couldn’t tell the detective that. For all I knew, Twill had heard about it from Stash. I understood why the police would hold it back, though—they regularly did that in such investigations. I should have considered that. “Did Andy have a hole too? Like Emily?”

Detective Moss nodded.

“Aside from Andy and Emily, how many others do you have . . . with the same hole?”

“Twenty-six.”

There was no hesitation as she said it. Clearly, it was a number she knew well.

I thought back to the memorial wall at the Quick. Flashes of the red yarn connecting people. “Dating back at least two decades, right?”

Again, she nodded. “The first one was eighteen years ago.”

I had placed the VHS tape on the table to the side of the folders. I nudged it closer to her. “You’ll want to watch this. It’s the security footage from the liquor store on that corner.”

I didn’t say I stole it; I only clarified what it was. She didn’t press me on it. Instead, she said, “The killer is somewhere in the Quick.”

“Watch the tape.”

Her gun hand didn’t falter, but her eyes shifted to my folder on the table. “All those bodies they found in your house. Did you kill them? Before setting the fire?”

Time to go, Champ. You want no part of this dance.

I took a step toward the kitchen. “I’m leaving now, and you’re going to let me,” I told her.

“Don’t move. I called for backup. You’re going to stay right there until they arrive.”

I kept going.

When I backed out of the room and quickly ducked through the same window I’d used to enter her house, she did nothing to stop me. I heard the window come down behind me and lock. I felt her eyes on me as I ran down the street. I wondered if she searched the house for Vincent. I suspected not. I doubted she really called for backup, either.

​41

​AMANDA

The doctor was at the window, whistling. Amanda couldn’t tell what he was looking at. He’d only pulled the curtain back an inch or so, but he seemed intently fixed on it.

“Why did you remove my kidney?” Amanda asked for the second time as anxiety grew within her. First, it was only this tiny pinprick in her gut, but now, it was spreading across her skin, through her limbs, to the tips of her fingers and toes.

With a soft sigh, the whistling stopped, and the doctor let the curtain fall back into place. He went to the foot of her bed, retrieved a clipboard, and scribbled some kind of note. Finally, he looked back at her. “You don’t recall?”

Amanda shook her head.

He pursed his lips and nodded solemnly. “That’s probably the anesthesia. It can sometimes induce short-term memory loss. I imagine you don’t recall the two of us speaking in the moments before you went to the operating room or following the surgery? We spoke at length both times.”

Amanda didn’t remember any of that, and when she shook her head again, she felt a dull ache in her right temple. That particular pain hadn’t been there moments earlier. Whatever it was, it was growing sharper. Like it too had been asleep and was waking with her. “I don’t recognize you at all.”

The doctor tilted his head, this sympathetic look washing over his face. “You and I have known each other for the better part of two weeks. We’ve had many conversations aside from those here in the hospital. Like I said, it will all come back to you. You just need to be patient.”

“Why did you remove my kidney?”

This time, his gaze did not falter. “Because you asked me to.”

That hit Amanda like a punch in the gut. “I asked you to?”

“You needed money, Amanda. You came to me through the recommendation of a mutual friend. I’m employed by an organ broker. He offered you five thousand dollars for one of your kidneys, and you accepted.” He nodded across the room at a black bag resting in the far corner. “Your payment is in that bag. Cash. As agreed.”

Amanda didn’t remember any of this.

She pushed, pulled, tugged at her brain, and none of it came out. This couldn’t be happening. It was all a bad dream. She’d wake any second. She’d wake and shake it off. Maybe it had all been a dream—maybe when she finally did wake, she’d find herself back in Midbo, in her own bed. Maybe she’d wake to find Brian Delroy in her living room, dressed in a suit, waiting to take her to the homecoming dance. Her parents at the foot of the stairs with a camera, both beaming—their little girl, all grown up and looking so beautiful.

“Amanda?” the doctor said. “Are you okay? You look a little flushed.” He took her hand and pressed his finger to her wrist. “Your heart is racing.”

Amanda could not only feel her heart pounding—she could hear it. The monitor behind her head was beeping frantically, and that seemed odd. Why was he taking her pulse by touch when the machine she was wired to reflected the results in real time?

The doctor gently lowered her wrist and patted the back of her hand. “You’re young and strong. You’ll be just fine. No reason to get fired up.”

“Is this even legal?”

The smile returned to his face. “Of course, dear. You’ve donated your kidney to a willing recipient in exchange for a nominal fee. All perfectly above board. Would any of us be here if it wasn’t?”

Amanda didn’t like it when he called her “dear.” Something about it made her feel dirty. Icky. That made her think about how he’d lifted the sheet and her gown to show her the scar, how he put her private parts on display for the world to see without a second thought. He still hadn’t covered her back up, not completely. Being strapped down, it was difficult to see, but she could feel the cool air on her exposed skin. She wanted to be covered up. She wanted to crawl deep under those blankets and hide someplace where the light couldn’t find her, but she couldn’t move.

None of this seemed legal, and if it was, would they really pay in cash? Cash in a bag left in the corner of the room?

The doctor sat on the edge of the bed, and rather than cover her back up, he tossed the sheets aside and raised her gown enough to expose her breasts. He studied her for a moment, then said, “The scar from the kidney will be easy enough to conceal. When you’re wearing underwear, it really won’t be noticeable at all. And of course, it will fade with time, as most scars do. This one, though . . .” He pressed his index finger to the space between her breasts and gently traced a line down about four inches, then he curved off to her left side following the muscles of her toned abdomen. “This scar will be far more noticeable, I’m afraid. Unfortunately, there is no other way to reach your liver.”

Amanda wasn’t sure she heard him right. “What’s wrong with my liver?”

At this, he looked confused. “Nothing’s wrong. If there were, you wouldn’t be such an ideal harvest candidate. As it stands, you and your organs are all in pristine condition.”

“You can’t take my liver.”

He took her hand in his again. “Well, not all of it. That would be fatal. The contract only requires a donation of fifty percent. You really don’t remember this, do you?”

Amanda shook her head.

“Well, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The half you’ve agreed to give up will go to a worthy donor, and your remaining liver will eventually grow to replace what is removed at no detriment to your remaining quality of life. Typical regeneration only takes about three to four months. You should take solace in the lives you’re saving with these gifts. You, Amanda, are a very special person.” He stood and rounded the bed. “Try to get some rest. We’re scheduled to be back in the ER in less than two hours.”

​42

​ANSON

It was after one in the morning by the time I made it back to the Quick. In the quiet market down below, I located one of the tables selling weapons, and I found a Ranger buck knife nearly identical to my own. It only took a moment to pick the lock on the case and retrieve it. I left a wad of bills in its place, enough to cover the cost. The handle was different, smoother than mine. Unused. Unproven. But it was a fine weapon, and when I slipped it into my pocket, the familiar weight brought a sense of relief over me not unlike returning home after a long time away.

Pudge was at the top of the stairs, asleep in his chair. His head lolled to the side, with a trail of drool dripping from the corner of his mouth to his shoulder as he snored. Oddly, seeing him like that—the sheer size of him—I had no trouble picturing him picking up his stepfather and tossing him through a window. Nor was it difficult to imagine him bashing the man’s head against the ground. Pudge was a menacing presence. The strange thing was, I couldn’t imagine a waking Pudge doing those things. Although his size was intimidating, when he was awake, he was really just this gentle giant. Even when he waved the gun at us, I didn’t think he’d actually use it.

A blanket had pooled around his feet. I picked it up and draped it over him before heading to the bathroom for a shower.

When I heard someone crying, a female someone, my mind skipped back to the nights at Camden Treatment Center. From the moment Libby arrived in that godawful place, she had cried every night. These mournful sobs drifted to me through the air vents and around the cracks in the doors. Although I hadn’t met Libby until weeks later at Finicky’s House for Wayward Children, I got to know her from those sobs. I fell in love with her through those sobs. When she and I finally touched, we connected as if we’d always touched. As if together was right, and even inches apart was wrong. When I heard someone crying from deep within the bathroom of the Quick, there was a brief moment where I thought Libby had somehow found her way back to me, and I found myself rushing through the otherwise dark space toward that voice.

It wasn’t Libby, though; it was Twill.

I found her in the last shower stall behind the drawn plastic curtain. She was naked on the floor, pressed against the tile in the corner, with her knees drawn up against her chest and wrapped beneath her arms. The scalding water rained down on her through a cloud of steam, cascading through her hair and over her body. A scrub brush was on the floor beside her, along with a worn bar of soap.

“Twill?”

Her red-eyed gaze drifted up to me—first in fear, then her face softened when she realized it was me. Through the falling water of the shower, she reached a hand out to me, and I took it. She guided me to the floor beside her, and I ignored the fact that I was fully dressed and my clothing was getting wet throughout. I ignored the fact the water was far hotter than I liked it. I settled in the space beside her and put my arm around her shoulder to draw her close.

Aside from Libby, I’d never held another girl so close. And while someone like Paul might not understand this, the fact that she was naked had no bearing on the moment for me. This wasn’t about that—this was something else entirely. I think Twill felt that too, because she buried her face in my shoulder and cried even deeper. She pressed into me like she’d climb inside my body if she could. Like I was some warm, comforting blanket she desperately needed, and I let her. I wanted her to. I held her tight and wished to take on her pain. We sat there like that for nearly thirty minutes. It wasn’t until Twill finally looked at me and leveled a weak smile, when she said, “You’re soaked, Anson,” that either of us spoke at all.

She was right, of course. There wasn’t a dry spot on me. I could even feel water sloshing around in my shoes. I ran my hand through my hair and slicked it back from my face. “I needed a shower and I also needed to do laundry, so . . .”

Her puffy eyes narrowed. “Was that an attempt at a joke?”

“I think so.”

“It’s probably best you don’t do it again.” She said it with this deadpan expression, and for a moment, I thought she was serious; then her tepid smile returned. “That was also a joke.”

“I don’t think either of us is destined for a life in comedy.”

“Definitely not.” Twill reached up and turned off the water before quickly covering herself back up as best she could. “Do you think you could get me a towel?”

“Sure.”

I got to my feet and sloshed over to the towel rack on the wall, for the first time noticing Twill’s discarded clothing on the floor. The heel of one of her shoes was missing, and the dark blue dress she’d been wearing was torn at the collar; half the buttons were missing. When I handed Twill the towel, I noticed fresh bruises on her left arm, both legs, and the side of her neck. “What happened?”

“Just some asshole.” Twill took the towel from me and stood. “Think you can turn around?”

I didn’t realize I’d been staring, and my cheeks flushed. I turned and faced the other direction. “Did he hurt you?”

At first, she didn’t answer. I could only hear the towel against her skin as she dried, then she let out a soft sigh. “I had a date with a guy named Keith. It was supposed to be some fancy night out. Dinner, dancing, then, well, you know . . . some of these guys are like that. They want the full girlfriend experience, and I don’t mind. I kinda like that. It gives me a chance to pretend things are normal. I’d been out with him before, and the last time, he was a perfect gentleman, so I was sort of looking forward to it, you know? He told me to meet him at the coffee shop off Market on King Street at six. Wow, was I surprised when a big black limo pulled up. The kind that stretches on for a city block. The driver got out, opened the back door, and there was Keith, beaming at me.” She fell silent for a second, and her face softened into a frown. “I should have known something was wrong when I saw him. He told me to dress up, but he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. It didn’t click. I guess I figured he just hadn’t had time to change yet. So I got in. I didn’t see the other guys until the driver closed the door. Until I heard it lock. You can turn around now.”

I turned back around, and Twill was standing there in a puddle, the towel wrapped around her and tucked in just right to stay in place. Most of the bruises were covered up—all but the one on her neck and another on her right shoulder. “The other guys?”

She nodded. “Three of them. They were sitting on the bench seat across from Keith, all the way toward the front. I could tell by the looks on their faces they’d been drinking a while. I told Keith I wanted to get out. He told me everything would be okay, and the car started moving. I told him I needed to talk to Lou—he’d only paid for one guy, and I don’t do the group thing. Ever. Keith said they had money, a lot of money, and they’d make it worth my while, and that just made me want to get out of the car more. The looks on their faces. They looked like wolves. Hungry wolves that hadn’t eaten. I told him no way and grabbed for the door handle. That’s when he hit me . . . the first time.” The tears had started to come back, and Twill looked down at her feet. She curled her toes in the puddled water. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. None of it.”

Although I was cold, every inch of me wet, and my clothing hung damp and heavy on my body, the only thing I felt was the newly acquired knife in my pocket. The weight of it. The heat.

“Say something, Anson.”

She looked so small. Nothing like the Twill I first met. Nothing like the tough girl I’d gotten to know. She looked like a bird who’d fallen from a tree and broken her wing. I didn’t want to think of her that way. She was so much stronger than that.

I licked my lips. “Do you know where they live?”

​43

​ANSON

Twill had no idea where Keith lived; she didn’t even know his last name. But she did know where he was staying, at least for the night, because after an hour in the limo, they’d taken her there. He and his buddies had booked a cottage on Charleston Harbor for the weekend. Some kind of boys’ getaway. A small two-bedroom place with a kitchenette and water views built on short pillars that raised it several feet off the ground to avoid flooding. It was a little after three in the morning when Twill and I arrived in a car borrowed from Ruddy’s parking lot. One he said wouldn’t be missed for a few days. We left the car down the street and approached the cottage on foot, sticking to the trees surrounding the property. The limo was long gone; there was only a dark green Ford Expedition in the driveway.

“Are you sure this is it?”

She nodded. “That’s Keith’s truck.”

We were both dressed in dark clothes. Twill’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail under a black ball cap. I handed her a pair of latex gloves pilfered from the Quick’s infirmary before tugging another pair on my hands.

This is a really bad idea, Champ. This is the kind of bad idea that leads to bad choices that become bad circumstances, all ending in a big steaming pile of bad. It’s noble of you to want to defend this girl, but it’s not your fight. Frankly, the longer you stay around these people, the deeper your hole seems to get. And let’s be honest—she made her particular bed before she lay down in it.

“There’s no excuse,” I muttered.

“What?”

I glanced at her, embarrassed. “Sorry, just talking to myself.”

She gave me an odd look, and I quickly changed the subject. “Do you remember the layout?”

With a nod, she turned back toward the cabin. “The doors off that front porch open on a combination living and dining room with the kitchen in the back. All wide open. Keith took the bedroom on the left. The fucker probably lit a hundred candles in there trying to make it look romantic. Like that mattered, considering what they did to me on that bed and on the floor.” She drew in a deep breath and pushed the thought from her head before going on. “There’s another bedroom on the right with two double beds. I’m guessing the other two guys are in there. It’s also possible only one of them took the room, and the other is on the pull-out couch in the living room. No way to know without breaking in. There’s a second door around the back. That one is better if you want to get inside. It opens on a back hallway between the kitchen and a bathroom with views of the living room. If someone is sleeping in the living room, at least we could surprise them that way.”

Although wooden shades were closed on the windows, flickering candlelight was visible from what must have been Keith’s room. The rest of the cottage appeared dark, though. No signs of movement. “Were they awake when you left?”

Twill shook her head. “Only Keith. The other two had been passing a bottle of rum back and forth all night. They passed out about two hours after we got here.”

“What are their names?”

“What does it matter? Asshole One and Asshole Two. Go with that.”

She was right, of course; their names meant nothing. We were here because of their actions, not because of who they were. Knowing their names would not change what would come next. Our actions were defined by their actions and—

“Anson?”

I’d slipped away again, if only for an instant. Twill seemed oddly dialed into me and picked right up on it; nothing slipped by her. She had this hyperawareness. Like she was somehow moving and thinking at a faster speed than the rest of us. Mother and Father had been like that, too, particularly in the moments before a kill.

“We’ll enter through the back,” I told her. “I’ll pick the lock and go in first.” Reaching into my pocket, I took out my newly acquired knife and opened the blade. “I’ll check the living room first. If nobody is in there, I’ll go to the bedroom with the two guys, and you can take care of Keith. Unless you want me to kill all three.”

“You’d do that for me?”

I nodded.

Champ . . .

“I’m not sure if that’s sweet or demented, but I like it.” She glanced down at the knife in my hand. “Are you sure that’s the way to go?”

Her hands were empty. “Did you bring something better?”

Reaching into her pocket, she took out a small tube and a wrench. She pressed the tube into my free hand.

Superglue.

“I’ve got a better plan,” Twill said. Before she could explain, she was on her feet, running for the side of the cottage.

She’s crazy, that one.

I didn’t need Father to tell me that. I was aware.

I ran after her.

I imagine that made me a little crazy, too.

​44

​ANSON

I found Twill crouching on the side of the cottage, partially hidden behind an air conditioning unit, her back against one of the cottage’s support pillars, holding the wrench in her left hand. When I knelt beside her, she whispered inches from my ear, her breath warm, “A knife is messy. It’s dangerous. There are three of them and only two of us, and I learned long ago you should never underestimate the strength or stupidity of a drunk male. We’re not going to risk waking them. We’re not even going inside.” She nodded at the tube of superglue in my hand. “I want you to circle the outside and glue every door and window shut. You don’t need much, just a drop on each. If they do wake up, I don’t want to risk them getting out. I don’t think they’ll wake up, though.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The kitchen stove is fueled by propane. The tank is out back—I saw it through a window,” she explained. “I’m going to find the pipe under the cottage and open it up so the gas leaks inside and fills that whole goddamn place up.”

“You’ll need a flame to . . .”

Then I remembered what she had said, the flickering light—Keith had filled the bedroom with candles.

“If we’re lucky,” she added, “we’ll be halfway back to the Quick before the place goes up.”

​FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1999

​45

​ANSON

I woke in my bed back at the Quick, covered in sweat. My sheets were tangled around my feet, and my clothes from the night before were piled on the floor at my side. I woke with no memory of returning. The last thought I could grasp was running around that cottage, dabbing drops of glue on each of the window seams and door jams. Single drops, as Twill instructed. There was nothing in my head after that, like the memories had been erased, and as my eyes snapped open, even my memory of the last window began to fade. I couldn’t help but wonder—had it all been a dream? Part of it? I knew there was some truth to it, evident by the first voice I heard. What he said.

“You were out with her all night, weren’t you?”

I swiveled my head to find Vincent sitting on the edge of the empty bed to my right, fully dressed, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. As I sat up, he handed it to me.

I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but I’d never been known to turn it down. Caffeine was a siren’s song after a night of little sleep. This particular blend carried a hint of vanilla. It tasted fantastic, and I nearly drank half before lowering the mug from my lips.

“I spit in that,” Vincent told me, stone-faced. “Twice. Big ol’ snotty loogies.”

I waited for him to laugh, when he didn’t, my stomach twisted into a knot and threatened to expel whatever it could. Somehow, I managed to hold things back. I didn’t know what this was, but something in the back of my head told me not to show weakness—not with Vincent, not now.

I carefully set the mug down on the corner of the dresser next to my bed and responded with a phrase Paul was fond of saying. “That was a dick move.”

Normally, I would never use such language, but in my years on the planet, I’d learned it’s always best to speak in the tongue of the locals, even when it’s beneath you.

“Twill is off limits.” Vincent’s voice remained flat. Uncharacteristically calm, he retrieved a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and tossed it at me.

A drawing of Libby.

One of Paul’s sketches.

Possibly the best sketch he’d done yet. Libby was standing at the mouth of the barn back at Finicky’s, her hair swept to the side by the wind, this half smile on her face. Her eyes looked so lifelike that the image could have been a photograph. She was wearing a pair of jean shorts and a white button-down blouse. At the sight of her, I forgot all about the tainted coffee. A lump formed in my throat and my eyes grew moist.

“Holy shit.” Vincent’s mouth fell open. “Is Anson Bishop actually having an emotional reaction?”

“When did he draw this?” I managed, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his comment.

“Who the hell knows with that guy. At least she’s got clothes on. The point is, we’re here for Libby, Tegan, and Kristina. You keep losing focus on that and we’ll never find them. Twill is bad news; you need to stay away from her.”

“There’s nothing going on between me and Twill.”

With that, he laughed. “Like you could handle a girl like her. You’ve had sex, what? One time? With Libby, no less. Over within ten seconds of getting your dick out of your pants. Paul told me all about it. Libby’s safe; Twill is not. You don’t go from a bike with training wheels to a tricked-out Harley. You gotta get some practice and work up to it. Twill is like a praying mantis. She might throw you a mercy fuck, but she’ll just as easily bite your head off when she’s done with you. You don’t mess with her.”

“It’s not like that.”

“I don’t give a shit what it’s like.” He jabbed his finger into the drawing. “Get your head in the game.”

I remembered the look that passed between Vincent and Twill back at the hospital, and I said something I probably shouldn’t have. “Is there something going on between you and Twill? Is that what this is really about? Because that’s what it seems like.”

Vincent glared at me, his face growing red.

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t break eye contact. “I think something happened between the two of you and seeing her again is bringing it all back.”

“I’m looking out for you.”

“You sound like a jealous boyfriend.”

He got to his feet, and I thought he might take a swing at me, might leave, maybe both. Instead, he turned his back and lowered his voice. “Back at Finicky’s, we think Twill killed one of the other kids. A boy named Mathew.”

“Mathew?” I’d never heard the name. My mind’s eye flashed to all the photographs on the wall leading up the staircase. All the kids who had been there before me. I imagined he was up there somewhere.

“He was older,” Vincent went on. “Seventeen going on eighteen. About to age out. Rough. Gangbanger from Assbackward U.S.A. Big dude. At least six-one and pushing one-eighty, on his way to two hundred and twenty. From the moment he got to Finicky’s, he fixated on Twill. Hardly ever spoke, but he’d stare at her. Follow her around. Generally creeped her out. If he laid a hand on her, none of us ever saw it, but he seemed like the kind of guy who would. Even Finicky was scared of him, and that’s saying something. She’d lock her bedroom door at night. All the girls did. That’s the only time I remember them doing that. Then one night comes, and Twill comes downstairs in shorts and a cut-off top, looking hotter than any of us had ever seen her. I figured Welderman and Stocks were picking her up; she was dressed for a date or something, but no. She said she was going for a walk. She went outside and vanished into the cornfield. Mathew went out right behind her. Did nothing to hide the fact he was following her. He stepped out into the corn, too.” Vincent went quiet for a few seconds. “The next morning, Twill was at breakfast, and Mathew was not. None of us ever saw him again. Paul and me even looked—we went up and down those corn rows systematically, one at a time, and found no sign of him. I’m sure he’s out there, though. Feeding the corn. Buried with all the other bodies Welderman and Stocks planted over the years.”

“Maybe she was defending herself.”

Vincent huffed. “She led him out there and he didn’t come back.”

There was more to it, I could tell. Even without seeing Vincent’s face, I knew he was holding something else back. I thought I’d have to push him, but a moment later, he went on.

“The night Paul and I searched the field,” he said, “I woke up and found Twill on top of me. Fucking me. When I went to throw her off, she pressed a knife to my neck and said, ‘You’re done looking for Matty. I catch you out there again, and I’m telling Kristina you put your dick in me. Before that even registered, she got off of me and left my room.” Vincent turned back around and faced me. “You tell anyone any of that and I’ll rip your fucking head off.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I said nothing at all.

After a long moment, Vincent started for the door. “Get dressed and come to the Kid’s room. He found something.”

​46

​ANSON

The Kid was sitting up in his bed, and some of the bandages were gone. The one covering his right eye had been removed, replaced with a white patch held in place by thin strips of tape. The surrounding skin was black, purple, and various shades of yellow, but it was clear the swelling had gone down and he was on the mend. A laptop was resting on his legs. He was so invested in whatever was on the screen that he didn’t see me come in. When he did notice me, he cocked his head, narrowed his visible eye, and twisted his swollen lips into a pirate snarl. “Arrrrggghh, me matey!”

Life had returned to his voice. A resilience you could only find in the young. The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on me. He was twelve, and I was only fifteen—both of us young, but somehow, I felt like I’d done some substantial growing up since the fire at my home in Simpsonville. I suppose, in his own way, the Kid had grown up a bit, too. Twelve going on twenty-five.

Paul and Vincent came in behind me, deep in some hushed conversation. I couldn’t make it out, and when they saw me in the room, both went quiet. Vincent gave me a short glance and tossed a KitKat bar onto the bed next to the Kid. His favorite. “Stole that from a blind man downstairs.”

“You did not.”

“I told him the one-eyed man is king and the king needs to eat.”

“I’m pretty sure the saying is, ‘In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,’” I told him. “No mention of KitKats.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

Paul took a quick look out into the hallway and closed the door, then he settled into one of the chairs and scratched his cheek. “So, what do you think?”

“About what?”

“Well, duh.” He pointed at the wall behind me.

When I turned, I realized Paul had been busy. Not unlike the memorial wall in the cafeteria, the Kid’s wall was covered in sketches. Libby, Tegan, and Kristina were up there. There were also drawings of Ms. Finicky, and Detectives Welderman and Stocks. Another drawing of Van Man was there, even more detailed than the one he gave me yesterday. It was the last sketch on the right that drew my eyes, though, and made me step closer.

“Anson Bishop, meet Officer Sam Porter,” Paul said from behind me as I stared up at the sketch.

Until now, I’d only gotten glimpses of Sam Porter—from a distance back at Finicky’s, when he pulled up in the patrol car, and at the hospital, where nearly his entire face and head were covered in bandages. Paul’s drawing made me feel like I was standing in the room with the man. Like he was looking at me as I studied him.

“Stash gave the Kid a laptop so he could keep himself busy,” Vincent explained. “Turns out, he’s pretty good with the thing.”

“It wasn’t hard,” the Kid said. “Once Paul gave me Porter’s name, I just did a bunch of searches. He’s been in the paper from the shooting and all.”

The shooting where he killed Weasel in that alley. Where he took a bullet but somehow managed to crawl away. Just the thought of it made my blood boil. Weasel had been a good kid. An innocent. He didn’t deserve that. From the drawing on the wall, Porter’s eyes seemed to look down at me, follow me. Part of me was glad the man didn’t die instantly. That would have been too good for him. He deserved a slow death. A painful death.

“Once I found the stories on the shooting,” the Kid continued, “I worked my way back. It wasn’t much of anything.”

“The Kid’s being modest,” Vincent said. “He pieced together Porter’s entire career with Charleston PD. From the moment he joined the force to the second he took that bullet. He managed to pull his employee file, arrest reports, even got to his healthcare records over at Roper. He’s improving, by the way. You wanna know when Porter pisses, the Kid’s got a spreadsheet. We know everything about him.”

I had no idea how the Kid could get to all that. “Aren’t those sorts of things secured?”

“Security at most bigger institutions is a joke,” the Kid said. “Me and Weasel had a computer at our last foster home before Finicky’s, and we used to take turns hacking into networks, seeing who could get the furthest. We’d time each other. Weasel was pretty good, but if he won, it was usually because I let him. He’d get stuck on hex encryption, sometimes multilayer keys, too, but I breezed right through those.”

I must have had a blank look on my face, because Vincent said, “I have no fucking idea what he’s talking about either, but the bottom line is he got us a ton of information on Porter. That’s not the best part, though.” He glanced at the Kid. “Show him.”

A smile crept across the Kid’s face as he turned the laptop around so I could see the screen. Van Man looked back at me. He was facing forward, a blue background behind him. I didn’t recognize it at first, but then I did. “Is that—”

“It’s his DMV record.” The Kid beamed. “That database was a little harder than the police department, but I cracked it. I think I could have gotten it faster if I wasn’t still on the painkillers. They’re making my brain a little mushy.”

“Derrick Hillburn,” Vincent said. “That’s Van Man’s real name. He’s Sam Porter’s partner. Well, at least he was. As of yesterday, he transferred to narcotics. The piece of shit somehow pulled a promotion based on some bullshit spin with Weasel.”

“Class A coverup,” Paul said. “According to the police report Van Man filed on the shooting, Weasel had a ton of drugs on him.”

“Weasel didn’t have any drugs . . .”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Well, duh. Van Man and Porter planted them. Had to. Probably right after they shot him. Made the whole thing look like a big drug bust gone wrong. Porter’s up for a commendation for taking that bullet, and Van Man—Hillburn—got his detective shield and reassignment to narcotics.”

“Fuckers used Weasel to get ahead,” Vincent muttered. “Both of them. Crooked scumbag fuckers. No better than Welderman and Stocks.”

“Worse,” Paul said.

I found myself nodding as I listened, but I only half heard them. I was studying the text next to Van Man’s photograph—his address.

​47

​AMANDA

Amanda’s eyes fluttered open. First, there was a thin shaft of light, like the far-off mouth of a tunnel. This pinprick grew wider and longer until it burned, and she had to pinch her eyes shut again. Open them slowly. When she finally managed, she caught the far corner of the room. There was no longer one black bag resting there, but two.

Kidney.

Liver.

“We had a minor complication, but you’re doing well now. Nothing to worry about.”

The doctor’s voice came from her right side. He was standing slightly behind her, near the various machines beeping and humming along. Amanda couldn’t quite get her head turned around enough to get a good look at him, but from what little she did see, it looked like he was injecting something into her IV line.

“What . . . kind of complication?”

The words didn’t want to come out. Amanda found herself licking at her dry, cracked lips, but it did little good; her mouth and throat were dry, too.

The doctor stepped around the bed and came into view. His white coat was rumpled, and his hair was a tangled mess. Like he’d just gotten out of bed and hadn’t had time to comb it. “About an hour into the procedure, you suffered a blood clot. We call this portal vein thrombosis, or PVT. It’s rare but does occur. Relieving the clot caused a significant loss of blood and you required a transfusion.” He massaged his arm, just below the elbow. “Luckily, you and I are both A Positive. I tapped a vein and gave you a little loaner blood.” The doctor winked. “I’ll want that back when you’re feeling better.”

“You gave me . . .” Amanda tried to wrap her head around that, but her brain was horribly sluggish. Like trying to swim through a vat of molasses or tar. If she needed a transfusion, why would they take blood from her doctor? Wasn’t he busy performing the operation? Her blood type wasn’t exactly rare; surely the hospital had some on hand. Why would it come up at all? Maybe it was a joke. Some attempt at dry doctor humor. If it was, Amanda didn’t get it. And why was he still rubbing his arm?

“I want to see it,” Amanda managed. “What you did to me.”

At this, the doctor pursed his lips. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Perhaps later, after you’ve regained some of your strength.”

“Now.”

“There’s really nothing to see. Perhaps when we change your bandages?”

“Now,” Amanda insisted.

He looked at her for a drawn-out moment, then finally relented with a sigh. “Very well.”

Amanda’s arms and legs were still fastened to the bed; she couldn’t move on her own. All she could do was watch as the doctor rounded her bed and tugged her sheets down to her ankles. Then, like before, he raised her thin gown until it was bunched under her neck, exposing her entire body. He then twisted around, retrieved a handheld mirror from a table near the wall, and held it over her.

Amanda let out a soft gasp.

Her torso was a patchwork of bandages. There was the one from earlier on her left flank, where her kidney was removed. And now there were several new ones. They started in the center of her chest, just below her breasts, then snaked down and to the right, like some perverse version of the letter “J.” Six new bandages in all—some crisp white, others dotted with crimson, all held in place by strips of white tape. “Take them off,” she told him. “I want to see.”

“That’s not a good idea. It’s best to leave the bandages in place at least twenty-four hours to minimize bleeding and—”

“Take them off!”

The words came out of her like a thunderclap.

The doctor jerked back, nearly dropping the mirror. “Perhaps it would be better if you rest.”

“I need to see,” she said again, pleading now. “Please.”

His lips pursed. This thin line. Finally, he nodded and went to work, gently peeling back the bandages.

Even with a scar, with two, she could still have a career in Hollywood, Amanda told herself. Plenty of actresses go a lifetime without showing skin on camera. She’d have to be careful in public—at the beach, on yachts, when traveling abroad in places like the French Riviera. She knew the paparazzi were relentless. Once she was famous, they’d go out of their way to get a shot of her in a bikini. Those long lens shots they loved to get. She’d always have to be mindful because she didn’t want images of this ending up in the tabloids. Grocery store checkout lines and newsstands. TMZ and Entertainment Tonight. No way. She could never give them the chance. Amanda could do that. She could keep it hidden. Her looks would get her through the casting doors; she would just have to woo them with her acting. She could do that, too. She’d made the front page of the entertainment section in The Midbo Gazette when she appeared as Seamstress Number Two in the Midbo Playhouse’s production of Our Town. She was good. She was talented. She wasn’t all about looks.

When the doctor removed the final bandage and raised the mirror again, when Amanda saw the angry red incision, saw how she’d been stitched up like a torn rag doll, her eyes teared up. She wanted to wipe those tears away, but she couldn’t, not with her arms and hands restrained. All she could do was look through them.

I’m still pretty.

She told herself.

I’m still gorgeous.

She told herself.

And I can act.

She repeated this in her head like a mantra and began to feel better.

Amanda almost smiled.

She would have smiled if the doctor hadn’t twisted the mirror. Not much, only an inch or so. Just enough for Amanda to catch a quick glimpse of her face. Her left eye was puffy and black. A horrible bruise covered her forehead, cheek, nose, and the side of her mouth. A deep, dark line running down the center of it like a twisty river on a map. Most on her forehead, though. A round dark patch there.

Then Amanda remembered.

She remembered walking up to the man with the SUV.

She remembered him asking where the nearest gas station was.

She remembered telling him.

When the doctor lowered the mirror and grinned at her, she remembered him, too.

Amanda remembered how he grabbed the back of her head and slammed it into the vehicle’s frame. That was the last thing she remembered before waking here.

​48

​ANSON

We waited until dark.

Vincent, Paul, and me.

Ruddy gave us a white Toyota with dark windows and green felt seat covers that made my skin itch. Vincent drove, I was up front, and Paul was in the back. The Kid wanted to go, but he was in no shape to travel, and frankly, he was most useful plugging away on that laptop researching Porter, Hillburn, and anything else he could find. Maybe Guyon.

Hillburn’s house was nothing special. A two-story brick Tudor near the middle of a street lined with more nearly identical two-story brick Tudors, each separated by driveways leading to detached garages in back. No doubt the builder’s idea to maximize space on each narrow lot. Seeing the white van parked halfway down Hillburn’s driveway was enough to send my heart pattering.

Vincent navigated the Toyota into an empty space across the street and two houses down and switched off the engine. “Got you now, fuckhead.”

He’d brought the .38. How he was able to sit in the driver’s seat with the gun tucked in the back of his jeans, I didn’t understand, but he did, and the thought of that brought on a realization. Anyone who could sit comfortably in a car with a gun poking them in the back could only do so because they’d done it before, because they were used to it—and that made me wonder what Vincent had been doing before arriving on Finicky’s doorstep.

Vincent had the gun, I brought my knife, and Paul was armed only with his sketchpad, on which he was busy scribbling. He’d roughly drawn out the Hillburn house, the surrounding properties, and the street. In the short amount of time we’d been there, he even managed to add Maybelle Markel on the sidewalk, standing beside her bike. She was looking at the van in the Hillburn driveway. Paul continued to sketch as he spoke. “In the business, this is what we call a crossover. The Misadventures of Maybelle Markel meets The Death of Van Man. It will have a limited print run with only a handful of copies, which will make it super valuable.”

“We’re not going to kill him,” Vincent said, his eyes also on the van.

Paul stopped sketching. “We’re not?”

“We’re going to follow him.”

I was confused. “Why don’t we just corner him in his house? Find out what he knows about Guyon?”

“. . . and then kill him.” Paul went back to his drawing.

Vincent looked toward the small grassy yard between the house and the garage out back. “That’s why.”

I followed his gaze to the clothesline strung between the two buildings, to the various items hanging from it. Then I understood. Not only were several white collared shirts hanging from the line, but there were also a couple of dresses and various undergarments. Even a pair of long stockings. “He’s married.”

Vincent nodded. “Or he’s living with someone. Either way, he’s not alone in that house.”

Paul pulled a red colored pencil from his pocket and began coloring in his drawing. “If he’s married or has a girlfriend, no way she doesn’t know what kind of scumbag he is. And if she knows, she’s no better.”

“No, Vincent’s right,” I told Paul. “We need him alive, and that would be hard enough if he was alone in there. They might even have kids. If we wait for him to leave, we can corner him someplace else.”

Let’s hope he takes the van, Father said softly. Lots of room to work in the back of that van. Nice and private.

I found myself nodding.

Father hadn’t spoken since the previous night with Twill, and I found the familiar voice comforting, even if he could be disagreeable sometimes.

I hadn’t seen Twill all day, but as the hours ticked by, I’d fully accepted the fact that my memories of the previous night were, in fact, memories, not a dream. I hadn’t seen or heard anything about an explosion or fire, but that didn’t mean we hadn’t killed those men—only that news hadn’t made it back to the Quick. I also hadn’t stopped thinking about what Vincent had told me. How Twill had killed that kid, Mathew, back at Finicky’s, and buried him out in the cornfield. Her warning to Vincent not to tell a soul. I wasn’t sure if I should be frightened by all that, repulsed, or impressed. The truth was, I probably would have killed Mathew, too. Mother surely would have. Father would have buried him in the cornfield. I would have too. She and I weren’t that different, and that thought also frightened, repulsed, and tugged at me.

“There he is.” Vincent sank lower in his seat. “Came out the back door. He’s getting in the van.”

I only caught a glimpse of him. He was wearing the same long, navy trench coat he’d had most other times I’d seen him, and the wind caught it as he slipped behind the wheel. A quick flash before he pulled the bottom of the coat inside and slammed the door. A moment later, the headlights snapped on and the van pulled out of the driveway. He made a left at the end of the street.

“Here we go.” Vincent started the Toyota, made the same left, and lined up behind him. Not so close as to be noticed, but several car lengths back. He followed Van Man like a seasoned pro, which again made me wonder about his past.

In the back seat, Paul flipped to a blank page. Within moments, he produced the van ahead of us, caught in the beams of our lights. Watching him draw was like watching a comic come to life in real time. He captured the rust on the van’s bumper. A turned trash can we passed on the right. The moon looked down at us with a harsh coldness to its light as we turned down various side streets and narrow roads. We made a right onto the much wider Calhoun, where Vincent allowed two cars to get between us and the van before we then took the bridge over the Ashley River toward Albemarle Point. He kept sight of him, though. And when the van took an exit on the right, Vincent did too, keeping the distance between us. There were several more turns, and with each, there was less traffic, less means of concealment, and Vincent had no choice but to drop back. Residential gave way to old commercial. Commercial gave way to slums. Slums gave way to abandonment. Paul scribbled furiously, capturing it all. Page after page. When the van pulled under a bridge next to a four-story brick building with boarded windows, Vincent drove past. We parked three blocks over behind a warehouse covered in graffiti. Vincent switched off the motor and turned to us both while flexing the fingers of his hands. “Ready?”

Paul set his sketchpad aside and I nodded.

​49

​ANSON

We locked the car for no reason other than habit. In a neighborhood like this, leaving a car unlocked was the better move because it would prevent a broken window. Aside from Paul’s sketchpad, there was nothing worth stealing, so I supposed it didn’t matter. If someone tried to steal the car with the doors locked, at least we’d hear them break the window and possibly get back in time to stop them. None of us wanted to walk back to the Quick from here.

For a large guy, Vincent moved with stealth. He followed the walls and stuck to the shadows, carefully planting his feet to avoid stepping on anything that might make noise. I followed closely behind him with Paul at my back. We saw no homeless here, and that surprised me. It was quiet with plenty of empty buildings. I supposed we were too far from the tourists, which meant we were too far from the money, making this part of town impractical for squatting, grifting, or those who sought income from less traditional methods over employment.

Your mind is wandering again, Champ. Probably best you stay on point. Situation like this. Give the air a good sniff—that’s how I do it. Run through all your senses—smell your surroundings, listen, touch the nearest wall, take a quick look around, but don’t lose focus on where you’re going. Eyes front when moving. Take in your surroundings when you’re not. Trust your instincts. Tap the animal in you; it’s your strongest sense.

The air was chilly and smelled of the harbor. Low tide. Dead fish, seaweed, and stagnant water. Oil and exhaust nearby, too. Cargo vessels. Tankers. Old trucks. Brushing the brick of the wall on my right prickled at my fingertips, and that made me feel alive. Heightened all my senses. I wouldn’t give Father the satisfaction of telling him he was right, but he was.

Vincent’s arm shot out. Stopped me in my tracks. He pointed.

I pressed against the wall and followed his finger.

The white van was visible between the two buildings in front of us. A black Mercedes sedan had pulled up beside it. Hillburn stood between both vehicles with three other men, his navy trench coat flapping gently in the breeze coming off the nearby harbor.

“I can’t hear them,” Paul said. “Can you?”

I shook my head. “We need to get closer.”

Vincent reached behind his back and pulled the gun from the waistband of his jeans. He pointed at a dumpster midway down the alley. “Head for that. Stay low and hug the wall. Don’t make a fucking sound.”

Then he was gone.

Paul and I followed.

We dropped beside him when we reached the dumpster.

Close now.

“. . . short on our quota,” one of the men said. “The bossman wants at least nine more girls and five boys. No younger than twelve. No older than fifteen.”

“Because it’s that easy, right?” Hillburn groaned. “Like I can just head down to the grocery store and place an order at the deli counter?”

The first man threw up his hands. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”

A short, stocky man to their left lit up a cigarette and let out a soft snicker. “Maybe you shouldn’ta got your ass handed to you by a bunch of kids.”

“That was Welderman and Stocks’s fuck up, not mine,” Hillburn fired back.

“Think that matters?” The stocky man shrugged. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Right before the bossman told us to tell you he wants nine and five, we spent a good thirty minutes trying to decide if we should just put a cap in you and shut you down completely instead. The kinda heat you brought with that mess? You should be six feet deep right now. I got half a mind to shoot you anyway and tell the bossman you drew first, gave us no choice. You think these guys would say otherwise?” He snickered. “Your amateur bullshit put us all at risk.”

The third guy bobbed his bald head and reached a hand into his jacket. “I’m on board with that. Fuck this guy.”

Hillburn didn’t back down. Didn’t even flinch. “I got four sharpshooters out here with me. SWAT guys. Best in the state. They see any of you draw and they’ll put you down before you get the chance to piss your pants.”

The stocky guy and the other man looked around—studied the windows and rooftops. The first guy did not. He took a step closer to Hillburn and jabbed him in the chest with a long, pointy finger. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. You’re too fucking cheap to divide your take into that many hands.”

Hillburn went quiet for a moment, then let out a slow, resigned breath. “Where am I supposed to get fourteen more?”

“I don’t care if you drive down the fucking street hanging out the window with a fistful of candy. Just get them. You show up at Guyon with any less than fourteen, you ain’t walking out. You don’t show up at Guyon . . .” He let the words linger a second before pointing at the bald man with his thumb. “. . . and I let Stevie here chop you up into little bits.”

“You kill me and you get nothing.”

The bald man he called Stevie took a step closer, narrowing his eyes. “We kill you and someone else steps up to take your place. You think you matter? I’ve forgotten more men like you than you’ll know in a lifetime. Fucking dirty cops,” he muttered. “More of you than rats in most cities.”

The lines of Hillburn’s face hardened with frustration. “If he wants fourteen more, he needs to clear me to hit the Quick.”

This quieted all three men.

The stocky one was first to speak. “You know he won’t do that.”

“One sweep. I can get fourteen. Hell, I can get twenty. Maybe more.”

“That’s a non-starter. He ain’t gonna sanction a run at the Quick. No way.”

“There’s a hundred or more living in that shit hole. Completely off radar. Nobody looking for them. Nobody to care if they disappear. Hell, we’d be doing the city a favor.”

The stocky man was shaking his head. “You need to get that idea out of your skull. Go out of town if you need to. Maybe take a trip into the city. Hit some bus stops. You know where to find them.”

Hillburn was shaking his head. “If he wants them by Guyon, I don’t have that kind of time. Places like that are good for one, maybe two. No way I can get fourteen. Where the hell would I even put them? You gonna help?”

Stocky Man held up his hands. “Not our problem. We ain’t no babysitter service.”

The bald one he called Stevie let out a sharp laugh. “Why don’t you run your modeling agency scam again? What did the ad for that one say? ‘Beautiful girls wanted for high-end fashion campaign’ or some bullshit? ‘Travel, clothing, and luxury accommodations included?’ That one cracked me up. I got your luxury accommodations.” He nudged the stocky man in the shoulder. “Remember that one?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Stocky Man told him flatly. “Ain’t nobody talking to you.”

Hillburn didn’t appear to be listening to either of them; he was too busy thinking. “He wants fourteen, tell him I need to hit the Quick. There’s no other way. We do it tomorrow night. Maybe even the morning of the twenty-ninth. Fast and surgical. Grab as many as we can and head straight to Guyon.”

“He won’t—”

It was Hillburn’s turn to jab a finger in the other man’s chest. “You know I’m right. Convince him.”

Steve ran a hand over his smooth skull. “He’s got a point. You round them up, get ‘em in trucks, and you’re there in half a day. Don’t need to feed them. They can piss in buckets. We move ‘em like the ones we’re bringing up from down south. It’s not a half-bad idea.”

Hillburn kept his eyes on the stocky man. “Convince him,” he said again. “And I’ll deliver.”

After several moments of silence, Stocky Man changed the subject. “How’s your partner?”

Hillburn let out a low sigh. “Recuperating. Slowly. He’ll be alright.”

There were nods all around. Nothing else was said.

Stocky Man dropped what was left of his cigarette and ground it out under his shoe, then turned and climbed into the Mercedes with the other men behind him. Hillburn remained still and watched them drive off.

“Come on,” Vincent whispered. “We need to get back to the Quick.”

​50

​AMANDA

“​You’re not a doctor, are you?”

Amanda wished she hadn’t said it. The moment the words came out, she wanted to scoop them back up and swallow, make them go away. But a dab of glue held his glasses together. His teeth were stained yellow. His breath smelled like rotten meat beneath a layer of mint. The knot in his tie was crooked. He chewed his fingernails. None of these things specifically meant he wasn’t what he claimed to be, yet all of them seemed to be pieces of a puzzle, and when combined, they formed a picture that wasn’t what was on the cover of the proverbial box. Like he wasn’t a real doctor, but only playing one, and he was poorly cast, at that.

Amanda had no idea where that word came from, proverbial. It jumped into her head in much the same way the image of this man knocking her out had. She had no recollection of him loading her into the back of the SUV, driving, or coming here, but she knew those things had happened, too. She knew those things on some deeper level. They came from the same place that told her she was in a lot of trouble. Far more trouble than she first suspected.

“Of course I’m a doctor,” he said casually as he reapplied her bandages over the incision in her chest. “Would you like me to show you the secret handshake?”

He gave her that wink again, and she half expected him to call her “dear,” but he didn’t. Instead, he finished with the bandages and tugged her gown back in place, repositioning her sheets to finally cover her up properly.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Amanda said in a meek tone. “Bad.”

This brought a frown to his face. “You have a urinary catheter in place. Feel free to go. That’s what the collection bag is for.”

“Not . . . number one. Number two.”

His lips dropped into a solid line. “Come now, Amanda. We both know that’s not true. The anesthesia used during surgery paralyzes your muscles. It will be a minimum of twelve hours before your intestinal tract begins to move again. Probably twenty-four before you’ll really need to move your bowels.” He went quiet for a moment. “This is really about your bindings, isn’t it? You want to get up out of that bed?”

Amanda found herself nodding.

“And with you believing I’m not a doctor, what would you do then? Smash my skull with a bedpan? Attempt to overpower me and make a run for it?”

Amanda didn’t nod at this, although she wanted to.

He sighed. “It’s common for the mind to play tricks when coming out of surgery. The anesthesia lingers in our cells and can sometimes release little bits here and there for as long as a week. It can make you sluggish, nauseous. It can even make you hallucinate. Feel paranoid. Images and thoughts can appear in your mind and feel perfectly real even though they are not. I want you to see something . . .”

He disappeared behind her for a moment, then returned with a clipboard. He held it out in front of her. “These are your consent forms. Do you recognize them?”

Amanda shook her head.

He pointed at the bottom of the first form. “But that is your signature, right?”

Amanda tried to raise her head, get a closer look. It certainly looked like her signature. A little wobbly, shaky even, but it looked right. Although she had no memory of signing anything.

He flipped through the pages. At least a dozen, all with her signature. “We’ve got consent to use this facility. Consent for anesthesia. Consent for all six procedures. You may not remember it now, but we talked about all of this at length during your pre-op visit. I imagine with time that will come back to you—you just need to be patient.”

Amanda’s mind had latched on to one particular word from that spiel and held tight, wouldn’t let go. “Six?”

He nodded. “The first two—your kidney and liver—were the most significant, which is why removal was performed through independent procedures. Your blood pressure is a little weak due to the transfusion, but once it stabilizes, I’m confident we’ll be able to continue. I’m hoping to combine the remaining harvests, but I won’t be able to confirm viability until you’re back on the table—you understand. There are so many factors involved. It’s sometimes best to be cautious and confirm all conditions are optimal before proceeding.” He nodded at the two large bags of money in the corner of the room. “With your donations, you’ve made a sizable contribution to your financial well-being. You should be proud of that. Most people your age don’t think about that. You’ll leave here with a nice cushion.”

Six.

The word screamed at her. Wouldn’t shut up.

Six what?

She needed to ask the question, but couldn’t. Kidney. Liver. What else?

He seemed to know what she was thinking, even though she hadn’t said it aloud. He began ticking off his fingers. “Kidney, liver, spleen, right lung, a portion of your lower intestine, a portion of your upper intestine, and your pancreas.”

As he rattled on, Amanda pictured the scars on her body, each new scar appearing with each tick of his fingers, turning her once beautiful, flawless skin into a patchwork of black stitches and angry flesh. She’d never be able to hide it all, and if a casting director saw one, just one, it was over. Word spread. The whole town would tag her as damaged goods. It didn’t matter how much money this brought in. Even if it funded the rest of her trip out to California, even if it paid for her to spend years out there, it wouldn’t matter. She’d never work. Her signature or not, she would never have signed those forms. No way. And if she had, when exactly was it? After he knocked her out? Maybe in some groggy state? Maybe with the first of the anesthesia? Is that why she couldn’t remember?

The doctor frowned, staring at his hand, at his fingers. “Hmm. That’s seven, not six.” He looked first to the clipboard, then up at her. “We appear to be missing a consent form.”

“I take it all back,” Amanda told him. “I don’t want to do any of it. No more. If I signed anything, I take it all back. Just let me go.”

“I understand your hesitance,” he told her. “But I’m afraid any recision period has long passed.”

Amanda had no idea what that meant and didn’t much care. “You’re not cutting me open . . . again. No way.”

“Oh my, I can see you’re getting agitated. I’d hate for you to twist the wrong way and tear open your stitches.” From his breast pocket, he took out a syringe, tipped it needle side up, and gently depressed the plunger. A drop appeared at the top of the needle and slid down the side.

Amanda tensed. “What is that?”

He slipped the needle into her IV line and dispensed the medication. “Just a little something to help you remain calm.”

Amanda spit at him.

She couldn’t move her arms, or legs, or any other part, so she spit at him. The gob of thick saliva caught the left lens of his glasses and the side of his nose, hanging there for a moment before dripping down to his cheek.

Amanda expected him to get angry. Shout at her. Hit her. But he did none of those things. Instead, he wiped the spit away with the tip of his index finger and slipped it into his mouth. He savored it. When his finger came out, he brought the slimy digit to Amanda’s cheek and traced her skin to the corner of her mouth, a thin grin growing on his lips. “I’ve enjoyed our work together, Amanda. Perhaps we should talk about your heart?”

“My heart?” The words came out sluggish, the medication taking effect.

“Of course,” he said flatly. “You’re such a giving person. With so many people out there in need, how could we not discuss your heart?”

​51

​ANSON

“​Tell me again,” Stash said from across the table.

We were sitting out in the courtyard off the Market, two tables over from where we ate with Twill on our first day at the Quick. At this late hour, the courtyard was deserted except for us and a young couple in the opposite corner who looked like they were on the tail end of a date and ready to head somewhere private.

Keeping his voice low so as not to be overheard, Vincent repeated the story. From the chair beside him, Paul flipped through the various drawings in his sketchbook, providing this illustrated journey to Vincent’s words like some poor man’s business presentation. Stash followed along, though, his face growing more and more concerned with each turn of the page.

I barely heard Vincent. I didn’t see the drawings. My mind was replaying the video of the liquor store—that girl being kidnapped by a man who looked a lot like Stash. Same size. Same build. I didn’t think Stash had a car, but he easily could have gotten that SUV from Ruddy. He knew far too much about those who disappeared.

Those who were taken, Father corrected. He’s the last person you should be talking to. For all you know, he’s handing people off to Hillburn. Maybe he’s getting paid for it. Maybe Hillburn killed them when they didn’t fit whatever mold he was trying to fill. Made the deaths look like something they weren’t to throw off the dogs.

No. That wasn’t right. Andy, Emily, the others, that was something else entirely, I explained to Father. The holes in their heads told me that. Hillburn was smart, practical. He might fake the drug overdose, but he’d leave it at that. The holes only led to more questions.

When Vincent finished telling the story for the second time, Stash sank back in his chair and rolled his fingers across the tabletop in a rhythmic thump, thump, thump. “The Quick operates in a sort of safe space. The city lets us exist because we keep people off the streets. The cops leave us alone for the same reason. Organized crime has a foothold in Charleston, no different than any other port city, any other major city—always has. But for the most part, they leave us alone, too. We give them protection money, a percentage of the revenue we bring in. I suppose that’s why they pushed back on the idea of raiding us. It would be counterproductive.”

“Who’s the ‘bossman’ they kept talking about?”

Stash glanced around the near-empty courtyard and lowered his voice further. “If you believe the papers, it’s a guy named Vincent Gigante out of New York, but the rumor is one of his captains is really calling the shots. A guy named Tucker.”

“Tucker?” Vincent frowned. “Just Tucker?”

“That’s the only name I’ve heard. Not much else. No description. No location. Just Tucker.”

“Who’s your contact?” Vincent asked. “Who do you pay?”

Stash rolled his fingers again, thinking. “The money goes out on the fifth of the month with one of the girls. Lou is told who to give it to. Her ‘date’ takes the package. As far as I know, it’s never the same guy twice.”

“So how do you contact them?”

“I don’t. I’ve never had reason to.” Stash looked around the table. “You gotta understand something: the Quick was around long before I got here. I came in not much different than the three of you. I had a problem with the bottle and my life came apart. I found myself on the streets. People here at the Quick scooped me up, helped me get it together. Over time, they left; I stayed. After a while, I had some kind of seniority and somehow found myself in charge. I didn’t create all this. It was here before me, and it will be here after I’m gone. The monthly payments were just one of many things I’ve learned about over the years. I never asked for specifics and nobody offered them up. It just was.”

My mind flashed back to the file I’d read on Detective Moss’s table.

Stash’s real name was Leonard Benson. Forty-three years old with a degree in socioeconomics from Stanford. Hardly the kind of person you’d expect to find homeless, but that tracked with the drinking. It also tracked with the arrest report Moss had—the bar altercation three years ago. He hadn’t mentioned his wife, but I was pretty sure Meagan was instrumental in getting him through the Quick’s doors that first time.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

Stash thought about it for a second. “Going on three years now. This place set me straight.”

That also tied out to the information Moss had.

“Who first told you about the payments?”

“A guy named Leonard. He ran things before me. Was here for nearly a decade before deciding he wanted to head out west. Seattle, I think.”

“Do you have some way to contact him?”

“It’s not like he left a forwarding address,” Stash said before looking at me. “It wouldn’t matter. Organized crime . . . those guys . . . they would have sent some low-level person the first time out. Someone working on orders. They compartmentalize. That’s how they keep the higher-ups out of jail. The guy collecting the monthly vig passes it on to his boss, he passes it on, the next guy does too. Decisions are no different. It’s not worth talking to anyone low in the food chain about this. We need someone higher up.”

“The bossman,” Paul muttered.

Vincent nodded. “Gigante. Tucker. Maybe someone directly below them.”

This made Stash laugh. “If they decide to make a run at the Quick, you’re not going to talk them out of it. They don’t give a shit about us. They’ll smile and tell you to your face they’re not going to touch us, then raid the place an hour later.”

Paul flipped to a blank page in his sketchpad and began drawing the couple in the far corner of the courtyard in quick, sharp lines. “No honor among thieves, then.”

“Not in the slightest,” Stash agreed before studying each of our faces. “I can’t condone how you got the information, but this is good intel, gentlemen. We can beef up our defenses and be ready for them. They won’t be taking any of our residents on my watch. The twenty-ninth is only—”

“Anson Bishop?”

Two uniformed patrol officers were standing behind us, blocking the courtyard exit to the street. A third quickly shuffled around to the other side and stood in front of the doors leading back into the market. Although none of them had drawn their weapons, all three appeared ready to do just that.

Stash started to get to his feet, then seemed to think better of it and settled back down. “What is this about?”

“We have orders to take Mr. Bishop into custody,” the first one said, his eyes never leaving me.

Stash’s brow furrowed. “Under whose authority?”

The officer’s hand slipped from the butt of his service weapon to his handcuffs. He removed them from his belt. “Do you plan to interfere?”

Both Vincent’s hands were under the table. His jaw had grown tense. As far as I knew, he still had the gun. I couldn’t let him do something stupid.

Paul looked like he might make a run for it. I brushed the corner of his sketchbook with my fingertips to settle him down, then rose slowly, holding out my wrists to the officer with the handcuffs. “It’s okay. I’ll go.”

“Anson,” Vincent gritted his teeth. “We don’t know these guys.”

I knew what he meant. It was the first thought to go through my head—they might work for the same people as Welderman and Stocks. Van Man. Porter. As dirty as all the rest.

Run, Champ.

I didn’t.

The officer cuffed me in the front, then jerked me roughly toward the exit. The other officer closed ranks behind us, between me and my friends. They nudged me through the gate to the sidewalk, toward two awaiting patrol cars parked half a block down the street.

​52

​ANSON

One of the officers opened the back door of the closest patrol car while the officer who had handcuffed me placed a palm on my head and forced me down into the seat. The moment my legs were inside, he slammed the door and turned his back, blocking my view through the window. He spoke to the other two for a moment, then they returned to the first patrol car as he rounded the front of mine and got in behind the wheel, starting the car.

“Where are you taking me?”

He glanced at me in the rearview mirror through a few strands of loose, dark hair, but said nothing. Instead, he gave his siren a quick squelch and pulled out behind the first patrol car.

This time of night, there wasn’t much traffic, and what little there was cleared out of the way when they spotted the two patrol cars coming up behind them. I made a mental note of each turn, each street sign, anything unique enough to refer back to if I had to retrace our path. Turns out that was unnecessary. When we pulled to the curb on the corner of Martin and Belmont, I knew exactly where we were. Outside my window was the homeless encampment where Andy had lived. Where his mother’s body had been left. Where that girl had been abducted. Unlike the last time I was here, the camp was alive. I counted five people among the tents under the dry cleaner’s awning. Andy’s tent was gone, replaced by a larger blue one with a bushy old man watching us from just inside the open flap. The circle with a diagonal line across the center drawn by Twill was still visible on the brick. Clearly, her warning had done little to keep people away.

“Why are we here?”

This time, the driver didn’t bother to look at me. He got out of the car and left, slamming the door behind him. A moment later, the door to my right opened and Detective Moss got in beside me. She fell into the back seat with a bit of a huff, like she’d been on her feet for a very long time and this was her first opportunity at something resembling rest. She stared forward for a moment before looking down at my cuffed hands. “I didn’t tell them to do that. Would you like me to remove them?”

Back at the table in the courtyard, when I brushed Paul’s sketchpad, I took a paperclip. I’d picked the locks on the handcuffs before the patrol car had pulled away. I handed them to her and suppressed the smile that desperately wanted to come out.

If she was impressed, she didn’t let on. She dropped the cuffs on the floor near her feet. She wore black flats, scuffed up, but practical. Shoes she could run in. “You broke into that liquor store and stole evidence,” she said, nodding toward the building on our right. “That’s enough to land you in juvie.”

“I gave you the tape. I never told you how it came into my possession. I certainly didn’t tell you I broke in or stole it. I imagine making assumptions in police work can get you in trouble.”

Careful, Champ. Confidence and arrogance are kissing cousins best kept at a distance.

The lines of her face tightened. “You were in my house. You have an established pattern of breaking and entering. In my line of work, we don’t call that an assumption; we call it repeat behavior by a known perpetrator. Once a thief, always a thief.”

“I didn’t steal anything from your home.”

She had a small scar next to her right eye. It looked old. Maybe from some childhood accident. It twisted into a half moon when she spoke. “If you hadn’t given me that tape, we wouldn’t have known to look for a black SUV,” she admitted, her voice growing softer. “We wouldn’t have known to look for the girl at all . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and we sat in silence for nearly a minute before I spoke again. “Did you find her?”

Detective Moss didn’t answer that; instead, she looked down at her hands. Her fingers moved, fiddled, like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. “You’ve had a troubling past, Anson. A lot of assumptions have been made about you. They’re in your file—detailed, listed, and bullet-pointed nice and neat. Damning assumptions. When I read something like that, I remind myself those assumptions are simply the opinion of another person. Qualified or not, they aren’t my opinions. I prefer to form those on my own. That being said, I’m willing to overlook a lot of what I read in that file. I’m even willing to overlook your few minor infractions. For now. Providing you stay out of my house. Think you can do that?”

I nodded.

She did too. “Consider this moment you entering my life with a clean slate. Those other words, those assumptions, are still there, but they’ve been erased from my chalkboard. Think of them as dusty remnants under the new words I’m writing about you myself. Does that make sense?”

I nodded.

I hope you don’t plan to offer her the same courtesy. When was the last time you met someone with a badge you could trust? Her team is tainted. Don’t buy into her nonsense. Cops love to get all friendly when it suits them; it helps them get close. It’s Police Buggery 101. They’ll smile right up until the moment they put the cuffs on you, but in your case, she won’t make that mistake again. You can guarantee when she’s ready to lock you up, she’ll use zip ties. No picking those.

“Why did you bring me here?”

She studied me for a few long seconds, then banged twice on her window. The officer who drove me here reappeared and opened her door.

“Follow me,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

​53

​ANSON

As I exited the patrol car behind Detective Moss, I felt a million eyes on me. There were the homeless people in the encampment under the awning. I counted seven—four in tents, the other three standing in shadows. There were also at least twenty members of the Charleston PD, all milling about. Some were flat-out staring at us; others were busy putting up crime scene tape and holding the growing crowd at bay. I also spotted four firemen—they were leaning against a brick wall, smoking cigarettes. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Their yellow turnout coats were stained with dark soot, as were their hands and faces. Their expressions were dire, worn out.

The smell hit like a wall.

Sharp.

Acrid.

Gas and plastic, burnt wiring, and upholstery.

There wasn’t much left, but I knew the smoldering black ruin halfway down the block was the SUV from the video. The general shape was still there, but not much else. Father had once told me a vehicle can reach temperatures of over 1500 degrees Fahrenheit when properly set ablaze. Aside from the fact they came with a built-in bomb in the form of a gas tank, nearly everything used in their construction was petroleum-based. Extremely combustible. Water was often ineffective in putting out a vehicle fire; instead, it was used for containment to ensure the fire didn’t spread as it burned itself out. The pavement around us was soaked in filthy water, littered with tiny bits of who knows what. I didn’t want to think about those bits. Especially when I spotted the ambulance and the black body bag on a gurney just inside the open back doors.

Detective Moss led me to the smoldering SUV. The driver’s side door was open. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and handed them to me, then slipped a second pair on her own hands. “Don’t you even think about touching anything. I just don’t want anyone to see you here without gloves. I don’t need more questions.” She turned toward the SUV. “The metal is still hot enough to take off your skin, too, so be mindful of that. Don’t touch, just listen. Got it?” She gave it a second for that to sink in before continuing. “We pulled a single body out. It was positioned behind the wheel. Female, approximately fifteen years old. The ME was able to tell me that much from the skeletal remains. Skin, tissue, organs, all that was long gone. Bones are tough, though; bones survive. We believe she was the girl from the video.”

“You said, ‘positioned behind the wheel.’”

“She wasn’t alive when the fire started.”

I swallowed. I suppose that was a good thing. “How do you know?”

“Because her skull was intact. Someone drilled a hole in her head and removed her brain. Same as Andy and all the others. We also found two leather bags in the back of the SUV containing human organs in stainless steel containers—kidney, liver, lung, spleen, heart, intestines, pancreas. If they’re hers, she was literally gutted and placed in this SUV for disposal.”

“The fire was meant to destroy all traces of him—the man who took her, not her. He . . . he staged the rest, wanted you to know what he did.”

Detective Moss’s eyes narrowed. “How old are you again?”

“Fifteen.”

“Watch a lot of cop shows on TV?”

“Not really.”

Her hand went to her hip as she considered that. “Aside from me and my chief, nobody else picked up on that,” she explained. “But yeah, those containers weren’t an accident. I’ve been told they’re designed to store valuables and documents when you specifically want to protect them from fire.”

“Did he do that with any of the others?” I asked. “Remove organs?”

She shook her head. “Only the brain. This is some kind of escalation.”

A patrol officer came up and eyed me suspiciously before speaking to the detective. “We’ve got a lot of press behind the line with more coming. I just saw a van for WCBD. They’re all asking if someone is going to make a statement.”

I turned and looked behind us. The crowd had grown substantially in just the time we’d been there. Several people had big, expensive-looking cameras with long lenses. There were a few television cameras on tripods, too.

“Tell them not at this time,” she said. “If they ask if this is connected to the other killings, say it’s unlikely.”

He frowned at her. “Is it connected?”

“It’s unlikely,” she repeated.

When he was gone, I said, “You’re going to lie to them?”

“It’s not a lie; it’s a half-truth. There’s a difference. Right now, they don’t need to know what they don’t know.” She rounded the back of the SUV to the opposite side, where the gas cap used to be. The quarter panel was flayed out like a jagged metal flower. “Nothing special about how he did it. It’s obvious he stuffed something down the gas pipe and lit it up. Bought himself a minute or two to get away before it blew.”

I looked around at the surrounding buildings. “There are no cameras on this part of the street.”

“I’m sure that’s no accident. He could have disposed of the girl anywhere. Same with the SUV. Instead, he took the time to drive back to relatively the same spot where he abducted her. I suppose that’s a smart move. If he dumped her somewhere else, gave us a secondary crime scene, we could use the data to triangulate. Maybe narrow down his starting position.”

“Or he’s from right around here, the center of Charleston. Close to where all the others were taken, where they were found.”

I thought of Stash again, couldn’t help it.

You’re not far from the Quick, right? Father pointed out. What? Maybe a mile or two at most?

“There’s something else I want you to see,” Detective Moss said.

She stepped back around the SUV and went to the sidewalk. A square area about four feet in diameter was fenced off with crime scene tape wrapped around orange traffic cones. At the center stood a small piece of plastic with the number twenty-three on it. An evidence tag.

“It’s okay,” she told me. “You can get closer. Get a good look. We think he dropped it.”

I approached the tape and leaned over.

Next to the evidence tag, lying face up on the concrete, was a photograph of me.

​SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1999

​54

​TWILL

Twill heard birds.

That made little sense because she was at a private party at the Dewberry Hotel in downtown Charleston, surrounded by the South’s most wealthy elite. Her escort (she refused to call him a date, even though he’d paid two thousand for the night) was a tech mogul who founded his first startup while still in college at Stanford and went on to fund half a dozen others, each more lucrative than the last. Now in his mid-forties, he was worth some ungodly sum of money and somehow knew Stash. Twill wouldn’t have gone if he hadn’t—not even for three thousand, not after what happened the other night. She’d told herself she was out. That had been the last time. She was ready to take her savings and go. Maybe New York or someplace deep south like Houston. Someplace other than Charleston where she could start fresh. Then Lou had asked if she’d be willing to do this one last date. Stash had vouched for the guy. And she found herself worming into a slinky dress with heels a few hours later. Perfect makeup surrounding her best fake smile. When he had arrived in a limo to pick her up, Twill had nearly spun on those high heels and run back to the Quick, memories of those same assholes bouncing around her head. But he was alone in the limo, and she forced herself to climb inside.

His name was Langdon.

She told him her name was Rose. She never gave the Johns her real name, nickname, or anything else personal. She kept that for herself.

Langdon’s smile didn’t look fake; it was nice. He was nice. Fit, too. Lean and hard.

Off to the ball she went with her pay-by-the-night Prince Charming.

She was surprised to find he was socially awkward, but he certainly was. Immediately after plucking drinks off the tray of a passing waiter, he began a not-so-nonchalant journey toward the corner of the large ballroom. He spoke to those who greeted him, nodded and smiled at others, but each encounter only hastened the retreat. Through it all, Twill held her arm in his and kept her smile. That was her job, of course. Well, at least part of it. She knew Langdon had a room upstairs—a suite, from what he told her—but he didn’t make a big deal out of it, and neither did she. That came with the territory—jobs like this always had a first half and a second half. Twill had learned to take advantage of the first half and enjoy every possible second, because that made the second half far more bearable. They stood in their quiet corner drinking champagne and eating hors d’oeuvres for nearly an hour. Twill made it a point to laugh at his jokes, as lame as they were. She nuzzled up close to him and made sure the men in the room—the ones who couldn’t stop looking at her—saw her do it. She let the slit in her dress ride a little high on her exposed leg, let Langdon see the beginnings of her thigh, just enough to put a blush on his face until he had to turn away. She giggled when he did that and whispered in his ear. She told him she couldn’t wait to feel his hands on her.

She did what she was supposed to do.

Twill did the job.

Twill did what was expected for two thousand dollars a night.

Twenty minutes later, when Langdon told her he wanted to go upstairs, Twill finished her champagne and let him lead her from the ballroom to the elevator, to the suite, through the door.

Twill heard birds.

And that made little sense.

It wasn’t until she realized she was no longer at the Dewberry Hotel that the truth clicked. The memories came back to her.

She remembered walking through the door into the suite.

Langdon’s startled gasp.

An arm around her waist from behind.

A needle in her neck.

Blackness.

Not a single bit of light.

And now birds.

Twill didn’t realize her eyes were closed until she opened them. And when she did open them, the blackness didn’t go away. She was surrounded by it. It had swallowed her whole. She was sitting on a concrete floor, her back against—were those bars? When she twisted around, when she reached for them, she confirmed that they were. Each bar was at least an inch thick, and they were spaced close together, no more than four or five inches in between. When she grabbed one and gave it a good shake, it didn’t give. It didn’t budge at all. She traced the cold metal down and found it disappeared into the concrete. Hoisting herself to her feet, she ran her palm up as high as she could reach but found no top, no ceiling. Those bars could be eight feet tall or a hundred feet tall, for all she knew.

The birds came from somewhere up above. A caw-like chatter. The click of little feet on metal. Twill had no idea how many, but they were trapped in here, too. She wondered if they could see any better than she could.

“Rose?”

The voice startled her. Twill actually jumped. She tried not to breathe. Went completely silent.

“Rose, are you there?”

She recognized it then; she knew who it was. “Langdon?”

He coughed. His voice sounded rough. Throat dry. “Where the fuck are we?”

​55

​ANSON

“We think he dropped it.”

Detective Moss had said that before loading me back up in a patrol car and returning me to the Quick at a little past two in the morning. I was in a bit of a daze as I wandered through the quiet market and went back upstairs. I barely remembered stumbling to my bed.

I didn’t lie down. No way I could sleep. I sat on the corner of the mattress as the others snored around me, lost to slumber.

It hadn’t been just any picture—I think that’s what spooked me. In the image, I was back at my home in Simpsonville. The house was ablaze behind me, with firefighters working to put out the fire. I was surrounded by first responders, all trying to get me to talk. The photograph was taken moments after I left the woods. Moments after I found my knife hidden near the lake, left behind by Mother. Left behind like she left me behind. Whoever took the picture had been there in the moments after I realized I’d been abandoned by my family.

Much of that night was a blur. I’d taken the memories and placed them in a box. I sealed that box and stacked it deep in the back of my mind, hid it behind a bunch of other boxes where it was meant to be forgotten, and remain forgotten, but it refused. Seeing that image brought it all back.

I remembered emerging from the woods the first time to find two vans with “Talbot Enterprises” stenciled on the sides in red lettering. Men in plastic white suits crawled all over our house like ants, inside and out. I hid and watched. Dazed. Mother had left with Mrs. Carter and the man I knew as Mr. Smith. The three of them had taken an old Plymouth Duster and vanished. No doubt with the money and documents Mr. Carter had pilfered from his employer. That’s why Talbot Enterprises was there—searching for them, searching for what they stole. When they couldn’t find what they wanted, they set the house on fire and drove off. I watched all this from the edge of the woods and didn’t show myself until the firefighters arrived. If someone were to ask me how much time had elapsed, I couldn’t answer. Perhaps minutes, most likely hours. All of it passed dream-like, this nightmare I’d hoped to wake from but never did.

Whoever took the photograph had arrived sometime after the men from Talbot Enterprises left, but long before the fire was out. And while under most circumstances my memory was near perfect, most of that day and night escaped me. Even now, as bits and pieces came back, as I closed my eyes and tried to wander through the memory as Father had taught me, I was unable. I couldn’t see the faces of those who were there. I only saw these blank things where faces should be, blank things lacking eyes, mouths, or ears.

Whoever had taken that photograph somehow found me in Charleston. Was it the killer? Or had someone placed the photograph in the killer’s hand?

I needed to know who took that picture. If the memory was in my head, I needed to draw it out.

Standing from my bed, I crossed the room in silence to where Paul slept. I gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Wake up. I need your help.”

An hour later, we were on the floor in the hallway surrounded by sketches. Under my direction, Paul had drawn my house, the surrounding woods, the Talbot vans, the firefighters, the police, Mother, Mrs. Carter, Mr. Smith, and the Plymouth. As I described all I could recall, his hand flew across the paper, bringing each bit of memory to life. Seeing those images jarred loose new memories, new faces. He drew those, too, and the doors I’d shut slowly creaked open. The boxes I’d packed opened with them. It was the last sketch that finally brought it all to a stop, the one he held in his hand. The one we were both staring at.

“Are you sure?” he finally said.

“Yes.”

“We need to wake Vincent.”

​56

​ANSON

Vincent wasn’t happy about waking early.

He was less happy when we showed him the drawing.

The three of us were huddled at a corner table in the cafeteria. Although there were no windows and I couldn’t see the sun, I knew it was rising. All around us, the Quick began to wake. People stumbled out from the shadows, the dark places where they tucked away at night, yawning, wiping eyes. Some laughing. Others talking low. Some padded down the halls to the restrooms; others went in search of food. The Quick always seemed the fullest in the mornings, after everyone came home to roost.

Vincent held the sketch with two hands, his meaty fingers twisted around the edges, pulling the paper so tight, it was a wonder it didn’t rip in half. He looked up at both of us. “You know this means nothing, right?”

I had told him about Detective Moss. Where she’d taken me. What she showed me. The picture found on the sidewalk. Paul explained how we had walked through the horrifying events of my last night at home, how he’d used his drawings to pull the memories out of me. Piece together what I couldn’t recall. I found myself nodding along, telling Vincent how it all came back, every second.

“You know this freak has a crazy memory,” Paul told him. “When he’s firing on all cylinders, he can tell you how many pimples were on the ass of some aspiring starlet in a porno he watched three years ago.”

“I don’t watch—”

He waved me off. “You know what I mean. He doesn’t forget anything. He’s like an elephant.”

Vincent looked at him stone-cold. “He’s flat out gotten lost in his own head while talking to us, and when he comes out of it, he’s got no memory of what he said or did. You’ve seen him do it. We both have. That sound stable to you?”

“I didn’t say he was stable. I said he has a good memory.”

“Look,” I told them both. “She was there. She took the picture. I’m sure of it.” I tapped the drawing. “This is exactly what I saw.”

“Or,” Vincent shot back, “you squeezed that brain of yours until this scene oozed out, then your mind dropped in a familiar face just because you needed to see something.”

“Hey Bishop, you’re famous!”

The three of us turned to find Ruddy coming through the door. He tossed a newspaper across the room. It landed in the middle of our table and slid to me. The headline read, “ANOTHER VICTIM, ANOTHER DAY WITH NO ANSWERS.” There was a photograph of the burned-out SUV with Detective Moss and me standing at the open door. I was looking directly at the camera.

“Fuck,” Vincent muttered, twisting the newspaper around to get a better look. With his free hand, he tucked Paul’s sketch in his pocket before Ruddy could see it.

Paul leaned over and scanned the text. “Double fuck. Check this part out: ‘Clearly baffled, the police are bringing in children to aid in the investigation. How long before they start parading psychics around area crime scenes in hopes of a break?’”

My heart gave a hard thump. “She did this on purpose.”

“Huh?” Vincent frowned.

“Detective Moss,” I told him. “They found that photograph of me on the sidewalk, then she brought me down there. She walked me right up to that SUV. She knew the press would get a shot. She wanted them to.”

Vincent stared at me blankly. He didn’t get it, but Paul did. He muttered, “The killer had your picture, and she wants the killer to know you’re in town.”

“What, like bait?” Vincent asked.

Ruddy dropped down into one of the empty seats. “So you’re what, some kind of informant now? Are you a narc? That won’t go over too well around here.”

The lights above caught the silver of the hoop in his nose and glistened. I tried not to look at it. “I’m not a narc.”

“But you’re helping them, right?” He tapped at the photograph. “That detective? You’re her informant?”

“Get lost, Ruddy,” Vincent told him without looking up from the newspaper. “Now.”

“Whatever.” Ruddy popped out of the chair and went to another table with Pudge and four other people I’d seen around, but didn’t know. When he spoke to them in low whispers, gesturing back at me, I turned away.

Vincent read the rest of the text. “This is really fucking bad.”

“Does it say his name?” Paul asked.

“No. They just call him a minor. No name. That doesn’t matter, though. A lot of people are going to see this. The wrong people. They know exactly who he is. If they haven’t figured out where we’ve been hiding, it’s not going to take them long to figure it out. It says the killer is targeting homeless from the Quick.”

“The last girl he took wasn’t from the Quick,” I told him. “I’ve never seen her around here.”

Vincent shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is the paper says she was from the Quick, and it’s right under a photograph of your ugly-ass mug staring at the camera. You might as well have been holding up a sign that said, ‘Come get me.’ We need to leave. Today. Now.”

“The Kid’s not in any condition to travel,” Paul reminded us. “It might be another week before he’s even allowed out of that bed.”

Vincent said nothing to that.

Paul tugged the newspaper away from him. “We can’t leave him here. Not with what’s coming. Not after everything he’s already been through. He won’t make it. It’ll kill him.”

“Paul’s right,” I said. “We can’t do that. You know what will happen to him. And where would we go? We still don’t know where Guyon is.”

“Anywhere but here,” Vincent said. “That’s where we’d go. Anywhere but here.” He looked up and frowned. “Christ, why is this place filling up so fast?”

He was right. At least half the residents of the Quick were in the room, with more streaming in through the door. All the tables were full, and people began lining the walls, huddled in groups. Whispering. Anxious.

“Stash called a meeting,” an older woman named Lumen said, taking the last seat at our table. “You mind?”

I shook my head.

Lumen used a walking stick on account of a bout with polio as a child. Her cane looked old enough to come from the first tree chopped down when Charleston was born. Lisco had told me she had perfected the art of begging in the streets, and with more than forty years of it behind her, she’d saved up nearly half a million dollars, which she either kept in a hole behind the corner QuickMart or an account with Morgan Stanley, depending on who you asked.

There must have been something in Vincent’s face because she gave him a quick look, then stood. “You boys look like you’d prefer not to have company.” She dragged her chair over to another table and settled in between two others.

A hush fell over the room as Stash came in with Meagan at his side. Both of them made their way to the front of the room.

Stash held up his hands to silence the anxious voices before saying, “I’ll make this fast, and I guarantee none of you will like it.”

​57

​ANSON

“​Late last night,” Stash went on, “I received some disturbing news. Personally, I’ve made it a point to be as transparent as possible with all of you, and I don’t want to start hiding things now, so I’m going to share what I was told. You’ve put a lot of faith and trust into me, and transparency is the least I can do.” He gave it a moment for that to sink in. “It’s no secret the Quick exists on the fine edge of a tightrope. There’s a daily balancing act between local government, residents, law enforcement, and those who operate outside the law. While many would say we fall within that last group, I guarantee there are far worse out there. Many of you have experienced that firsthand.”

There was a soft rumble of murmurs through the crowd.

“We have reason to believe the Genovese crime family out of New York plans to take a run at the Quick in an effort to round up bodies whom they intend to sell into their sex trafficking ring, both domestically and abroad. They see the Quick as a source for many, all in one shot. People who won’t be missed. We think they’re trying to meet some kind of quota, and this could happen as early as tonight.”

This brought on a much louder cacophony of voices. Shouted questions and comments.

Stash’s hands went up again. “Let me finish! Let me finish! Then I’ll take questions!” He waited in silence until the voices quieted back down to a low rumble. “The young are obviously our biggest concern. They’re the targets. But that doesn’t mean the rest of you aren’t in danger. We have no idea what type of force they plan to use during this raid, but we can’t discount the fact that they might be willing to hurt anyone who stands in their way. That puts us all at risk. Thankfully, we’re in a position to prepare preemptively.”

“What the fuck do you plan to do?” A male voice shouted out from the front of the room. “Line up behind Pudge at the top of the steps and hope he figures out how to aim by tonight? Fuck that. I’m leaving.”

To his credit, Stash kept his anger in check and answered calmly. “You are welcome to leave, Bobby—you all are, but anyone who does will not be permitted reentry until we can be certain this situation is behind us. And if you leave, I can’t guarantee your bed will be here when you get back. The Quick has always operated on a first-come, first-served basis, and this will be treated no different.”

Bobby let out a hoarse laugh. “From what you’re saying, it sounds like there won’t be a shortage of beds when this is all over. I ain’t too worried about that.”

Stash ignored that. “I know many of you are armed. That’s good. For those of you who aren’t, we’d like to help get some kind of weapon in your hand. Meagan has a list of current residents. She’s going to pass it around. I’d like you to locate your name, and if you have a weapon, write it in. If you don’t have a weapon and would like something, leave the line blank. If you don’t have a weapon and prefer not to be armed, please just write the letter X.”

Meagan held a clipboard in the air for a moment, then set it down on the nearest table.

“If you have a gun,” Stash continued, “be sure to write the caliber. We’re working on bringing in ammunition, and it would be helpful to get a better handle on what exactly we need.”

Lumen cracked her cane against the ground to get his attention. “That’s your plan? Some O.K. Corral standoff? You’re going to pit a bunch of homeless against armed professional thugs?”

“No,” Stash told her flatly. “We’re hoping it doesn’t come to that. The weapons are a secondary line of defense. A deterrent. The plan is to keep them out altogether.” He looked back toward the door. “Detective?”

Every head in the room turned with him, watching as Detective Moss stepped tentatively inside and crossed over to where Stash and Meagan stood. Her hair was pulled back. Her gun and badge were clipped to her belt on full display. Muffled voices filled the room. Nervous voices. Nobody expected to see her inside the walls of the Quick, least of all me.

Detective Moss waited for the whispers to die down, then cleared her throat. “Whether on the books or not, this facility has served an integral role in helping people and keeping folks off the streets for multiple generations. I’m proud to call Charleston home, and I’m prouder still in knowing that our community is willing to support each other on so many levels. I’m not alone in that. When Stash reached out to me, I contacted a number of my friends in law enforcement and assembled a task force. We’re off the books; it has to be that way, but we have numbers. I’ve got teams monitoring all points of ingress and egress, not only for the Quick, but for the Market down below. We have people on the sidewalks outside, as well as unmarked cars patrolling the perimeter. Teams will be working in three eight-hour shifts—around the clock—until this is over.” She looked out over the crowd. “At the top of that clipboard going around is my cell phone number. If you spot or hear anything suspicious, I want you to call me directly. I can mobilize a response faster than 911.”

There was clearly a lot more to Moss than I knew, than she had let on. How did she know Stash? Or Meagan? Who had called her? Was she just here to get closer to the killer?

“Thank you, d=Detective.” Meagan gave Detective Moss an appreciative smile before turning to face the rest of us. “We have plenty of food and water. We’re well stocked on all necessary medications. As Stash said, you are welcome to leave, but we firmly believe this is the safest place for you, particularly the young. While these people have zeroed in on the Quick, we have no doubt they will also be grabbing anyone from the streets who fits their bill. Out there, there is nobody to protect you.”

Stash cleared his throat. “Any questions?”

There were many. It seemed half the people in the room spoke at once.

Vincent, Paul, and I said nothing.

Vincent had taken Paul’s drawing from his pocket and was studying it again. Closer this time. His eyes darted from the image to the front of the room and back again.

Paul had captured the moment in perfect detail, exactly how I remembered it. I had turned from my burning house and looked back at the ambulance parked in the street behind me. There were two paramedics. A man in his twenties busy rifling through the contents of a storage locker built into the shell of the vehicle, and a woman, also in her twenties. She held no medical equipment in her hands; instead, she held a camera. The lens pointed directly at me.

Just as Vincent had done, I looked from the drawing to the front of the room, then back again.

I had no doubt.

The woman who photographed me at my house that day was Meagan.

​58

​TWILL

“​Oh, Christ, my head hurts,” Langdon said. His voice seemed to come from straight across from her, from somewhere in the sea of black that separated them. He sounded at least ten feet away, maybe more.

“Mine too,” Twill told him. And that was no lie. It felt like someone had put a belt around her head and tightened it until it nearly popped.

“They injected us with something,” Langdon groaned. “Some kind of knock-out drug. Any idea where we—oh, shit. Are these bars? Are we in some sort of cage?!”

Twill nodded, then realized if she couldn’t see Langdon, he certainly couldn’t see her. “I think so. They go down into the floor. I’m not sure how high they are.”

“Is there a door?”

How the fuck should I know? Twill wanted to tell him, but didn’t; instead, she said, “Are you hurt? Aside from your head, I mean?”

“Someone punched me when we walked into the suite, right before injecting me in the neck. My ribs hurt, but I don’t think they broke anything. Just knocked the wind out of me. You?”

Twill hadn’t thought to check, but she didn’t think so. Using the bars as leverage, she slowly got to her feet. Her shoes were gone, and when she patted herself down, she found a tear in her dress near her left shoulder, but nothing else. No sore spots. No blood. “I’m okay,” she told him. “I’m going to try walking the perimeter and see if I can find the door. Stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”

“Okay.”

From above, there was a flutter of wings. Two, maybe three birds took flight with disturbed caws. They settled a moment later with a harsh rustle of feathers.

Twill moved slowly, keeping one hand on the bars and sweeping the air in front of her with the other, hoping to catch something before running into it while simultaneously hoping there was no something. The concrete was cold and damp against her toes, and when she stepped into a soft, wet puddle, she let out a sharp yelp.

“What is it? What’d you find?”

“I think it’s bird shit,” she told him. “Gross.”

“They sound like crows.”

“Yeah.” Twill didn’t care what kind of birds were above her. Unless they knew a way out, they’d be of little use. She wiped her foot against the side of the bars and kept going. She went at least five feet before finding the first corner and another ten before finding the next. When Langdon spoke again, he sounded close.

“I guess you’re not chained, are you?”

“What?”

“I’ve got something fastened around my ankle with a lock. That’s attached to a chain connected to one of the bars.” He gave it some sort of tug. Twill heard the sharp rattle of metal against the concrete. “I’m going to stand up and try walking. See if I can tell how long it is.”

“Wait,” Twill told him. “Stay put until I reach you.”

“Why?”

Twill didn’t really have an answer for that other than she wanted to reach him. She didn’t have much of an answer for that, either. She barely knew the guy. She didn’t want to be alone, though, and right now, she felt very alone. “I’m trying to get an idea of how big this cage is. If you start moving around, that will be harder.”

Not the whole truth, but part of the truth.

“Okay.” There was another soft rattle of the chain as Langdon settled back into place.

Twill found him a moment later, approximately five feet from the last corner. That put him directly across from where she had woken up. She nearly stepped on him, and even though she expected to find him, she still startled. He grabbed her leg and quickly put his other hand on the small of her back to steady her. Twill pulled away from him, probably a little harsher than necessary. More of a reflex.

“I’m sorry,” Langdon muttered. “I wasn’t trying to . . . I just didn’t want you to fall. I’m sorry if that was inappropriate.”

Twill almost laughed at the absurdity of that. He had paid her two thousand dollars for the evening. Sex was expected. An innocent touch was hardly a reason to admonish the guy. “I’m just jumpy. It’s okay.”

Even this close, she couldn’t make him out. She pictured him on the ground, his shirt partially untucked, several buttons missing. His perfectly combed hair now a ruffled mess. He let out a soft groan. “Oh, man. It’s not just my ribs. The side of my face hurts too. I don’t know if they punched me or if I hit something when I fell, but I think it’s starting to swell up.”

“Stay there,” Twill told him. “I’m going to keep going around. Hopefully find the door.”

“Hold up a second. Any chance you used some kind of pin to hold your hair up?”

Twill imagined her hair was a mess right now, but it had looked spectacular when she left the Quick. It took her half an hour to get it right. “A few of them. Why?”

“Can I have two? I want to try picking the lock on my ankle.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Let’s just say portions of my youth were misspent.”

Twill reached for her hair, removed two of the pins, and held them out. His hand fumbled for her in the dark and found them. His fingers were warm. She didn’t want to let go but did. “Stay put.”

Langdon rattled his chain. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She stepped around him, careful not to step on him, and reached for the bars again. She followed them another five feet to the next corner. “It’s square for sure. About ten feet on each side.” She kept going. She found the door another five feet over and stopped. “Got it!”

When Twill gripped two of the door’s bars and gave it a good shake, the rattle echoed through the room. Above, the birds fluttered to life in one chaotic rustle of feathers and screeches. So many, the rush of air found her; this musty belch of gamey oils and dust. It entered her eyes like a swipe of sandpaper. She brushed at them with her palms and fingertips as they began to tear up and burn.

Something wet and warm slapped against her shoulder. Twill instinctively brushed the bird shit away, then cursed herself for doing it because now it was on her hand, too.

Behind her, Langdon made a shuffling noise as more rained down. When it finally ended, he said, “Let’s not do that again.”

“Sorry,” Twill managed as she blinked away the last of the dust from her eyes. “I don’t understand why there are so many up there.”

“It means there’s a way out.”

That was a good point.

Unable to see, Twill worked around the edges of the door until she found the lock—a large deadbolt, at least four inches square, reinforced with screws as thick as her fingers welded to the bars. Twill grabbed the handle and yanked hard—it didn’t budge. She told Langdon what she found.

“They probably want money,” he replied flatly. “Some lowlife who knows who I am figured he could get some kind of payday. I bet they’ve already called my business manager or my office and made some kind of demand. Alex will get us out.”

Twill liked the sound of that. It was much better than the images of Emily and Andy bouncing around in her mind. Their bodies were abandoned with holes in their heads and needles in their arms. Left in the street like yesterday’s garbage by some asshole who got off on taking lives for the sake of taking lives. There was some irony in that, she supposed. But when she killed, it was with very good reason. Not something she did lightly. The people Twill killed deserved to die. Like those assholes the other night. Like that fucker at the morgue. Whoever was snatching residents of the Quick was satisfying some dark, ugly, twisted urge. If this were about money, and not that, well, that was much better. And it could be, right? As far as she knew, the Quick Killer (that’s how she thought of him) had never grabbed two people at once. Always only one. Always someone homeless. Langdon was some tech gazillionaire. If there was a profile, he didn’t fit it.

“What kind of lock is it?” Langdon asked. “What brand?”

Twill couldn’t see anything; it was too dark. “I don’t know. A lock, lock. A big one. Why? You gonna try and pick it too?”

Behind her came the rustle of the chain again. “Yeah. I’ve nearly got this one.”

Twill ran her finger over the keyhole, the cold metal of the lock. She couldn’t see it, but it felt sturdy. Beefy. But who knew? Maybe he could pick it.

A shrill ring startled her.

Harsh.

Loud.

Coming from right next to her head.

A telephone.

​59

​ANSON

We were in the Kid’s room. Paul, Vincent, and me. We’d closed the door, but there was no lock. There was a quick discussion about whether or not to block the door with a chair before we decided against it. There was no need to draw attention.

Vincent was doing that pacing thing, crossing the small space like a trapped bull before turning on his heels and strutting back, his nostrils flaring with each breath. “We should have fucking left. I knew it. I goddamn knew it.”

“You didn’t know shit,” Paul muttered. When his brain caught up with his mouth and realized he’d just said that to Vincent, he looked up with wide, fear-filled eyes. “I mean, how could you? How could any of us?”

Vincent’s only response was a soft grunt as he stomped across the room again.

“I think it’s a mistake,” the Kid said. “How could Meagan have been at your house in Simpsonville? What are the odds of that? I think maybe you just saw someone who looks like her, that’s all.”

Paul said, “I think the Kid’s got a crush on his pretty doctor, and it’s clouding his impressionable young mind.”

Beneath the dark pattern of healing bruises, the Kid’s face flushed red, but he didn’t deny it.

I was busy trying to ignore all of them. In my head, I played the images of that day. More and more of them came back to me with each pass, building on what Paul had helped me recall earlier. The Kid was right: it made absolutely no sense that Meagan would be there. Or that I’d run into her again here. There was too much chance involved in that. Too much randomness. Logic told me it couldn’t be true, but with each pass through my mind, the images became clearer, sharper, and her face came into focus.

I was sure.

I didn’t want to be, but I was.

Other images had grown clearer, too. I thought of the vans I had seen before the fire started, the men crawling around the house, and I turned to the Kid and nodded at the laptop on his bedside table. “Are you able to look up companies on that thing? The way you did Van Man and Sam Porter?”

The Kid reached for the laptop and powered it on. “Sure. What company?”

“Talbot Enterprises.”

The name had been painted on the sides of the white vans.

When Paul heard the name, he flipped through the sketches in his notepad until he found one with the vans. “It’s probably bogus. Might as well say Red’s Carpet Cleaning. Maybe the vans were stolen. Bad guys wouldn’t be stupid enough to show up at a crime scene with the name of their current employer stamped across their vehicles. Were they wearing t-shirts that said ‘Suspect’ across the front, too? I bet whoever was in charge had a ball cap that said ‘Top Baddie’ on it.”

Vincent glared at him. “Stop talking.”

“Whatever,” Paul muttered.

“If they were in a hurry,” I told the Kid, “if they didn’t expect to get caught, they might show up like that. They were in and out fast. It’s isolated. They didn’t see me, and there was nobody else out there to see them.”

The Kid had been typing. He stopped. “Talbot Enterprises is real. I’m not sure why they would be in South Carolina, though. Best I can tell, they don’t have any branches in that state. They’re based out of Chicago.”

“What do they do?”

He tapped a few keys and studied the screen. “Lots of stuff. The company was founded by a guy named Arthur Talbot fourteen years ago. Looks like he started in residential real estate, then got into accounting services and software development. They do a lot of commercial real estate and development now, too. It’s a pretty big company. Over a thousand employees. Even more if you factor in subcontractors. There’s a list of projects here a mile long.”

Mr. Carter was an accountant.

Did he work for Talbot Enterprises?

“Is there any kind of employee log? Do you see someone named Simon Carter?”

The Kid went back to typing. After a few seconds, he frowned. “Nobody named Carter.”

Vincent stopped pacing. “What about—”

“I’m already looking,” the Kid replied without looking up. A second later, he shook his head. “I don’t see Meagan either.”

“Do we even know if that’s her real name?” Paul asked.

I thought back to the police report I’d seen on Detective Moss’s table. When Stash had been arrested, it was Meagan who bailed him out. I imagined they asked for a driver’s license when you posted bail. Some sort of identification. Unless she had a fake ID to back it up, Meagan was probably her real name.

There was a knock at the door. It opened, and Ruddy stuck his head in. “There you are.” He stepped into the room with the clipboard in his hand. “The three of you haven’t filled this out yet.” He glanced at the Kid. “Well, four of you, if you’re up for it.” He got a better look at the Kid, the bruises, and walked it back. “You don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to.”

Vincent took the clipboard from him and scribbled in “.38” next to his name, then looked at me. “I’ve seen you shoot. No fucking way you’re getting a gun.”

“I have a knife,” I told him. “I don’t want a gun.”

Paul raised both palms and shook his head. “I’m a lover, not a fighter. I’ll be in the back capturing your death on paper so future generations can sing your praises.”

In the hallway behind Ruddy stood Detective Moss.

​60

​ANSON

Looking over Ruddy’s shoulder, Detective Moss quickly studied the Kid’s small room and the four of us. When Ruddy realized she was standing behind him, his freckled face grew red. He mumbled some excuse and vanished down the hallway with the clipboard.

Detective Moss placed her hand on the edge of the doorframe. “May I come in?”

Paul and Vincent simultaneously responded with, “No,” while the Kid and I told her she could.

Her gaze fell on the Kid, and apparently, she decided it was his room, his call. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her before turning to me. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Father had taught me years ago never to let anger rule my decisions or cloud my thoughts. He said it was an unproductive heavy fog draped over rational thought, and no good came from acting on it. I reminded myself of that when I said in the calmest voice I could muster, “I’m thinking you set me up.”

She didn’t deny it. “I did. And I would do it again. But not without knowing I could ensure your safety.”

Vincent drew closer, his red nostrils flaring. “You painted a target on his back and told some killer where to find him?!”

If she was in any way intimidated by Vincent, she didn’t show it. “You’re assuming they dropped that picture by accident. I don’t think that was the case. I think they left it there for us to find. I think that was their way of telling us Anson’s next.”

“Why would they tell you that?”

“Not me.” She shook her head. “Other people on the force. The wrong sort of people.”

When none of us replied to that, she lowered her voice. She studied each of our faces. A long moment slipped by before she spoke again, and I didn’t expect what she said next. “Half the cops I work with are on the Genovese payroll. The other half are scared of the first half. When a clue like this is left out in the open, it’s no accident. It’s someone sending a message. We want this kid, and there’s a sizable payday in the future for whoever finds him.”

“If that’s true, it means the killer is working for the mob, too.”

That came from the Kid, and honestly, it surprised me that he came to it so fast. I hadn’t known him well at Finicky’s, but I was quickly realizing he was much smarter than I had assumed. Particularly for his age.

Detective Moss nodded at him. “That may very well be true.”

“Then why would he target Andy or Emily or all the others?” I asked her.

She didn’t have an answer for that and said nothing.

“We’ve got access to a car,” Vincent said. “We’re leaving. This isn’t our fight.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Stash said nobody had to stay if they didn’t want to. We don’t want to.”

“He wasn’t talking to you,” she said flatly. “He was talking to everyone else. If it had been up to me, we would have cleared everyone but the four of you.”

This only made Vincent angrier. “You can’t keep us here.”

“Yet, oddly, I am.” She shifted her weight to her back foot and looked directly at me. “Look, I don’t think this is just about some roundup so they can line their trafficking coffers. I think that may be some kind of half-truth, a smokescreen. I think you’re their real target, Anson. I think you may even understand why. You don’t trust me enough to share, I get that, but your silence doesn’t make it any less true.” She gestured at Vincent, Paul, and the Kid. “I’m curious, have you at least told them? They’re your friends, right? They deserve to know.”

I felt their eyes on me, then. All of them.

Vincent drew closer. “Spill it, Bishop.”

I swallowed. “Before coming to Finicky’s, my neighbors stole something from that company I mentioned, Talbot Enterprises. He worked in their accounting division. He . . . died . . . and his wife ran off with whatever he stole, along with my mother.” I didn’t mention Kirby, the man who ran off with them—that would only bring on more questions.

“Stole what?” Vincent pressed.

“Money,” I told him. “A lot of money. Information, too. My neighbor, Mr. Carter, he was an accountant.”

“An accountant for who?” Vincent asked.

Criminals, Father muttered. Isn’t that what Mrs. Carter said? A dozen of them, maybe more. Even a few members of the Genovese family. He helped them hide their money.

“He was an accountant for the mob,” I said softly.

Detective Moss looked me dead in the eyes. “For the Genovese crime family?”

“I think so.”

Vincent ran his hand through his unruly hair. “Jesus, Bishop . . .”

Detective Moss asked, “And your mother and this Carter woman ran off with it?”

I nodded. “They must think I know where they are.”

“Do you?”

I shook my head. “Mother never told me where they were going; she just ran. Her and Mrs. Carter.”

They left you, Champ. That’s what they did. They abandoned you to deal with this mess all alone.

Detective Moss placed her hand on my shoulder. “She hasn’t been in contact with you?”

“No.”

“The baddies don’t know that,” Paul said quietly. “Do you have any idea what people like that will do when they get hold of you?”

“They won’t get to him,” Detective Moss replied. “I won’t let them.”

Vincent let out a huff. “You just said half the cops on your force are on the Genovese payroll. How the hell can you keep him safe?”

“I’ve got this place under complete lockdown with people I trust. Cops I know aren’t dirty.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Paul said, “that’s the half who are scared of the first half?”

“Jesus, you’re an idiot,” Vincent snickered.

“No, he’s right,” Detective Moss said. “It’s a valid point. But fear also keeps them sharp, and they see this as an opportunity to remove the bad members of the force for good. Those people are like a virus; we all want them gone. They won’t get in here.”

Vincent went quiet. Something he rarely did. His eyes bounced across those of us in the room, but spent the most time on the Kid, and I had a pretty good idea what he was thinking. We couldn’t move the Kid, not yet, which meant he had to stay here. If he had to stay, we were all staying; that wasn’t a question. Vincent might be part Neanderthal, but he was also loyal, protective. He’d do what he had to do to keep us safe. I knew he had his .38 tucked into the back of his jeans, and when his hand dropped to his side, I thought he might reach for it, but he did not. Instead, he took out Paul’s drawing of Meagan from his pocket. He gave me a quick glance, and when I nodded, he unfolded the sketch on the Kid’s bed in front of the detective.

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

So I told her that part, too. How Meagan was at the house in Simpsonville. How she had taken the photograph of me. The same photograph she’d found on the sidewalk.

What the detective said next surprised me.

“This is good.” Her face lit up, and for the first time, she looked excited. “She doesn’t know about this, right? She doesn’t know that you know?”

I shook my head. “We haven’t told anyone.”

She seemed to consider this for a long time, then said, “Does she have a room here?”

​61

​ANSON

Vincent and Paul stayed with the Kid as I led Detective Moss down the narrow steps from the attic to the main level and rounded a corner at the base of the stairs. Deeper down the hallway, a boy of maybe fourteen holding a butcher knife patrolled. His face grew stiff and anxious at the sight of the detective, but he did not attempt to hide the knife. Instead, he locked eyes with her for a few seconds, then continued down the hallway.

Neither of us moved until he rounded the far corner and vanished.

Meagan’s room wasn’t so much a room as it was a storage closet under the staircase. That said, it was a private space—something in short supply at the Quick. And it was near her patients. Probably the reason she picked it.

With one hand resting on the gun at her hip, Detective Moss knocked twice on Meagan’s door and announced herself.

No reply came.

She tried the knob and found it unlocked.

I half expected Moss to tell me to wait outside, maybe act as a lookout, but instead, she motioned for me to enter with a sideways bob of her head as she silently stepped into the room.

Inside, she closed the door, and the two of us quickly scanned the interior.

There was a cot against the wall on the right, the sheets and blanket made with military precision, pulled tight at all corners with a fluffed pillow resting on top. A small, three-drawer dresser was centered against the back wall; a lamp, digital clock, and several books were piled on top. On the wall to our left was an armoire. It was about my height and stained a dark brown, the wood chipped and scratched with years of use. The ceiling sloped with the stairs above, but we both had enough room to stand.

“We’re going to make this fast,” Detective Moss told me, eyeing the armoire. “I’ll take that. You get the dresser and around the bed.”

I nodded.

I didn’t ask her what we were looking for because I knew she didn’t know any more than I did.

This Meagan woman is connected to Talbot, and Talbot is bad news, Champ. She’ll put you in a box. For the life of me, I don’t understand what you’re doing. Leave. Just leave. Don’t you feel the rope tightening around you? Honestly, I thought I taught you better than this. I am seriously disappointed.

Shut up,” I said softly.

Detective Moss’s eyes narrowed. “Huh?”

Shaking my head, I didn’t explain; I just went to Meagan’s bed.

Disappointed or not, Father had taught me the proper way to conduct a search, particularly when you wanted to go unnoticed.

Without disturbing her sheets, I lifted the mattress and peered underneath. Aside from a few random dust bunnies, there was nothing. Nothing under her pillow. Nothing in the pillowcase, either. I ran my fingertips down the length of her sheets, then back up again, adjusting by a few inches with each pass. Combing in a grid pattern until I reached the opposite corner from where I started. Again, nothing found.

On the small dresser were copies of the latest Nora Roberts novel as well as a worn paperback by Thad McAlister. A political thriller, too. I quickly flipped through all three and found nothing within the pages aside from scrap pieces of paper she apparently used as bookmarks. The top drawer was filled with toiletries, as well as toothpaste and a brush, a hair dryer, and some makeup. The center drawer had t-shirts and socks. The third held underwear and bras. I felt my face flush red at the sight of those, and my color only deepened when I caught Detective Moss watching me. “You’d be surprised what women hide in their underwear drawer, Anson. Check carefully. Don’t be afraid to dig.”

In my mind’s eye, I flashed back to the Carters’ house behind our own in Simpsonville. Mother had told me something similar when we searched through Mr. and Mrs. Carter’s things on the day I’d found the photograph of her and Mrs. Carter, both naked, doing unmentionable things to each other.

There was no photograph in Meagan’s things.

I found nothing in Meagan’s things.

When Detective Moss let out a slow sigh, I knew she wasn’t making any progress either.

I closed the bottom drawer, ready to give up, when it got stuck. I pulled it open and tried again, but it would not shut.

“Fiddlesticks,” I muttered.

Even to me, the word sounded weird coming from my mouth. When Father said it, he made it sound natural.

Detective Moss twisted back toward me. “What is it?”

I tried the drawer again, but it only closed about halfway. “It’s stuck.”

Finished with the armoire, Detective Moss closed the double doors and knelt next to me. She tried the drawer herself and frowned. “It’s caught on something.”

Rather than push the drawer, Moss pulled it toward us until it dropped from its tracks, then she reached inside the dark cavity and came out with a small book. “Bingo. Next time, I think I’ll start with the underwear drawer.” She flipped through the pages and studied the text.

“What is it?”

“I think it’s some kind of ledger.”

“May I?”

She handed it to me.

About half the pages were filled, and as I read the text, my heart gave a solid thump. Particularly the last page. The final three entries read:

“WF15 5k EC.”

“WM15 4k AD.”

“WF15 6k MP.”

I’d seen entries just like these. They’d been written on the backs of photographs at Finicky’s. The pictures of all the kids on the staircase wall. When I spoke, my voice was thin. “This one stands for white female, fifteen years old, five thousand dollars.” I paused a second at the remaining two letters. “Those are initials. What was Emily’s last name?”

“Cormack,” Detective Moss replied, her finger falling to the letters EC.

I moved on to the next one. “White male, fifteen years old, four thousand dollars. Andy . . .”

“Dickson.”

“Dickson,” I replied. “Andy Dickson. AD.”

Her finger brushed the last entry. “White female, fifteen. Six thousand dollars . . .” Her voice trailed off at the initials. “I don’t know of anyone with the initials MP.”

“It’s whoever he has now,” I said.

“You mean whoever she has now.” She flipped back through the pages. “There must be a hundred other entries here. I don’t see any dates, but this book is old. There are at least three different types of handwriting here. Like it’s been passed on from person to person over time.”

“I bet everyone on the wall in the cafeteria is in there.”

Although Detective Moss had been in the cafeteria for the meeting earlier, I wasn’t sure if she’d gotten a good look at that wall. If she didn’t understand what I was talking about, she said nothing. Instead, she thumbed back through the book and tapped one of the pages. “I don’t think Meagan is our killer. I think she’s supplying victims to our killer.”

“For a price,” I added.

She nodded. “Considering how far back this all goes, we may be talking about multiple killers.”

“Multiple suppliers and multiple killers.”

All those people on the wall, dating back generations.

Above us, heavy feet thundered up the stairs. Someone big heading to the Kid’s room. Maybe Pudge. A moment later, they came back down again and vanished down the hallway toward the front of the Quick.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, quickly working the drawer back into place.

Detective Moss stood and pocketed the ledger. “I’ve got someone in CSU I can trust with this. I want to get some pictures of the wall in the cafeteria, give them something they can compare to.”

So she did know about the wall.

When she opened Meagan’s door, we found Stash standing there blocking our path, a large shotgun cradled in his arm.

​62

​TWILL

Riiiiiing!

This was no ordinary phone; it was old-school. The kind with metal bells and a hammer inside. In her mind’s eye, Twill pictured that hammer slamming to one side, then back again. Cracking against the bells with steadfast purpose. Anger, even. Above, the birds went into a frenzy. A raucous screeching and sudden movement. Twill knew enough to shield her eyes this time and did exactly that as nastiness fell from up top, raining down on her. With her free hand, she fumbled toward the sound, the insanely loud ringing, and when her fingers brushed the cold plastic of the receiver mounted to the bars above the door, she snatched it from the cradle. She was shaking as she brought it to her ear. “Hello?”

At first, there was only silence, then a thin breathing within that silence, then, “Am I speaking to Madison Poppy?”

It had been at least two years since someone had used her real name, and hearing it now made it seem that much more foreign to her. As if one of her stepdads had somehow found her and was prepping to scold her for running off from the life she’d tried so desperately to forget. For leaving him alone with her mother. The voice on the phone wasn’t one of her stepdads, or at least she didn’t recognize it as one, but it was male. He spoke in a low whisper, just above a breath. A voice that didn’t sound much like a voice at all, but instead, it was some shadowy thing that found a way to reach her from within the place nightmares were born. It lingered at her ear. It slicked her spine with the slippery tongue of a dead thing.

“Who is this?” she managed, her voice breaking midway through the short sentence.

Behind her, Langdon’s chain rattled. “If that’s the fucker who took us, tell him I’ll pay whatever he wants, but he needs to let us out now. No bullshit.”

Twill turned and gave him a harsh shush.

“I don’t want money.”

Images of Emily and Andy flashed through Twill’s mind again, and she quickly shook them off. “If not money, what do you want?”

“I want you to confirm I’m talking to Madison Poppy.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked nicely. If I’m forced to continue asking, I may not continue asking nicely.”

“I’m not scared of you, you piece of shit. If you had half a ball, you’d turn on the lights and step in here. Face me rather than relying on all the theatrical bullshit.”

“Is that how you see your current situation? Theatrical bullshit?”

“I see a weak man who has to hide and drug people. A weak man who locks people in a cage. A weak man who probably has to pop a pill to get a boner because he doesn’t have a drop of testosterone in his puny little body.”

“Jesus, Rose, you’re going to piss him off,” Langdon said from the dark. “Don’t antagonize him. Just tell him we’ll give him whatever he wants. I’ve just about got this lock figured out. If you can keep him on the line, I’ll tell him myself. I’ll put him in touch with the right people.”

“Are you Madison Poppy?”

“Madison Poppy died when I left Montana.”

“Twill, then. Born again.”

“What do you want?”

“I want what you want. I want you to get out of that cage alive.”

“Then open the door.”

“If only it were so simple.”

“You put us in here—you can let us out.”

“I’m only a facilitator. I don’t make the rules.”

Behind her, another phone rang. Same harsh, metallic clang of metal on metal. Langdon’s chain rattled, then the ringing stopped as he found the other phone and answered. “Hello?”

Twill couldn’t hear what was said, and even if she could, she might not be able to make sense of it. A single thought had jumped into her head and was screaming at her: If she was on the phone with the person who kidnapped them, who was on the line with Langdon? The answer was surprisingly simple—there was more than one. Knowing that didn’t make her feel any better. “How many of you are there?”

“Enough to complete the task.”

“So two limp-dicked assholes?”

“My friend is currently telling Langdon the same thing I’m about to tell you. I strongly suggest you pay attention.”

Twill didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but she also understood aggravating him wouldn’t help either. Whether she liked it or not, this guy had the upper hand, at least for now. “What?”

“Only one of you will be released from that cage. The survivor. If you want to see daylight again, you need to kill Langdon before he kills you. You will not be provided food. You will not be provided water. You will not be given a weapon of any sort. While he may physically be stronger, we both know what you are capable of. You’re cunning. That is your asset. Without sustenance, time is also your enemy. Strike fast, strike soon. The longer you wait, the more difficult such exertion will become. Killing a grown man is difficult. Killing a grown man while fatigued is nearly impossible. But kill him, you must. If you want to get out.”

There was a soft click, and the line went dead.

Twill held the receiver in her hand for a long moment, then fumbled it back onto the base. From behind her in the dark, she heard Langdon do the same—plastic rattling against plastic, then silence.

At first, neither spoke, then Langdon cleared his throat. “So you go by Twill?”

Twill swallowed. “Yeah.”

“I suppose I should have known Rose wasn’t your real name. Girls like you never give their real name.”

The darkness in the cage was nearly absolute. Although her eyes had attempted to adjust, Twill still saw nothing beyond vague nearby shapes. If she couldn’t see Langdon, it was unlikely he could see her.

She took several steps away from the door, and when she spoke again, she put her hand in front of her mouth at a slight angle. Between that and the echo off the concrete, she hoped it would make it harder for Langdon to figure out exactly where she was. “How are you coming on that lock?”

“I got it open while I was on the phone,” he told her in a voice that sounded far too calm.

​63

​ANSON

Stash held the shotgun with a single-handed grip, with the barrel over his shoulder and the butt resting in the crook of his arm. While he couldn’t fire in that position, it wouldn’t take much to swing the weapon around and level it at us. Lou from downstairs was behind him, his face blotchy and moist with sweat. Some kind of handgun was tucked in the front waistband of his jeans.

Before either of them could speak, I blurted out, “Have you seen Meagan? Detective Moss asked me what it would take to move the Kid if we have to.”

Not the best of lies, but better than nothing.

“She’s not in here,” Detective Moss added without missing a beat. “We’ve looked everywhere.”

Lou repositioned his weight to his back foot and hooked the thumb of his right hand on his front pocket, inches from the gun.

“She went to the hospital to get supplies.” Stash’s eyes remained on me. They’d never looked so cold. He nodded over my shoulder at Meagan’s empty room. “You shouldn’t be in there. That’s her private space.”

“We wanted to leave her a note.”

“And did you? Leave her a note?”

“I couldn’t find a pen.” I glanced toward the stairs leading to the Kid’s room. “I was heading back up to get one.”

“How about we all go together?”

While he left the shotgun on his shoulder, his hand inched closer to the trigger. He motioned toward the staircase.

You could grab it, Champ. You go up the stairs first, him behind you. Hit him with all your weight when he least expects it, one quick backward thrust. Throw him off balance and take the gun when he tumbles. We probably practiced that move a thousand times on the basement steps back home. You know you can do it, even if he outweighs you.

I started up the steps.

Stash behind me, Lou behind him.

I didn’t make a play for the shotgun only because Detective Moss was behind Lou, and something about that felt off. If Stash and Lou were trying to corral us, surely Lou would have made the detective go first. He was vulnerable with her at the rear.

When we stepped back into the Kid’s room, I thought Vincent might go for the gun he had at the small of his back, but he didn’t. His eyes quickly met mine, then bounced to Stash and Lou and back again, this silent message to stand down. “They were just up here,” he said. “Twill’s missing. Have you seen her?”

“Twill? I . . . no,” I stammered. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

Lou leaned back against the door frame. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully, with one eye on Detective Moss. “Twill went out earlier on a . . . date . . . and was due back about three hours ago. She hasn’t checked in. That’s not like her. She always checks in after a date. Right after.”

He said this last part more to me and the other boys than to Detective Moss, but his weak attempt at code wasn’t lost on her. She knew exactly what he meant by “date” and made no attempt to hide it. No doubt grateful for the chance to change the subject. “Do you know the guy?” she asked. “Is he some kind of regular?”

Lou seemed slightly taken aback by that, and he glanced at Stash before answering. When Stash reluctantly nodded, he turned back to Moss. “He’s new, but . . . but Meagan vouched for him. I came up here looking for her.”

The heavy footsteps we heard.

“But she’s at the hospital.”

Stash nodded. “Like I said.”

An image of the latest entry in that ledger we found in Meagan’s room flashed in my mind.

“WF15 6k MP.”

I wanted to ask what Twill’s real name was, but I knew I couldn’t, not without having to explain. I imagined Detective Moss was thinking the same thing.

“Does Meagan know how to reach him? This guy?” Moss asked. To her credit, she didn’t so much as blink at the drawing still sitting on the Kid’s bed. Instead, she stepped between it and the two men at the door, giving Vincent enough time to slip Paul’s sketch of Meagan back into his pocket.

Lou looked like he was about to answer Moss’s question when the Kid cleared his throat.

“Um, guys?” He turned his laptop around to face us. “You’ll want to see this.”

When we all drew close, he expanded a window and clicked a button marked “play.” A video filled the screen—a shot of the road outside the Market District’s main entrance.

“I tapped into a security feed from the convenience store across the street on King. These guys just pulled up.”

Although it was dark out, the street lights provided enough illumination to clearly see two white vans at the curb, not unlike Hillburn’s. I half-expected to see “Talbot Enterprises” stenciled in red on the sides, but they were unmarked. The back doors opened on both, and twelve men quickly streamed out, six from each. Dressed inconspicuously, they split up and walked off in different directions. Four of them took up positions on the sidewalk; the others quickly stepped off and vanished. The vans pulled away. It was all over in under twenty seconds.

“Shit, they’re here,” Paul breathed.

The Kid pressed stop. “I’m trying to find more cameras, but I haven’t had much luck. I can only see the front. There’s probably more of them, though. There’s a good chance they dropped people off all around the building.”

Vincent’s mouth was hanging open, and his body grew rigid. “How many people are still here? To defend this place?”

“Seventy-three at last count,” Stash replied. “Nearly half are kids, though. Sixteen and under.”

Vincent turned to Detective Moss. “How many cops do you have?”

“Ten on the ground, four more in patrol cars circling the building.”

He looked out through the doorway, nodding toward Ruddy’s voice coming from somewhere nearby. “I didn’t count the weapons on that clipboard, but it didn’t seem like many.”

Stash licked his lips and swallowed. “Eight handguns. Twenty-three knives. Two shotguns, counting this one.”

“That’s it?” Vincent’s red face grew redder. “You just told everyone you could get more?”

“We can get knives from downstairs, and we have ammunition coming, but we can’t get more guns.”

“The ammunition isn’t even here?”

“It’s coming.”

Vincent glanced down at the frozen image on the laptop. “Fuck.”

Stash’s math was wrong. I quickly pointed out, “We have three shotguns, right? Not two. You forgot Pudge at the stairs.”

Stash’s eyes fell to the floor for a second. “We took the firing pin out of Pudge’s shotgun when we first gave it to him. He’s always been more of a deterrent.”

“So put it back in,” Vincent told him, his voice filled with aggravation.

“Nobody knows where it is. It’s been a few years.”

Vincent blew out a breath and ran his hand through his ruffled hair. “We are so fucked.”

“There are only two ways to get up here from down below, and we’ve got both covered with multiple people,” Stash insisted. “As long as we hold both staircases, they can’t get upstairs.”

“And I’ve got men positioned inside the market and patrolling the streets. Stash is right. They won’t get through.”

Vincent looked back at the Kid. “Let me see that video again?”

The Kid pressed several keys and the video repeated.

“Stop it there,” Vincent instructed.

The Kid did. Having just exited the van, the men were frozen mid-step.

“Can you zoom in?”

“Some,” the Kid told him. “I think. The quality isn’t that great.”

The quality was good enough.

As the image of one of the men grew on the screen, the barrel of some kind of assault rifle became visible sticking out the bottom of his jacket, tucked under the crook of his arm. It appeared they were all concealing assault rifles.

Their clothing looked bulky, too. Like multiple layers.

Detective Moss understood why. “They’re wearing body armor under their shirts.”

“We can’t defend against that,” Vincent said. “Not for long.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Stash replied.

“They’re not going to shoot,” Detective Moss said. “Think about it. If their plan is really to herd the young for trafficking, they need to be careful about it. Surgical. They can’t hurt anyone. They don’t want damaged goods. They certainly can’t risk drawing more law enforcement or the press. The guns are for show.”

It was after midnight. The Market had closed hours earlier. There was nobody to hear—

A single shot cracked through the air.

​64

​TWILL

“​I think you should stay where you are,” Twill said, still attempting to throw her voice. Unsure if it really worked.

“Why?” Langdon replied. “So you know where to find me? So you can kill me first?”

Yes.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Langdon,” she replied in a quiet voice. “We don’t have to do what they said. If you picked the lock on your chain, then you can probably pick the lock on the door. We can get out on our own. Fuck them.”

As she spoke, Twill worked her way around the bars. She crossed back to the place where she first woke. As far from Langdon as she could get. There was a soft rattle of his chain, then nothing. Near complete silence. Was he moving too? “Langdon? What are you doing?”

At first, he didn’t speak. When he did, it was clear he had moved. His voice came from across the cage and to the left, near the far corner. “They have my wife. They said if I don’t kill you, they’ll kill her.”

“You’re married? Why would you hire . . .”

She didn’t bother with the rest of that sentence because half her clients were married. He told her anyway.

“My wife and I have an understanding.”

Lovely.

Twill shuffled a few more feet to the side.

Reaching into her hair, she retrieved one of the pins. She carefully straightened the metal and gripped it between her thumb and forefinger. There was a soft nub of wax on the tip, and she peeled that away with her nails.

Not exactly sharp, and not exactly a weapon, but if she got him in the eye, she could . . .

She could what?

Blind him?

Then maybe knee him in the crotch?

Bite him?

Tear his throat open with her teeth?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. If he tried to hurt her, she’d hurt him back. Or maybe she’d hurt him first. Twill was many things, but weak wasn’t one of them. “You need to try picking the lock,” she told him in the same quiet voice; timid, even. A touch of fright. She wanted him to believe all those things. Then she quickly moved a few feet in the opposite direction she’d been going. Careful to walk on her toes so as not to make a sound.

“You don’t think they’re watching us?”

Twill had heard of cameras that could see in the dark. Night vision goggles, too. Langdon was right. Whoever had put them in here wouldn’t just lock them in the cage; they’d want to watch every second. They probably got off on it. They were probably listening, too. The fact that she and Langdon had talked about picking the lock aloud meant their captors had probably worked out some countermove. Hell, they might just shoot them the second they left the cage.

“We need to work together,” Twill said. “I promise, I won’t hurt you.”

“Oh yeah, me too. I promise. You can trust me. Should we pinkie swear on it?” he grunted. “Like I’m going to believe you. You’re just some whore. A pretty whore, but just a whore.”

“Fuck you too. You’re the asshole paying for sex.”

So much for quiet, timid, and frightened.

Langdon said nothing for a moment. When he replied, it was his voice that softened. “I’m sorry—you’re right. That was a little harsh. I apologize.”

Twill stepped into another pile of bird shit. It was warm and seeped up between her toes. She tried not to think about it and forced the anger from her voice, too. “How about you stay over there and I’ll stay over here, and we can talk this through?”

“Yeah, okay. Neither of us moves and we come up with a plan together.”

“Exactly.” Silently, Twill slipped a few feet to her right.

“This isn’t exactly how I expected our night to end.” His voice had gone from the menacing tone a few moments earlier to something more reserved, closer to the way he’d spoken to her back in the car and at the party. “I’m guessing it’s a first for you, too?”

Was that an attempt at a joke?

Twill didn’t answer because she didn’t want him to know she’d moved all the way to the corner and was inspecting the bars. While the vertical bars were spaced about four inches apart, she found there were also horizontal bars, probably meant for support. The first was about three feet off the ground, and when she stepped on it and climbed up, she found another bar three feet above that. Gripping it with both hands, she hoisted herself up, got her feet on it, and climbed higher.

“Twill?”

She was six feet off the ground. It took a moment, but she found the next horizontal bar three feet above the last. There was no sign of a top to the cage, at least not yet, and Twill wondered how high she’d have to climb to find it. Would it be open? Could she simply swing over the top and come down on the other side?

Maybe.

“Twill? What are you doing?”

Like her, Langdon hadn’t remained still as promised; he’d continued circling the cage. When he spoke, he sounded like he was directly below her. She pictured him standing there, his arms out in front of himself, swiping slowly at the air, groping for her in the dark.

“Twill, you said you wouldn’t move? Did you lie to me?”

She held her breath. Went as still as she could.

“If we’re going to work together, we’re going to need trust. Lying to me is not a good way to build trust. In fact, it puts me on the defensive. That’s counterproductive, don’t you think?”

Moving ever so slowly, Twill eased her left hand up the nearest bar until she found the next horizontal run above her, then she brought her right hand up too, gripped, and soundlessly started to hoist herself higher. At six feet, he might still be able to reach her, but if she could get up to nine, she’d be safe. She could think. Form some kind of plan.

Twill had managed to get one foot on the next horizontal bar and was hanging precariously, about to pull herself up, when something brushed across the fingers of her left hand. That was followed by a blinding hot pain.

​65

​ANSON

Stash pulled a radio from his pocket, brought it to his lips, and pressed the transmit button. “Who fired?”

An ungodly amount of time slipped by before there was a response. Finally—

“It came from downstairs.”

I didn’t recognize the voice, but that didn’t really matter.

From her pocket, Detective Moss produced a radio of her own. “This is Moss. We heard a shot. What’s going on down there?”

Different voice. “Murdock, here. We took incoming fire. Single shot breach through a window from a rooftop on the southeast side. Silenced. Probably some long-range rifle. Carmichael took it in the vest. He’s winded but okay. Louden returned fire. That’s what you heard. Over.”

Detective Moss bit her lower lip. “Louden, do you have eyes on the shooter?”

Crackle of static, then: “I did, but I think they went to reposition after taking that initial shot. I don’t see anyone now. Please advise. Over.”

She glanced over at the Kid, then said, “We have reason to believe they’ve taken up position all around the exterior and may be preparing to breach. They’re wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. Over.”

“Understood.” This came from Murdock. “We have the market secured. Lights are out and we’re on night vision. We tried to close the exterior security shutters, but no joy. They’re roll-down electric, and we haven’t been able to locate the switch. If you have someone up there who knows where to find it, that would be fantastic. Over.”

Detective Moss looked over at Stash, who softly shook his head. Lou didn’t know either. She thumbed the radio button and replied, “Location unknown. Over.”

From the bed, the Kid flipped the laptop back around and began to type away at the keys with some newfound fervor. A few seconds later, a smile edged his bruised face and he looked up.

Detective Moss’s radio crackled again. “I don’t know how you did that, but thank you. Shades deployed. Windows are secure.”

The Kid’s smile grew wider. “They’re wired into the building’s security system.”

“What else can you get to?” Vincent asked him.

The Kid looked back at the screen. “Not much. Lights. Sprinklers. Main breakers.”

“You can control all that from there?” Detective Moss rounded the bed to get a closer look. Whatever was on his screen only appeared to confuse her.

“That’s the raw source code,” the Kid explained. “I’m guessing it doesn’t make much sense if you don’t know what you’re looking at.” He pointed at the top left corner. “Everything is organized by module and MAC address. Once I have that, I just need to send a call method to adjust the parameter and—”

“Okay, stop,” she said, shaking her head softly. “I believe you.”

“All that did was buy time,” Vincent pointed out. “We need a real plan.”

Detective Moss raised her radio again and spoke. “Patrol, we have active engagement on the exterior, no less than a dozen assailants, including at least one sniper last seen in a building to our southeast, possibly repositioning. What are your current twenties? Do any of you have visual? Over.”

She waited as the seconds ticked by, her finger hovering over the transmit button.

I exchanged a look with Vincent.

I tried not to look at Stash.

If Meagan was working with the mob, there was a good chance Stash was, too. She may be his ex-wife, but they were obviously still close. We certainly couldn’t trust him. I wasn’t so sure we could trust Lou, either. I knew from talking to Twill that those who participated in his escort service did so willingly, which meant he wasn’t as bad as the traffickers, but he certainly had one foot in their camp. What would it take to bring him completely into the fold? Probably not much.

Detective Moss pressed the transmit button on her radio again. “Patrol, do you copy?”

Paul’s face went stone white. “They took them out, didn’t they? All of them.”

“That’s not possible,” Moss replied, even though we all knew it was. It was very possible. She pressed the button again. “Murdock? Are you able to raise patrol? My radio isn’t getting through. Over.”

Murdock didn’t respond, either.

Three more shots rang out in quick succession. Semi-automatic fire. Pop! Pop! Pop! That was quickly followed by a single shot, then six more, rapid fire.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Paul muttered, echoing the cadence, his hand absentmindedly scribbling on the pad at his side—these nonsensical doodles of police cars and buildings with bullets flying everywhere. Some battle brewing in his head and oozing out to the paper. I half expected him to draw Superman swooping in from above, or maybe his favorite female lead, Maybelle Markel, in full army fatigues and carrying a bazooka.

The Quick had gotten oddly quiet. Nobody made a sound. I heard nothing but Paul’s pencil and my own breathing.

Three more shots, then nothing.

Complete silence down below.

Detective Moss’s eyes were glued to the floor as she reached into her pocket and took out her mobile phone. She keyed in a number, then frowned at the display. “I’m not getting a signal. That’s not possible—there are towers all over this part of town.”

“Signals can be blocked,” the Kid said softly. “Radio and cell phones.”

She thumbed the mic on her radio again. “Murdock? Louden? Carmichael? Anyone read me? Over.”

When nobody answered, Stash leaned toward Lou and quietly said, “Make sure everyone who has a weapon is in some kind of defensive position. Tell everyone else to go to the cafeteria, particularly the kids. That’s our most insulated room. Nobody gets in there. Understand?”

Lou gave him a quick nod and disappeared down the hallway at a run.

Stash then looked at Vincent. “You’ve got a gun, right?”

Vincent nodded.

“I’m heading to the south stairs. I need you boys on the north side backing up Pudge. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes,” Vincent told him. “But—”

“But what?”

“You know we can’t hold them back forever. Not against that kind of firepower. We need a Plan B.”

Stash offered a weak nod, and something became abundantly clear. While he understood Vincent was right, he also knew there was nothing else we could do. There was no Plan B.

He bolted down the stairs, spouting orders into his radio. Orders, I was fairly certain, nobody could hear.

​66

​ANSON

The moment Stash was gone, Detective Moss turned to me, cradling her useless radio and phone. “We can’t trust him. Not after what we found downstairs. He might be working with Meagan.”

Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “What did you find?”

We quickly told him.

The Kid listened in silence, and I could only imagine what was going through his head. Every time he trusted someone, they betrayed him. Paul wasn’t much better. He’d quickly hashed out a sketch of Stash with the shotgun, and he added Meagan standing beside him, tying a noose with a length of rope.

Drawing in a deep breath, Detective Moss turned to me. “I need to find some way to get in touch with my men. If I leave you here, are you going to be alright?”

I exchanged a quick look with Vincent. Images of the fight at Finicky’s farmhouse played out in my head. How we killed Welderman and Stocks. “We’ll be okay,” I told her.

Detective Moss pressed her mobile phone into my hand and nodded at the Kid. “Maybe your friend can get this working. If he does, press number one on the speed dial. It will connect you directly with my partner. I trust him. Tell him what’s going on and tell him we need help. Understand?”

Again, I nodded.

She was gone then. Out the door and down the steps.

“Help me out of this bed,” the Kid said with a soft grunt, sliding to the edge of his mattress and rolling his legs over the side.

I shuffled around and got an arm around him. “Are you okay to move? Maybe you shouldn’t.”

He winced when he tried to stand. “I can’t stay in this room and wait for them to take me away. I want to help.”

His legs were wobbly, and when he put pressure on them, all the color left his face. A thin sheen of sweat appeared. He pinched his eyes shut and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth.

“You should stay—”

He shook his head before I could finish and opened his eyes slowly—first the good one, then the blackened, swollen one. He met my gaze. “I’m going to help.”

The way he looked at me . . . I saw a much older boy. Not even a boy—a man. I saw the man he would become. This determination and perseverance someone his age shouldn’t understand yet, much less possess. He’d hardened in the past days. He was becoming someone I wished he didn’t have to become. I understood, though, because I had changed too. We all had. I placed my hand on the small of his back and steadied him. “Okay. Okay.”

“You might be the toughest person in this building, Kid,” Vincent told him. Then he reached for some clothes piled on a chair in the corner of the room and tossed them on the bed. “But you’re not helping anyone with your ass hanging out of that hospital gown. Get dressed.”

That sounded dangerously like a compliment, and Vincent didn’t do compliments. The awkward silence that followed only reinforced that. His gaze shifted to me. “Stay with him and meet Paul and me by the stairs with Pudge when he’s ready.”

Without looking up from his sketchpad, Paul said, “Paul wants to stay right here and maybe hide under the bed.”

Vincent grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the door. “If you’re not willing to fight, I’ll just use you as a human shield. Either way is fine by me.”

When they were gone, I helped the Kid out of his hospital gown and into his clothes. His shoes gave us the most trouble—although they were the right size, his feet had swollen from lying down so long. With his first few steps, I thought for sure he’d fall, but instead, he grew stronger as the unused portions of his battered body returned to life. He no longer had an IV line in his wrist, so I didn’t understand why he dragged the IV pole out from behind his bed and wheeled it toward us. Then I saw the wire trailing from the pole back to his laptop. “I needed an antenna,” he told me in this matter-of-fact voice, and I answered with the only thing that made sense.

“Of course you did.”

We took the narrow stairs down to the Quick’s main level slowly.

The Kid held the railing with both hands while I had his laptop and the antenna. At the base of the steps, we found ourselves in a madhouse.

People, both young and old, were quickly shuffling in both directions. Some running, some walking as fast as their bodies would allow, all moving with purpose while simultaneously looking like they had no idea where they were going or what the next minute would bring. Many held some kind of weapon—everything from guns to chair legs. Worried voices poured out from the cafeteria, a jumbled mess of unintelligible sounds.

If the Kid looked pale upstairs, now he was colorless. His skin had gone nearly translucent everywhere but the bruises, and those stuck out like oil haphazardly painted on a white canvas. He’d lost a lot of weight over the past few days, and although his appetite had steadily increased, he had a ways to go just to get back to the skinny beanpole he was before.

“Do you want me to find a wheelchair?”

He shook his head. “I know it looks bad, but it feels good to be moving. I’ll be alright.”

And that was when he collapsed.

The Kid didn’t so much fall as fold. His knees buckled, his waist and torso a moment later, and he melted in a heap. I managed to grab him and slow his fall as he went to the floor. If he passed out, it was only for a second. His eyes danced around and took in his new surroundings with confusion, then he realized what had happened as he grasped where he was. “Well, that was weird.”

“This is a bad idea.”

I was thinking about the ruptured spleen he had suffered. The three broken ribs. While he may have had some time to mend, it wasn’t enough. It probably wouldn’t take much for those wounds to get injured again. I didn’t know enough about the human body to understand what that really meant, but I assumed it would be dangerous, particularly without medical care nearby. And there certainly was no medical care to speak of. Even if Meagan appeared, there was no way I’d let her anywhere near him.

“Anson, when Weasel died, was he alone?”

The words slipped from the Kid’s mouth in a papery thin voice barely above a whisper. I was blindsided and not sure how to respond. While I had heard the shot, I had been in the car with Vincent. Only Paul saw what happened. I realized the two of us—now sitting on the ground, our backs against the wall—were in a similar position to how Weasel’s body was most likely found. Paul had said the bullet hit Weasel, and he crumpled in much the same way the Kid had a moment earlier. In his semiconscious state, his mind had somehow connected that to Weasel’s final moments. Weasel had been the Kid’s only real friend, and the truth was, the only person who had been with him was that cop, Sam Porter. A dirty cop hovering over you as you drew your final breath was anything but comforting—not a thought I wanted to share. “He knew we were nearby,” I instead told the Kid. “He knew we all cared about him. We might have been the only family he’d ever known. I like to think he thought about all of us. I’m sure he thought about you. In a way, we were all right there with him, and there’s no way any of us will ever forget what he did. Who he was. He was our brother.”

The Kid didn’t respond to that; instead, his gaze fell to the floor as people continued to rush by us.

When I felt a vibration in the pocket of my jeans, I nearly jumped to my feet. Then I realized it was Detective Moss’s phone. When I saw the name on the display, I nearly dropped it.

Derrick Hillburn.

Van Man.

​67

​TWILL

Sharp.

Hot.

Whatever dug into the back of Twill’s hand quickly pulled away, then stabbed again. Her fingers nearly lost the bar with an involuntary urge to let go, get away, but she managed to hold on even when another stab came.

A scream rose in Twill’s throat and she forced her mouth to remain shut; she trapped it and wouldn’t let it out.

There was a ruffle of feathers, then another stab.

A peck.

It was the crows, one or more.

Twill had one foot on the nearest horizontal bar, her other leg dangling in the air. One hand was free and the other was under attack. If she let go, she’d fall. She’d hit the concrete below hard—maybe break a bone, maybe worse.

“Where’d you go, Twill? I’m at the lock. I think I can pick it, but I need your help. Truce, okay? I promise, I won’t hurt you.”

Although Twill couldn’t see much of anything, she still had a vague idea of where the door was, and Langdon’s voice hadn’t come from that direction; it had come from the opposite side of the cage. He—

Peck!

That one caught Twill on the back of her hand, just below the knuckle of her middle finger. Her fingers splayed open, lost the bar, and grabbed at empty air as she twisted and began to fall. Twill grabbed blindly with her other hand, somehow found another bar. She pulled herself up and against the cage with such force that the entire structure rattled. It shook like a bell hit with a hammer. The harsh thump reverberated out in all directions. The crows squawked and took flight, sending another rain of debris down from above.

“Fuck, Twill! Why the hell do you keep doing that?!” Langdon shouted from below. A different position now; he was circling below her.

Twill managed to get her injured hand back on the bars and quickly hoisted herself up to a standing position again. At least nine feet off the ground now. She was breathing hard and did her best to do it quietly. In through her mouth, out through her nose. She forced her body to calm as the birds settled above. Until there was no sound left but Langdon’s shuffling steps below as he charged across the cage and crashed into the bars directly below her. That sent the birds fluttering again. More debris. More angry caws.

This time when it faded away, all was silent.

Either Langdon stopped moving, or he’d taken off his shoes so he could move quietly.

Twill reached up to the next bar and was quickly met by multiple pecks, a frenzy. She yanked her hand away, swatting at the small bodies—three, maybe four of them, all attacking at once. There were more above her, a lot more. She was near the top, had to be.

Down below, the metal chain rattled.

Dragged across the concrete.

Then a slow whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

Like a helicopter blade slowly coming to life.

Spinning.

Langdon was—

He let out a soft grunt when he released the chain, and that was quickly followed by a loud clunk! as the chain smacked against the bars directly below Twill’s feet.

“You went high!” Langdon called out over the frenzied birds. “You’re climbing, you sneaky little bitch!”

He quickly reeled in the chain and began to spin it again. When he let it go the second time, it struck close enough to Twill’s hand for her to feel the displaced air. The end must be weighted, probably with the lock he’d picked to remove the chain from his leg. It clattered to the ground and scratched across the floor as he prepared to throw it again.

Twill had no choice; she had to go higher.

She needed to find the top and hopefully swing over to the other side.

She knew she was close; she could tell from the sounds of the birds. They couldn’t be more than a few feet above her. That meant one more horizontal bar, maybe two, and she’d be at the top.

Before she could change her mind, she reached up and found the next bar. When the birds pecked at her hand, she swatted them away. Not gently, but with harsh, heavy swings of her arm. The birds were bigger than she thought, heavy; it was like hitting bags of sand, but she hit them anyway. She kept swatting until there were none left. They flew to other parts of the cage and cawed at her angrily.

Twill gripped the horizontal bar and hoisted herself up. She was bringing her foot up when she heard the whoosh down below, the low whistle as the chain flew through the air. It struck her in the small of her back, like a weighted fist against her spine.

Twill fell.

​68

​ANSON

“​Don’t answer it,” the Kid said softly, looking down at Detective Moss’s phone. “Just turn it off or something.”

I looked down the hallway, hoping to spot Detective Moss, but I didn’t see her.

Some of the color returned to the Kid’s face. “If his call is coming in, the block is off. Hang up and try dialing her partner!”

I had no idea how to do that—I’d never used a cell phone before. When I hesitated, the Kid snatched the phone from me. He quickly pressed decline and keyed through several menus until he found what must have been the speed dial options. Carmichael was in the first spot. The Kid clicked on the name. A second later, “No Service” appeared on the screen. “It’s not working.” He tried again but got the same message. He was about to try a third time when a text appeared on the screen:

Answer the phone or you’re all dead.

When it rang again, the Kid only stared at the screen.

One ring.

Two.

“Give it to me,” I finally said, reaching for the phone.

When he handed it to me, I pressed accept and brought the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

At first, there was only silence, then Hillburn’s voice came over the line like some snake slithering under the crack in a door. “Well, this isn’t Detective Moss, now is it? Who am I speaking to?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He went silent for a long time. When he spoke again, his words were like a dead thing brushing against my skin. “I knew you wouldn’t run, Anson. They all told me you would, but I knew. I knew you couldn’t help but stay. You just can’t help yourself. How’s your arm doing?”

My arm had been in a steady state of hurt since I broke it, but the truth was, it felt better. The pain was gone and had been for a few days now. I’d been told it would itch next, but that hadn’t started yet. I didn’t tell him any of this. What I did tell him surely would have scored me a scolding from Mother and Father.

“Fuck you.”

The Kid’s eyes went wide at that, and I imagine mine did too. I’d never used profanity before, not once. Honestly, it felt good. Empowering.

“You’re not going to Guyon, Anson. Not like the rest. I’m going to make an example out of you. What I’m going to do to you will be so horrible, everyone in the Quick will beg to go to Guyon. They’ll line up two by two.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere.”

“I miss that,” Hillburn said. “About being a kid. The imagination. Belief in the impossible. That kind of thing fades as you get older. Eventually, it goes away altogether. The world loses its color and goes to shades of gray. Imagination fuels hope. Your friend, Libby? She had hope. She held onto that hope. She firmly believed you and the other boys would somehow appear and rescue her. Tegan and Kristina, too. Even when we dragged them from that car and loaded them into my van. Even when we tied them up and stuffed their pretty little mouths with gags, they looked over our shoulders, their eyes filled with hope. You didn’t appear, though. Christ, you should have seen their faces when we locked them in that box. I think that’s when it hit—nobody was coming.”

If imagination fueled hope, anger fueled mistakes. He wanted to get me angry. He wanted me to make a mistake. I tamped the anger down, ignored it, as Father had taught me.

When we locked them in that box.

He wanted me to ask about the box, too. I wouldn’t. That would open a door. One that led to where he wanted me to go. Instead, I told him, “We killed Welderman and Stocks, and we took out Finicky and your entire operation in that house. If I have any regret, it’s letting you and Porter walk away. Maybe it’s time to fix that. I wonder if the Genovese family understands how sloppy you were at Finicky’s. I wonder if Tucker knows. I doubt it. You wouldn’t be breathing. He should know, though, right? Somebody oughta tell him?”

Hillburn went silent with that.

Imagination not only fueled hope—it could also fuel fear. Nothing was more frightening than the conjurings of our own subconscious. In my mind’s eye, I could see Hillburn on the other end of the phone call, maybe lowering the phone slightly from his face at the mention of Genovese or Tucker—two names I shouldn’t know. Before he could respond, I dug in deeper. “Did you know Meagan was working for the Genovese family, too? She made it sound like it was some kind of secret. What did she call it? Oh yeah, compartmentalization. She didn’t want to talk about any of that when we first figured out what she was doing, but I can be very persuasive with a knife. Father taught me. I imagine if you read my file from Camden, you know all about that. Dr. Oglesby was quite fond of taking notes. He knew all about my knife.”

The Kid was staring at me, his mouth hanging open.

“You can tell Tucker whatever you want. He knows it was Porter who dropped the ball at Finicky’s. I made that very clear. He also knows what’s happening at the Quick. He knows I’m the one making it all right. So don’t you worry about me. I’ll come out of this just fine. You need to concern yourself with what happens next.”

It was my turn to go quiet. I didn’t say anything.

“Tell Detective Moss her team is down. The officers she had patrolling the Market have been neutralized. I’ve got snipers on all the exit points. The last thing we want to do is shoot anyone else, but we will. You are completely alone. There is nobody to call for help. Your only chance at surviving this is surrender. I’ll make you a personal promise—you do that, you surrender, and I’ll take you and your friends to Libby and the girls. I’ll reunite you at Guyon. If you don’t surrender, we have a problem. I’ve got a solution for that, too. Want to guess what it is? I’ll give you a hint.”

From somewhere above my head, I heard a soft click. When I looked up, the sprinklers came to life. All around the Quick, I heard shouts. It wasn’t water raining down from those pipes; it was gasoline.

​69

​TWILL

Twill fell.

She grabbed for the bars. Her fingers brushed metal, missed, and found nothing more but air. She hit the concrete hard, this slap that reverberated through every inch of her body. When her head hit, it didn’t strike the concrete, but instead smacked against something softer. In stunned silence, Twill reached up and realized it was one of Langdon’s shoes, no longer on his foot.

He had taken them off.

She was attempting to sit up when he slammed into her. He half jumped, half fell, and came down hard on her legs, pinning her to the ground. “There you are!”

Twill thought of the hairpin, but it was no longer in her hand; she’d dropped it.

He grabbed for her neck, got his hands around her throat, and squeezed. “I’ll make it fast. Just hold still. Let yourself go. It will be easier for you. I swear.”

Twill tried to shout, to scream, but she had no air. Nothing but a muffled gasp slipped from her lips. She twisted her hips, tried to buck him off.

Langdon squeezed harder, the balls of his thumbs digging deep into her flesh. “Stop squirming, dammit!”

Through bird shit and filth, her fingertips slipped across the concrete. She brushed against his shoe, grabbed it, and slammed it into his head.

Stunned, his grip on her neck loosened. Twill bucked again, put every ounce of strength she could tap into it, then curled her fingers into a fist and punched him in the balls. Although she couldn’t make out his face, the high-pitched yelp that left his lips told her she hit her mark. She bucked again, and this time, he fell to the side. When Twill rolled out from under him, she grazed the metal chain, grabbed it, and got to her knees. Through the murky blackness, she spotted the faint outline of Langdon’s head and pounced. She twisted the chain around his neck and yanked it tight.

Langdon let out a startled gasp.

Twill pulled harder.

She pressed her palm against his chest and used his own body as leverage.

Langdon managed to get his fingers under the chain. He jerked hard, enough to draw in a sharp breath, enough for a single word to rush from his mouth on a breath of tainted air.

“Longhorn!”

It wasn’t loud, not much more than a gasp, but someone heard. Someone was listening.

Bright lights clicked on all around with an audible clunk! Like a breaker being flipped. Harsh white light so bright, Twill had no choice but to pinch her eyes shut.

Langdon brought his knee up and kicked out at her, caught her stomach, and Twill was thrown backward. She cracked against the metal bars. Langdon shuffled in the opposite direction like a crab scurrying across the floor until his back was against the opposite side of the cage.

Twill caught vague outlines of his movement through squinted eyes; the lights were so bright.

Langdon sucked in another ragged breath, and this time, he yelled it. “Longhorn!”

There was no reply, only the flutter of the birds above. Twill looked up, and when she saw the top of the cage, a sense of defeat washed over her. She’d climbed nearly all the way up, but it wouldn’t have mattered—the cage had a barred ceiling. It was riddled with twigs and branches and at least a dozen bird nests. More crows than she could count filled the empty spaces, their tiny black feet grasping the metal. They shuffled around in angry frustration. Bright lights burned from above, attached to a metal ceiling about five feet higher than the cage itself.

As Twill’s eyes adjusted to the intense blazing light, she looked back down, taking in every inch of the enclosure and what little she could see beyond. Lights mounted on tripods surrounded the cage, placed about every four feet. Staggered between those lights were large video cameras. Not the kind you’d find at the local electronics store, but the kind you might find in a television studio. Big, bulky things that probably weighed fifty pounds. Two on each side. Eight in total. There was one more up top, hanging from the roof of the building, looking down into the cage from above. There were these hinged walls beyond that, from floor to ceiling. Moveable walls surrounded the cage, cameras, and lights from all sides.

“Longhorn . . .” Langdon muttered again, rubbing at his neck.

Twill glared at him. “What the fuck is Longhorn?”

He licked his chapped lips. “It’s a safe word.” He looked around the cage, his eyes settling on the camera above Twill’s left shoulder. “Did you hear me? Longhorn! I’m done! Get me out of here!”

Twill didn’t understand. A safe word?

A loud pop! came from a speaker somewhere in the room, then the same voice she had heard on the phone boomed from all around.

“I’m afraid you’ve been outbid by a gentleman in Crimea. He has taken control of the experience. The rules of play stand. Only one of you will be permitted to exit. Continue game.”

Langdon’s face twisted. “Continue . . . ? What? You can’t do that!”

Twill tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Her eyes narrowed as she looked across the cage at Langdon. “You paid for this? This is some kind of twisted fantasy you wanted to act out?”

He vigorously shook his head. “I didn’t pay for this. I paid to be locked in a cage with you, but not some fight to the death. We were supposed to work together to find a way out. That’s all. I didn’t agree to the rest.” He looked back at the camera. “Hear me? I didn’t agree to your bullshit! I’ll sue the shit out of you when I get out of here!”

This made even less sense than what Twill initially believed. “Why would you want to be locked in a cage with me?”

He looked at her like she was the crazy one. “Why? It’s like a real-life escape room. It’s only a rush if you believe it’s real.”

“You just tried to kill me—that felt pretty real.”

He raised his voice again. “Because these fuckers changed the rules! You dying is one thing, but nobody gave them permission to hurt me.” His voice went louder. “I’ve got shareholders to answer to! You pieces of shit!”

The speaker came to life again. “Madison Poppy. You have received a sponsor. Should you kill Langdon Weir, you will receive one hundred thousand dollars and be released.”

Langdon didn’t miss a beat. He looked right at her, stone-cold serious. “I’ll double whatever number they put on the table if you get me out of here.”

Twill didn’t want any part of whatever rich person bullshit this was. Money or no money, she wanted out. She gestured around the cage. “Is this what happened to my friends? They got killed as part of some game?”

“I don’t know anything about your friends.”

“Is this Guyon?”

This seemed to confuse him. “You know about Guyon?”

“Is that what this is?”

He shook his head. “Guyon is tomorrow. This is something they do . . . before.”

“What, like some kind of pregame?”

He licked his lips. “Something like that, yeah.” He nodded at one of the cameras. “It’s televised to everyone who will be bidding at Guyon. They grab some homeless person and—”

“Stop,” Twill cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it.” She jerked her thumb toward the locked cage door. “Do you really know how to pick that, or was that bullshit too?”

​70

​ANSON

Shouts and screams came from everywhere, panic and cries. I shielded my eyes as best I could and scurried under a table against the wall, pulling the Kid with me. On the phone, Hillburn’s voice remained calm.

“This is what you’re going to do,” he said. “Everybody over the age of twenty needs to go to the cafeteria and stay put. No heroics. No crazy stuff. Nice and orderly. I want everyone under the age of twenty to line up on the north stairs. No weapons. Leave those. Anyone comes down with a weapon, we not only kill them, we kill the person standing in front of them and the person behind them. Three deaths for one fuck-up. Don’t make me do it. Tell them. Make sure they understand.”

Beside me, the Kid was huddled under the table, furiously typing away at the laptop. Every few seconds, he paused, took a quick glance at the hallway, then went back to it. Gasoline soaked everything. It had been running for under a minute, and puddles were already forming on the hardwood floor.

“I’m going to give you ten minutes,” Hillburn continued. “If we open that north door and I don’t see a line as instructed, I light a match and this entire building goes up. I’ll make you one more guarantee. If that happens, the pain you’ll feel burning alive will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to Libby and those other two girls. They will wish for death.”

The Kid tilted his head, pressed one more key, then froze, looking out from under the table.

A gurgle came from above. A rattle of pipes. And the rain of gasoline stopped.

“Got it.” He beamed.

Hillburn cleared his throat. “That’s impressive, but do you think it really matters? Ten minutes, Anson. Get it done.”

He hung up.

The phone immediately rang again. The display said, “Carmichael.” Moss’s partner.

I quickly answered. “Hello?”

“Where’s Moss?”

“She’s trying to reach you on the radio. She gave me her phone.”

“Someone’s jamming signals. We’re running countermeasures. Jamming their jammer. I don’t know how long it will work. Tell her Murdock is down. He got one of their snipers, then took a direct hit. Through and through his neck. He’s gone. They breached the north end. We’re pulling back and—”

The line went dead.

“Are you there?” I knew he wasn’t, though. They were jamming again.

More gunfire erupted downstairs.

Chaotic.

Random.

The phone vibrated with an incoming text.

Nine minutes.

My heart was pounding like a jackhammer. I wanted Father to tell me what to do, but he was silent.

“Come on,” I told the Kid, stuffing the phone in my pocket. “If Hillburn’s coming up the north end, we need to warm Pudge and the others.”

I helped him out from under the table.

Everything was soaked.

The smell of gasoline hung in the air like an acidic fog. His eyes were red and teary; mine were no better. We couldn’t wipe them, either—it was all over our hands and clothes, too.

“Oh, no.”

The Kid’s face went pale. He keyed something into the laptop. Paused, then typed again. He was hitting the keys hard.

“What’s wrong?”

“The laptop’s dead. I think some of the gas got inside.”

“Leave it,” I told him. “It will just slow us down.”

The screaming and shouting had died away, replaced with coughing. The cafeteria was nearly empty; everyone was either in the kitchen or the bathroom, trying to get to the water.

We were halfway to the north entrance when Vincent came out of a storage room on the right and found us in the hallway. He grabbed us both by our shirts and pulled us back through the door. The second we were inside, he slammed the door behind us. I started to tell him about Hillburn and Carmichael, but he wasn’t listening. He twisted me around, pointed me toward the corner of the room.

Meagan’s lifeless body was half-buried behind some boxes of cleaning supplies. Her vacant eyes stared out at us from the inside of a clear plastic bag still on her head, cinched tight around her neck.

​71

​ANSON

I reached out and tentatively touched Meagan’s neck, just beneath the edge of the plastic. She was clearly dead. I didn’t expect to find a pulse, but she was still warm. She hadn’t been dead long. “Stash said she was at the hospital getting supplies.”

“She musta come back,” the Kid said softly.

“Or maybe she never left,” Vincent added.

More gunfire erupted from down below. Three quick shots, then four more. If Hillburn’s people weren’t at the stairs yet, they were getting close.

From one of the storage shelves, Vincent tore open a package of paper towels and handed each of us a roll. From another shelf, he plucked bottles of water from a carton and tossed them to us. He poured half the water from one of the bottles on his face and scrubbed away the gasoline with a fist full of towels. “After the gas, I came in here to get this stuff. I found her instead.” He jerked an uneasy thumb toward Meagan.

Following Vincent’s lead, the Kid and I dumped water over our heads and let it run down our faces before wiping it away. The sting began to leave my eyes. “Does anyone else know?”

“Fuck no. Just you.”

I spotted a book of matches on the corner of the shelf and slipped them into my pocket just as Moss’s phone buzzed with another text message. I didn’t want to look but had little choice. It was from Hillburn.

Eight minutes.

“Eight minutes until what?” Vincent frowned.

While the Kid told him, I got a closer look at Meagan. Although every inch of her was saturated in gasoline, her hair and face were not. She’d been killed before the sprinklers came on. The bag was made of thick plastic with a black drawstring at the mouth. The string had been pulled tight enough to leave angry red marks on her neck. Both her hands were pinned behind her back. “Whoever did this was strong. They held her arms back with one hand and suffocated her with the other.” I leaned her forward just enough to get a look at her back.

Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing?”

“They held her from behind. I’m guessing they put their knee or a foot on her back for leverage.”

“I don’t give a shit how she died, Columbo. We need to find a way out of here. Now.”

I ignored him. “Somebody either figured out she’s been working with the killer, or somebody already knew and killed her to keep her from talking.”

His face twisted with impatience. “Who cares? This isn’t our problem.”

“It is our problem,” I insisted. “Whoever did this is strong. I don’t think it could be a woman.”

“There are a lot of men here. It could be anyone.”

I shook my head. “How many do you think actually know what’s going on? Know enough to want to kill her? I can only think of one.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Stash.”

The Kid quickly shook his head. “Stash wouldn’t kill Meagan. He loved her. Meagan told me she asked for the divorce, not him. He never stopped loving her.”

“According to her,” Vincent pointed out. “Nobody knows how he really felt about her. Maybe it made him bitter. Maybe he resented her. Maybe they were working together, supplying people to this killer, and he got tired of splitting the payday.” He threw his arms up in the air. “Maybe he’s wanted her dead for a long time, and today screamed perfect opportunity. Again, I don’t give a shit. She’s dead. We are not. I want to keep it that way. Grab that water. Come on.”

With the package of paper towels tucked under his arm, Vincent led the Kid and me back out into the hallway. I locked the storage room door behind us. The last thing we needed was someone else finding Meagan.

Making our way back to the north stairs, we handed out the remaining water and paper towels as we went. We found Paul with Pudge at the north steps. He snatched the last of the towels from my hand and quickly scrubbed his red face. “I’m so glad we decided to hang around this place.” He’d discarded his sketchpad off in the corner. It had been soaked by the gasoline. Ruined. When he finished, he offered the water and towels to Pudge, but he just shook his large head. He was pacing back and forth in front of the door leading downstairs, both his beefy hands gripping his useless shotgun. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was burned red with spit at the corners of his mouth. He looked like a rabid dog.

Moss’s cell phone rang again.

Hillburn.

I ignored it. “Pudge, are there any cameras downstairs? Can you see what’s going on?”

“Yes and no,” he replied without stopping.

When he didn’t elaborate, I pressed him. “Which is it?”

There was a small television next to his stool. He tapped it with the toe of his shoe. “Video broke about fifteen minutes ago.”

I took a closer look at the screen. The camera was still working, but it was pointing at the ground.

“What was the last thing you saw?”

“People.”

“Were they cops?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they have uniforms on?”

“Don’t know.”

“What did they look like?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted, then smacked the side of his head with a closed fist. “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

Smack! Smack! Smack!

Vincent grabbed Pudge’s arm before he could hit himself again, straining under the effort. Vincent was strong. Pudge was stronger. He managed to calm him, though. I didn’t ask again. With a grimace, the Kid bent down and checked the television. It was still on, but the screen was blank. “The camera is transmitting, but it’s been covered up with something.”

Another text from Hillburn.

Five minutes.

I looked at Vincent. “Should we barricade the door?”

Pudge shook his head violently. “Nobody opens the door. That’s what Stash said. Nobody. Nobody opens the door.”

Another incoming call—this time it was Carmichael.

I quickly answered. “Hey?! Are you—”

“Listen to me,” he interrupted. “I need you to—”

The call disconnected.

Smash it, Champ. Father whispered to me. It’s clouding your thoughts. Smash it and be done with it.

Oh, how I wanted to. I wanted to throw it to the ground and stomp it until there was nothing left.

“Nobody opens the door,” Pudge said again from behind clenched teeth. “Nobody goes downstairs.” He grabbed his stool, jerked it in front of the door, and sat. Daring anyone to try to move him.

Ruddy came barreling down the hallway, his braided hair smacking his back and shoulders. He skidded to a stop a few feet from us, out of breath. He glared at the phone in my hand. “Why the fuck aren’t you answering that thing? The cops have been trying to reach you. They regrouped on the other end of the building and found a way out. You’re all that’s left. South stairs, now!”

Without further explanation, he twisted on his heels and ran back the way he’d come.

​72

​TWILL

Langdon crouched at the locked door of the cage. He was wiggling two of Twill’s hairpins around, his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth. Why did men always do that? You put a tool in the hand of a man, and their tongue slips out. Every time. Fucking weird.

Twill was standing in the corner of the cage.

Langdon had said if she got any closer, “I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you.” His exact, unfiltered words. He’d sounded insistent, the bastard. Twill wasn’t exactly worried, but when he made zero progress on the lock with her hovering over him, she decided to give him some space. Little good that had done. His hands were sweaty, covered in bird shit, and the pin kept slipping from his grip. The more frustrated he got, the less progress he seemed to make.

Finally, she said, “Do you want me to try?”

“I want you to stay the hell away from me,” he grumbled back through clenched teeth.

Getting bested by a girl had taken ‘big strong man’ down a notch. Twill was willing to humor him for a little bit, but not much longer. She wanted out.

Twill was under no illusion she was safe. Langdon would certainly try to kill her if it meant saving his own skin. And whoever had put them in this cage seemed content to let them be as long as they played by the rules. Those rules were simple—only one of them got to leave. If he actually got that door open, she’d have to act fast.

The chain was curled on the floor at the opposite side of the cage. It wasn’t long enough to make it all the way to the door. That probably wouldn’t work again, anyway; he’d expect it now. If she were to kill him, she’d have to get creative.

Twill looked down at her torn dress. Filthy. Ruined. She let out a low sigh. “How much did you pay?”

Langdon’s finger slipped again. He swore under his breath, then went back to it. “For what?”

“For me,” Twill said, gesturing around. “For this.”

“Six thousand,” he muttered.

Twill considered that. “Was that on top of the two thousand you paid for . . . our date? For the night?”

“Our date . . .” Langdon let out an aggravated huff. “6k for you. Period. I bought you. I own you to do with as I please. Fuck you, kill you, whatever. That was the deal.”

He said this so matter-of-factly. Like he’d purchased a car or a sandwich. This guy disgusted her.

“You can’t own another person. This isn’t 1840.”

“No? How long has it been since you were . . . what did he call you?” Then it came to him. “Madison Poppy.”

It had been over a year since she’d heard that name. More than three years since she considered it her name. As far as she was concerned, Madison Poppy died the moment she ran off from the hell that was Sarah and Nick’s house in Tupelo, and that was what? Four years ago now? Almost five. She’d been only ten, going on eleven. Fucking Nick and his grabby hands. Fucking Sarah, who gave exactly zero shits what her husband did as long as the foster care checks kept coming. Fuck them both.

“These people are good,” Langdon said. “Log into any government database, and you’re going to find Madison Poppy doesn’t exist and never did. Any school records you might have had are gone. Department of Child Services, gone. Criminal record, gone. You’re not a person anymore. You’re a nothing. Nobody’s looking for you. Nobody cares.”

Twill tamped down the anger brewing in her gut. “Who exactly did you pay the six thousand to? Was it Lou?”

He shook his head. “Who the hell is Lou? It was somebody else. Some—” There was a soft click from the lock, and his eyes went wide. He twisted the handle and the door opened with a whiny squeak. “Holy shit. I got it.”

From speakers all around, the voice boomed, “The same rules apply, but the field of play has expanded. Only one of you may leave.”

The voice was followed by a soft click, then a melody Twill had heard before.

Da, da da da. Da, da da da.

The opening to “It’s Not Unusual,” quickly followed by Tom Jones’ deep baritone voice crooning about jealousy and unrequited love.

Landon looked toward the ceiling, his head cocked. Confused.

Twill ran at him and jumped on his back before he could get to his feet.

She wasn’t a large girl, barely a hundred pounds, but he hadn’t been ready for it. His knees buckled and cracked against the concrete, and his head came forward and slammed against the metal bars.

He grunted. Tried to shake her off.

Twill clapped her hands on his ears. She hit him as hard as she could with open palms. Ruddy had taught her the move. Ruddy said if you do it properly, the air pressure will rupture both eardrums. Not only did it hurt like hell, but hearing would be damaged. Maybe permanently, maybe not, but either way, it would buy you some time. Twill had no clue how much damage she’d inflicted, but Langdon screamed like a little girl, and that was good enough for her.

Both his hands went to his head, and when they did, Twill bounced—she brought all her weight down on his back for a second time. His shoulder hit the cage door, knocked it open, and he dropped, splayed out on the floor—half in, half out of the cage, stunned.

Tom Jones launched into the chorus.

“It’s not unusual to be mad with anyone.”

“It’s not unusual to be sad with anyone.”

Twill quickly scrambled off and over Landon, climbed across his back, and found herself outside the cage when his hand shot out and grabbed her by the ankle. She stomped on his wrist with her other foot. When he released her, she grabbed the cage door and slammed it against the side of his body. Once. Twice. Then a third time for good measure.

Langdon went still.

Not unconscious, though. His groans told her that much.

Quickly turning, Twill almost smacked against one of the cameras. She nearly lost her balance avoiding it and got tangled in one of the lighting rigs, almost fell, but managed to stay on her feet.

She got to the hinged wall and pressed against it. The walls were on wheels, meant to be mobile. Temporary. When a gap opened up between them, Twill squeezed through and gasped at what she found on the other side.

​73

​ANSON

When Ruddy vanished down the hall, I told Paul and Vincent, “Take Pudge. I’ll be right behind you.” I turned to the Kid. “Go with them.”

“What are you going to do?”

I pulled the matches from my pocket and nodded toward the door leading downstairs. “Make sure Hillburn doesn’t follow.”

The Kid’s eyes widened. I expected him to argue with me, but he didn’t.

Neither did Paul or Vincent. They gripped Pudge’s hefty arms. “Come on, big guy, we’re getting out of here.”

“. . . But the door,” he protested.

“The door will be just fine,” Vincent told him. “You did a great job, but it’s time to go.”

Pudge mumbled something incoherent, then nodded and rose from the stool. Vincent gave me a quick nod, then the four of them were gone. I was alone.

The cell phone vibrated again.

Three minutes.

This time I clicked on the phone number—it only rang once. When Hillburn answered, I didn’t give him a chance to speak. “We need more time,” I told him. “The gasoline created a panic. Not everyone wants to listen, but they’re coming around.”

Hillburn clucked his tongue.

I caught movement from the corner of my eye. It had come from the television monitor on the floor. The image jerked to the side, then up. A blurry image. Then Hillburn’s face filled the screen, a phone pressed to his ear.

“Little pig, little pig, let me in . . .” Then he tapped the lens with the knuckle of his index finger. There was this smirk on his face, this ugly half-grin. “I’ll give you three more minutes. No more.”

I hung up.

I’d only need one.

Bending to the base of the door, I folded the lid of the matchbook in on itself so that half of the match-heads were pressed against the strike strip, then I jammed it under the door and wedged it in tight. Another trick Father had taught me—the moment the door was opened, the friction would grind the matches against the strike plate and ignite them. With all the gas on the surrounding floor and walls, the entire place would go up.

Satisfied, I got back to my feet and ran down the hall.

Somehow, the Quick had emptied behind us. Most of the doors were open. The rooms were deserted. I didn’t see a single person. When I passed the storage room, I thought of Meagan’s body inside. There was nothing I could do about that, not now. No time.

They weren’t at the south stairs. Not exactly. When I rounded the final corner of the hallway, I nearly ran into Stash and Detective Moss. Both were standing next to a bookcase that had been pushed aside, revealing what looked like the mouth of a slide. A hand-painted sign hung above it, as ancient as dirt. It read, “Fire Exit.” I’d seen slides like this on the outside of old buildings before, schools in particular. When Moss spotted me, she rolled her eyes and spoke into her radio. “We’ve got him. He’s the last one.”

The voice I knew as Carmichael quickly responded. “Copy that. Follow him down. We’re gone the second you load up.”

“Understood.” Detective Moss eyed me with frustration. “What the hell, Anson? I gave you my phone so you could talk to him and help coordinate, not ignore him. You could have gotten people killed!”

“I didn’t ignore him; the call dropped.” As I spoke, my eyes never left Stash. My thoughts were on Meagan. The strength it took to kill her like that. To quiet her. I could picture him doing it. Taking her life. He was still cradling the shotgun, and I couldn’t help but look at his hands. Callused. Covered in the scars of a life led rough. I wanted to see red lines, something that matched the drawstring on the bag I found over Meagan’s head, but there was nothing so obvious.

“Did you see anyone else?” he asked me in a hurried tone, glancing back the way I’d come. “Anyone at all?”

When he turned back to me, I met his eyes and refused to look away. I needed to know the truth. “Everyone is out. Are you sure Meagan didn’t come back?”

He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t look away from me. His voice was filled with worry. “She would have found me. She said she’d track me down the second she got back.”

“You can call her from the road,” Detective Moss said. “Tell her where to go.”

You saw that, right? Father whispered. Her eyes looked up and to the side for a quick second before she spoke.

“Go,” I told Stash. “I’ll be right behind you. I need to run something by Moss.”

He nodded and climbed into the slide. A second later, he was gone.

When I looked back at Detective Moss, her gun was out.

​74

​TWILL

Twill was no longer standing in a giant hellhole of a dungeon with a cage; she was standing in a hospital room. An honest-to-God hospital room. Large bed. IV racks. Various machines beeping and whining. The floor was this mint green tile peppered with brown stains that had to be blood. Someone had tried to clean it up, but did a half-assed job of it. In the far corner, next to a window, was a wooden chair with cushions of teal and beige. On the floor, resting against the side of the chair, were two black bags. Twill ran over, hoping to find something she could use, but they were stuffed with newspaper.

When she pulled the curtain aside, her heart sank further.

The window wasn’t real. It was some kind of a lightbox. When she pushed against the fake frame, the entire wall shook. The wall was as flimsy as the panels she’d just pushed through from the room with the cage. There were cameras here, too. Unlike the ones surrounding the cage, these were smaller, hidden. There was one on the ceiling looking down at the bed, hidden in a smoke detector, and another behind the bed. Another behind a vase of dusty plastic flowers on a countertop in the corner of the room. Next to the hospital bed was a pink Formica dresser. Twill yanked the drawers open one at a time and found nothing inside but dust and an old instruction manual for the hospital bed. Like someone had set up the bed, tossed the manual in the drawer, and forgotten about it. On top of the dresser was an empty water pitcher and a plastic cup, both bone dry.

Tom Jones finished up with several “whoa, whoa, whoa’s” and went silent.

The music faded and died.

The hospital room was fake, like a movie set or something, but what she found on the bed was not. The once-white sheets were stained with dried sweat and blood. It wasn’t paint or corn syrup like she’d heard they used in the movies; it was real. There was no hiding the smell. There were these leather belts fastened to the rails, four in total, and Twill had no doubt they were used to secure someone to the bed by their wrists and ankles. Fastened to the side of the bed was a thick plastic bag half full of what looked like urine. There was a plastic tube fixed to the top, now coiled and lying on the filthy floor. Someone had been in the bed. And not very long ago.

Crossing the room, Twill went to the closet door and pulled it open.

She expected the closet to be empty, another prop like the rest of the stuff in the room, and she was partially right. There were no clothes. No hangers. There wasn’t even a bar at the top to hang such things. The closet wasn’t a closet at all, but a door leading to another room disguised to look like a closet.

What Twill found in the next space was even odder than the last.

She was standing in an operating room.

The floor was the same mint green tile as the hospital room next door, but that’s where the similarities ended. The walls were covered in white subway tile, but when Twill touched them, she realized they were as fake as everything else. Not tile at all, but some type of cardboard painted gloss white. As flimsy as the other walls she encountered. The stainless steel table in the center of the room was real, though. As was the bright light hanging from the rafters. It had been left on, and Twill wished it hadn’t, because it made it impossible to ignore the blood on the table and puddled on the floor. Several streaks had even found their way to that light up above.

The blood was everywhere.

The cold room smelled of wet copper and urine. Something worse beneath that Twill didn’t recognize and didn’t want to. Something horrible had happened here, and like the other spaces, cameras all around captured whatever it was.

The far wall held a refrigerator and a stainless steel counter with a built-in sink. The plumbing was visible beneath, and that was as odd as everything else. The drainpipe went directly into a hole in the floor, and the copper pipe feeding the sink was attached to a green garden hose no different than the kind you’d find in someone’s yard. It trailed beneath the countertop and vanished through a small cutout in the fake wall. As Twill approached that sink, the smell intensified; this deep, sickly sweet scent that made her stomach churn. An ugly smell that belonged deep in the woods. Something dead left to rot on the side of the road.

Twill didn’t want to look in that sink, but she couldn’t stop herself. She rounded the operating table, careful not to touch anything, including the random drops of blood on the floor. She stepped around those on the tips of her toes, wishing she still had her shoes. Somehow, the blood was worse than the bird shit and filth in the cage.

The sink was buzzing.

This low hum.

Twill froze at that. Had to force herself to continue. She drew a deep breath and peered over the side.

What she found easily fit on the set of any horror movie.

There were several scalpels, saws, and other odd-looking implements, all covered in dried blood and—

Her stomach lurched.

A hint of acid and something chunky filled her throat, and she swallowed it back down with a twisted grimace. Willed it to stay down. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t.

Embedded in the blades of the saw were these tiny white bits, the edges tinged with yellow. Maybe fat or muscle or even bits of bone—she didn’t want that to be true, but some ancient part of her brain whispered that it was. The same part of her brain told her it was fairly fresh, maybe a few days old at most, and whoever had wielded those implements might not be too far away. Maybe that’s what the cameras were for. Maybe that person was watching her right now.

Flies crawled across the various surfaces, hungrily feeding. Tiny wings and feet excitedly moving about this feast left behind by . . . by who? By what? Twill couldn’t help but look back at the operating table before quickly returning to the contents of the sink. Then her gaze fell on the refrigerator. Like the flies, it was humming too, and with that sound, a thought came into her mind. Most of the room was fake, an illusion, but the refrigerator was not. Neither were the bloody fingerprints riddling the chrome handle.

​75

​ANSON

“​You found her, didn’t you?”

Detective Moss said this with little emotion. More out of frustration than anything else. Like I had inconvenienced her somehow. I couldn’t help but look at her hands the way I had studied Stash’s. I saw no marks on her either. Nothing to indicate she’d killed Meagan. Nothing to indicate she’d put the bag over the other woman’s head and yanked the string tight, possibly bracing herself, pushing on Meagan’s back with her other hand, or possibly her foot or knee for leverage. I couldn’t shake that image. Somehow, I knew that was how Meagan’s killer did it. Then the answer came to me, as obvious as the sun rising in the east. “You wore gloves . . .”

She snickered like this was funny. “Of course I wore gloves.”

“Why did you kill her?”

Her gun remained perfectly steady, leveled at my chest. “Because she got soft on me. She wanted to let you go.”

“She recognized me from my house. From Simpsonville.”

There was something behind Moss’s eyes, this shift. I’d always found her difficult to read, and perhaps that’s why I didn’t see this. Even now, as she pointed a gun at me, I didn’t want to believe she was involved. But her eyes had changed; there was no denying it. The thick veil that had kept her true intentions hidden from me had lifted. Any warmth that had been there moments earlier was gone, leaving nothing but a chill as sharp as the Reaper’s blade. “Originally, they brought the Kid to a hospital outside Charlotte. I suggested they move him here to Roper, then to the Quick. I knew if we brought your friend here, you’d show up. It was just a matter of time. Where else could you go, right? After Finicky’s. There are only so many places around here to hide. We’d hoped by giving you a taste of freedom, you might make contact with your mother, or maybe she’d come back for you. We think your mother and the Carter woman ditched Kirby not long after Simpsonville. We can’t be sure. He hasn’t turned up. He will, though. They all will. Can’t hide forever. Finicky’s was too remote, too hidden. But the Quick? The second you set foot in the Quick, half this town knew about it. We figured she’d have to come for you.”

“She didn’t.” I swallowed. “She won’t. Mother doesn’t care about me. She left me.”

“Hillburn thought that was a ruse, but I’m beginning to think you might be right. Hell, even when I painted the killer’s target on your back, she didn’t show up. That was all over the news; no way she missed it. What kind of mother does that? She cares more about protecting what she stole than she does her own son.” She pursed her lips. “That’s bad for you, Anson. Tucker wants everything returned to him, and he’s not a very patient man. I suppose you’ll see that soon enough.” She motioned toward the mouth of the slide with the barrel of her gun. “Get in.”

I didn’t argue with her; there was no point. I backed up to the slide and crawled in. I didn’t go down, though. Instead, I held onto both sides and told her, “I left your phone sitting on the landing at the north steps along with a note that says, ‘Detective Gracie Moss killed Meagan Ward and left her body in a closet.’ Who do you think will find that first? One of your dirty cops or one of the good ones? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see who comes up those steps . . .”

Her face twisted into a frustrated frown. “You’re a little shit.”

She went to push me, but I let go before she could.

The world went dark as I dropped down the tube. The walls were slick, covered in some kind of oil or wax, and unlike some playground slide, this one was steep. My stomach jumped. Stagnant air rushed by, filled with the sweat of all those who had gone before me.

The moment I shot out the bottom, hands were on me. They grabbed me from both sides, picked me up, and nearly tossed me to the pavement. Somehow, I managed to keep my legs under me, as wobbly as they were, and quickly took in my surroundings.

I was in an alley.

The Market District building at my back, the Quick up above.

There were men in SWAT uniforms all around, and others in plain clothes.

Safe.

We were—

Someone kicked me in the back of my knee and my leg buckled. I went to the ground. When I looked up, Hillburn was standing there, the same grin from the security monitor plastered on his face. A half-filled syringe was pinched in his fingers, with dozens of used needles at his feet. “Hey, Anson. Welcome to the party.”

I saw Vincent and Paul on the ground behind him, both unconscious. Drugged with whatever Hillburn had in those needles. Their hands and feet were neatly zip-tied for when they woke. They weren’t alone. The alley was riddled with bodies, both young and old. A semi had backed up to the mouth of the alley, and men dressed in SWAT gear were carrying the unconscious people up a ramp and loading them in the back. The men we had seen getting out of the white vans were all there too, and I realized they were sorting everyone. The young went to the truck; anyone over twenty went through a doorway into an adjoining building. All of them were working together. I caught a glimpse of two men carrying Stash’s unconscious form inside the building before they vanished in the shadows.

Hillburn caught me looking at the men in SWAT gear and his grin widened. He shouted at one with short salt and pepper cropped hair, “Hey, Murdock, your sister likes to take it up the ass!”

The man he called Murdock raised his assault rifle, pointed it at Hillburn, and pulled the trigger. Three quick shots rang out. Hillburn’s body jerked, then he started laughing. “That never gets old!”

Blanks.

They were all firing blanks.

The entire thing had been a ruse.

From a nearby crate, Hillburn snatched up a video camera with a wire trailing through the doorway where they were moving the adults. He held the camera up to his face. “Line ‘em up, Anson. They’d better be there when I open this door!” He started laughing like this was the funniest thing in the world before tossing the camera back down to the crate. “We’ve got this whole place wired. Not exactly hard to swap out a camera feed.”

Another man dressed in SWAT gear peered out the back of the semi. “Quit screwing around. We should have been on the road twenty minutes ago!”

Carmichael.

They were all dirty.

Every last one of them.

It took six people to carry Pudge’s unconscious body up the ramp into the back of the truck.

Hillburn raised the syringe and gave the plunger a little pressure—just enough to send a drop of whatever drug it contained out through the tip. “Time for you to take a nap, Anson. I’m handing you to Tucker myself.”

He took a step closer.

From above came a deep roar.

The windows of the Quick, covered from the inside, blew out into the night sky on a wave of flames. A boom deep enough to rattle the pavement.

​76

​TWILL

Twill pulled at the handle, and the refrigerator door opened with a sucking sound. A blast of cold air rolled out at her, a plume of white mist. She didn’t realize how thirsty she was until she saw the rack full of bottled water. She grabbed one, wrestled off the cap, and chugged. She washed the bile back down her throat and chugged some more. When the bottle was empty, she tossed it to the ground and was about to grab another when she spotted the camera inside the refrigerator. It was small, like the ones in the fake hospital room. Built into the plastic molding next to the light in the top left corner. A small red light was on next to the dark lens. Like someone wanted her to know it was there. Wanted her to know they were watching.

Twill leaned in closer. “Who the fuck are you?”

No reply came. She didn’t expect one. Only the blank stare of that black lens. The unblinking red light.

While the top rack of the refrigerator was stocked with bottled water, the two lower shelves contained plastic Tupperware containers. No different than the ones her last foster mother had filled religiously with things like meatloaf, spaghetti, and lasagna, which would have been okay had she been a good cook, but she was anything but, and Twill and the other four kids never dared open those containers unless there was nothing else to eat in the house. Even then, it was a last resort, when the stomach pains became too unbearable.

Like Twill’s last foster mother, whoever left these containers had labeled each in a neat script worthy of a typewriter. They didn’t say meatloaf, spaghetti, or lasagna, though, and as Twill read the labels, the contents of her stomach twisted into a knot worse than the one she had felt at the sink.

Each container bore the name “Cullen, Amanda” on the first line, but it was the second line of each that caused Twill’s body to go cold.

“Kidney.”

“Liver.”

“Spleen.”

“Intestine (lower).”

“Intestine (upper).”

“Pancreas.”

“Heart.”

The lids were askew. Opened and not resealed properly. Like someone had scooped out the contents and returned the empty containers.

While that middle shelf with the Tupperware containers was bad, the bottom shelf was worse. The contents of the bottom shelf caused Twill to stumble back and nearly fall, her hand covering her mouth, but unable to stifle the gasp. There were dozens of glass jars, each sealed with a metal lid and the same neat script on the labels.

“Cerveau - Dickson, Andrew.”

“Cerveau - Cormack, Emily.”

“Cerveau - Cullen, Amanda.”

Other names. Names Twill recognized from the wall in the cafeteria at the Quick.

Twill didn’t speak French, but she had picked up an intro to French CD once at a bus stop in Albany and listened to it on the long ride to Charlotte about a year before arriving in Charleston. Had someone asked her what she recalled of that CD twenty-four hours ago, she would have said nothing, but that single word came into her head now. It came in with the force of a truck barreling down on a brick wall. She could even hear the woman’s voice as she spoke it—“cerveau”—as she pronounced it with a perfect French accent a moment before uttering the English translation—”brain.”

Twill stumbled back several more feet, then froze when she heard Langdon’s voice from behind her. “There you are . . .”

She didn’t turn. She didn’t face him. Instead, she watched the refrigerator door slowly close with a soft click. “They’re not going to let us go, Langdon.”

“Bullshit.”

“They don’t let anyone go. Look around you. What do you think they do here?”

This time, Twill did turn, but she did so slowly. Partly because she didn’t want to spook him, and partly because her body had begun trembling so bad that when she tried to move, her muscles went stiff and fought her. As if any sudden movement was what caused those other people to find themselves in that hospital bed, on the operating table, in the refrigerator.

Langdon’s eyes were deranged, wild. His face and neck were bruised. He was favoring his left leg; his right had taken the bulk of the hit from the cage door when she slammed it on him. He was flexing the fingers of both his hands at his sides like a car revving its engine, ready to jump from the starting line. He’d kill her if he reached her; that was written all over his face. It only took a few hours for the quiet software mogul to go primal.

“If you kill me, you’re still not getting out,” she told him. “If you kill me, you’re probably never getting out.”

“Bullshit,” he said again in a gruff voice. His grasp of language was devolving as quickly as his mind. “They want me to kill you. That’s why they ignored the safe word. I get it now. It’s all part of the game.” He drew closer, a grimace filling his face when he put weight on his right leg.

“Don’t.” Twill stepped back until she was against the sink with nowhere else to go. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Sure. Let’s pop a squat and have a little chat.” He looked around the room, seemingly for the first time, then recognition hit as he realized where he was. A grin edged his cracked lips. “Oh man, you should have seen the things he did to this one. When I get out of here, I’ll watch it again. She had no clue, not until the very end. She was a stupid little bitch, just like you. Way more fun than the boy. She thought she was getting out. They all do. I’m sure you do too, right? You think you’ll figure this out? That’s the best part. The way you all cling onto hope right until the very end.”

He took another step.

Her back against the sink, Twill slipped her left hand down into the filth. She did it slowly, inconspicuously. When the tip of her index finger brushed against cold steel, then something soft and slimy embedded within the teeth of that steel, she ignored the acid churn in her gut and held Langdon’s gaze. Even when those hungry flies found her hand and started to crawl across her flesh, she refused to flinch. She didn’t even shake them off. She gripped the handle of the blade. “What the hell kind of safe word is ‘longhorn,’ anyway?”

Saw in hand, Twill was about to lunge at him when a short man in glasses and an argyle sweater stepped out of the shadows behind Langdon. “I’m afraid the safe word was my idea.”

Langdon started to turn toward the new voice, but not before the little man produced a gun, pointed it at Langdon’s temple, and pulled the trigger.

​77

​ANSON

Boom.

Fireballs shot out from above, blinding white and hot, then sucked back into the building when the explosion inhaled with a deafening gasp. Every inch of the Quick was aflame.

Glass rained down.

An image of Detective Moss standing at the door of the north steps filled my mind. Maybe she saw the matchbook; maybe she didn’t. I imagined her realizing her mistake an instant before the flames ate the flesh from her bones.

Your match trick worked, Father, I thought silently.

Duck! he quickly replied.

And I did.

I slumped down as the force of the explosion threw Hillburn toward me. Somehow, even in his surprise, he managed to keep hold of the needle. His arm came around, swinging toward my neck, or, more appropriately, where my neck had been. As I dropped, his elbow brushed across the top of my head, skated over my hair, and twisted wildly above me as he lost his balance and crashed down on top of me, pinning me to the ground with his weight.

I brought my knee up, tried to catch him in the groin, but I hit him in the thigh instead. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the needle skittering across the blacktop.

Hillburn groaned, “You little shit!” He twisted to his side and lunged for the needle.

I grappled for anything I could use as leverage. My fingers found his belt, and I seized it. I jerked him hard in the opposite direction. He had nearly fifty pounds on me, maybe more, and while Father had taught me to defend myself, his number one rule was never let them get you on the ground. His number two rule was never let them get on top of you if you do end up on the ground. He may have told me to duck, but he’d gone quiet after that, and I could picture him watching with a soft tsk, tsk, tsk, hoping at the very least that I would catalog my mistakes here so it never happened again.

Jerking Hillburn’s belt did nearly nothing. He shifted his weight and managed to get his knee on the palm of my other hand, pinning it tight. He ground it, dug in deeper, and I refused to give him the satisfaction of a yell.

My fingers slipped from his belt and brushed his holster. I had no idea what kind of gun Hillburn carried and didn’t much care. I fumbled across the leather, found the small strap securing the weapon, and popped the snap. Hillburn was stretching for the needle again when I managed to pull the gun from the holster and turn the barrel toward his flank, stuff it tight against his gut, and pull the trigger.

Nothing happened.

“Christ, Hillburn,” came a voice from above us.

Carmichael again.

He kicked the gun from my hand, sent it flying.

“The little shit nearly put a hole in you!”

I caught a glimpse of him standing over us, thick black smoke bellowing out from above, this scowl on his face. Then I felt the needle enter my neck.

Cold liquid under my skin.

Hillburn and his ridiculous grin looking down at me in the moments before all went dark.

​78

​TWILL

The bullet seemed to leave the gun in slow motion. There was a loud crack, a puff of smoke, then a small hole appeared in Langdon’s temple, closest to the short man. A fraction of a second later, a much larger hole appeared in the opposite side of Langdon’s head, sending a mist of red flecked with brain matter through the air and against the wall at Langdon’s side. Langdon’s face locked in an expression of confusion, then he fell to the floor in a lifeless heap at the man’s feet.

The little man looked down at the body, then at the gun in his hand. When he spotted flecks of red on the chrome barrel, he produced a handkerchief from the pocket of his khaki pants and wiped it away. “I apologize for such a distasteful resolution, the messiness of it all, but I’m afraid dear Langdon wasn’t much of a sport. He certainly doesn’t hold a candle to you, Ms. Poppy. I’m sorry, Twill. You do prefer Twill, don’t you?”

Twill couldn’t nod if, well, her life depended on it, and in that particular moment, it just might, but she couldn’t move.

The little man nudged Langdon’s shoulder with the tip of his shoe. “This man has nearly double your weight. He spends five days each week in the gym with a personal trainer, honing every muscle and pushing the limits of physical endurance. By all accounts, he is a superior specimen to you. Yet, you bested him at every encounter. Cunning trumped brute strength. Ingenuity over crass power.” He gestured around the room. “All these obstacles thrown at you, yet you continue. Even now, I suspect you have a weapon in hand from that sink and are prepared to attack. Even now, with the threat defused.” A grin twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Remarkable. Truly remarkable.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“You may call me Doctor,” he said with a slight bow. A fucking bow. Then he glanced at her hand in the sink. “I have no desire to kill you, but I will if you attempt to injure me. I think we’ll both come out of this for the better if you remove your hand from that sink.”

When Twill didn’t move, he offered a noncommittal shrug. With the gun leveled on her, he crossed the mock operating room to the refrigerator and tugged open the door. He studied the contents for a moment, then retrieved one of the glass jars from the bottom shelf before turning on the heel of his perfectly buffed shoe and heading back the way he’d come. As almost an afterthought, he told her, “It’s best if you follow me. No good will come of you staying in this room. In fact, I strongly advise against it. Oh, and if you remove anything from that sink—a scalpel, perhaps?—I’ll know. I strongly urge you not to do that. Last warning.” His gaze fell to a glass bowl on the floor. Twill hadn’t seen it until now. It looked like a fish bowl, but it was upside down. Trapped inside was a tiny grayish-black snake, no more than a foot long. Its slender body twisted and bent as it tried to climb the glass, clearly searching for a way out.

The doctor nudged the bowl with the toe of his shoe. “That’s a baby mamba. The deadliest snake in the world. With proper nourishment, it will grow to over six feet in length. Twenty minutes after its bite, the average adult loses the ability to speak. After one hour, they become comatose. Death occurs in under six hours.”

He made no further comment. With the carefree steps of a stroll through the park, he stepped around the bowl with the snake and over Langdon’s body before vanishing around the corner.

Next to the bowl with the snake was the body of a dead rabbit with a swollen red bite mark in a tuft on its neck. Like the sink, the flies had found that too. They crawled over the matted fur, hungrily eating the exposed flesh.

Twill turned away and stood there; she tried not to look, unsure of what to do. The doctor sounded like the man who had been on the phone, and again over the loudspeaker, but she couldn’t be sure. And did that even matter? He was one of them, whoever they were. Certainly not someone she could trust.

But he was someone who knew where they were.

He was someone who knew the way out.

He was someone who understood what was between her and that way out.

Twill released the saw and took her hand from the sink. She wiped away the flies.

On wobbly legs, she went after him.

Back in the room with the hospital bed, Twill discovered another door had appeared. This one had been concealed behind the curtains and fake windows. The wall itself had been hinged, and now a gap had opened in the corner, just wide enough to slip through. Although she didn’t see the little man, she knew he’d gone that way, and when she stepped through the opening, she found herself in what looked like a small office. Not the kind you’d find in some downtown building, but the kind you’d find in the basement of someone’s home. Again, there were windows, but they were high up on the walls. No doubt fake like the others. What looked like framed university degrees dotted the far wall, but the lighting was too dim to make them out. At the center of the space sat two chairs: a wooden one and a cushioned leather chair upon which the little man who called himself a doctor now sat. He gestured toward the other with an open palm. “Get comfortable, Ms. Pop—Twill.”

The gun sat on a table at his side, along with the glass jar he’d retrieved from the refrigerator. The label was facing the opposite direction; she couldn’t make it out.

“Please,” he said. “I promise, I won’t bite.”

Twill smoothed the lines of her ruined dress and settled in the chair opposite him.

Mounted to a pole over her left shoulder was a blood pressure and heart rate monitor. The doctor nodded at the machine. “Would you be kind enough to indulge me? Slip the cuff around your forearm and the plastic reader over your left index finger. The machine is automated; it will take care of the rest.”

“Why?”

His brow furrowed, as if this were the oddest question she could possibly ask. “Aren’t you curious? After the ordeal you just endured? The sooner we get on with things, the sooner you can be on your way.”

Twill did as he asked. Not because she trusted him—she didn’t trust this guy at all—but because humoring him might take his guard down, give her time to think. Give her an opportunity to come up with a plan.

She slipped the cuff around her arm and it immediately began to fill with air, cinching tighter. When she placed the small plastic reader on her index finger, the machine behind her head began to beep, slow and steady. The cuff around her arm grew a little tighter, held, then deflated. The machine beeped twice with the results.

The doctor’s mouth opened slightly and he leaned forward. “That is truly remarkable.”

“What?”

He met her eyes for a moment, then retrieved a notepad from the table at his side. “Your blood pressure is ninety-seven over seventy-six, and your heart rate is only sixty-eight beats per minute.” He quickly scribbled on the page. “Considering how you spent your last few hours, I would have expected much higher numbers. It’s as if you just rose from a nap rather than experienced a stress-inducing encounter. Absolutely remarkable. You are quite the specimen.”

A stress-inducing encounter?

Who the fuck was he kidding?

Specimen?

He reached into his pants pocket and retrieved what looked like the key fob to a car, studied the buttons, then pressed the black one.

Twill felt a sharp prick on the tip of her index finger, and when she went to remove the heart rate monitor, he quickly waved his finger. “A needle containing cyanide just punctured the epidermal layer of your digit. Should you attempt to remove it, the device will inject you with the poison. You will be dead in less than ten seconds.” He twisted the key fob in his hand. “The same will occur if I press this red button.” He studied the device for a moment longer, then returned it to the table. “I see no reason to do that, not as long as you cooperate. You will cooperate, won’t you, Twill?”

Behind her, the monitor beeped with her heartbeat. There was a slight rise as he told her all this, then it fell back into a steady rhythm. “Cooperate with what?”

At that, he only smiled. He picked up the jar from the table and removed the cap. He sniffed the yellowish-white liquid inside before raising the jar to his thin lips and taking a drink. Several swallows. He then set the jar back on the table and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

This time, the label was facing Twill.

“Cerveau - Cormack, Emily.”

He tapped his pen against the edge of his notepad as the monitor beeped behind her head. “Shall we begin?”

​79

​ANSON

Libby brushed her fingertips through my hair, this gentle caress. We were at the edge of my lake near my parents’ house in Simpsonville, lying on a blanket next to the tree where I had once kept a cat. That all seemed so long ago. The sun was high in the sky, warm even for such a mid-July day. Libby had packed a lunch in an old basket I found in my parents’ basement. One I vaguely remembered from my childhood. Trips to the park with my parents. Sandwiches and homemade lemonade, sometimes pie.

Aside from the ripples in the surface from a duck near the center of the water, the lake was quiet. Birds chirped from the branches of the trees above, and tiny critters scurried about the forest floor, watching the two of us with curious eyes as they foraged for food.

I imagined a house here, nestled in the trees, edging the lake. Nothing too fancy—just a small cabin with a porch. A few windows that looked out upon the water and the woods beyond. The sound of children running through the brush, all giggles and playful laughter.

“You were right, Anson. It’s beautiful here.”

I brushed a flake of dried leaf from her cheek. “You’re beautiful,” I told her.

Oh, and she was. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, had taken on a golden shimmer in the sunlight. Her skin, slightly flushed with the warm summer air, radiated with life. I could get lost in her eyes. I could spend hours studying the lines of her full lips.

She leaned closer and kissed me with those lips, and I let her. I didn’t want her to stop. She did, though; she stopped and leaned back on her heels, this mischievous grin forming. “Has it been thirty minutes yet?”

I shielded my face and looked up at the sun, studying its position. “Closer to forty.”

I leaned in to kiss her again, but she pressed a fingertip to my mouth. “You promised we could go for a swim after thirty minutes.”

Mother’s warning to never swim within thirty minutes of a meal again flashed through my mind. I had never once gotten a cramp after eating, yet her words weighed on me every time I took a bite while remotely close to a body of water. I had shared the warning with Libby as we finished off the last of the potato salad. While she thought it was silly, she’d known me long enough to understand—if Mother said, I’d do, so thirty minutes it was.

Libby rose from the blanket and stretched, then stepped to the water’s edge and dipped her foot in. “It’s a little cold, but not too bad.” She glanced up at the sky. “Perfect under the sun.”

I watched as she gripped the bottom of her white tank top and pulled it over her head. She shucked out of her jean shorts and made a little show of removing her bra and underwear. I did my best to appear disinterested, but it was all I could do not to go to her and take her right there at the edge of the water. My heart raced like a jackhammer. I wanted her so.

Naked, she waded in. When the water was just above her waist, she dove forward and vanished under the surface with the grace of a mermaid, barely creating a ripple. Considering she hadn’t grown up anywhere near a lake, pool, or ocean, I had no idea where she’d learned that. All this time together and yet she still surprised me daily. She broke the surface about twenty feet from where she started, tilted her head back, and brushed the water from her face before smiling at me. “Are you coming in, Mr. Bishop? A girl could get chilly in this water all alone.”

I offered a slight tilt of my head, this noncommittal shrug. “I don’t know. I was thinking about maybe taking a nap instead.” I stretched in a mock yawn and leaned back against the base of the tree.

“Suit yourself!” With a quick shrug of her own, she did a somersault and dove back under. For a brief second, both her long legs shot up from the water, her toes pointing perfectly at the sun, the water shimmering on her bare skin, then she was gone again. This insanely beautiful mirage I’d never tire of seeing.

I had no intention of really leaving her in that water alone.

I quickly tugged off my clothes on the way to the shore and jumped in. Nothing remotely as graceful as Libby’s dive. The water was maybe eighty degrees at the surface and quickly cooled in the deeper spots. Not particularly cold, but not warm either. It hit my skin like an electric current, woke every cell, and caused my heart to thump even wilder than it had at the sight of Libby. When it grew too deep to walk, I swam out to the spot where she had gone under and waited for her to reappear, paddling slowly to stay afloat.

Nearly a minute slipped by before she did, and when she did come up, she was about fifteen feet from me, close to the center of the lake. It was deepest there. I didn’t know how deep exactly, but Father had once told me there was a significant drop-off near the center, like Mother Nature had carved out a bowl at the bottom.

“Playing hard to get, Mrs. Bishop?” I started toward her with slow, lazy strokes. Then I froze when I realized the smile had left her face. “What’s wrong?”

She was paddling in place, as I had been, but bobbing oddly, only using her feet and one hand. “I found something,” she said, and held up what looked like a rock, but wasn’t. I realized it was a black garbage bag encircled with duct tape. Several small slits had been cut in the plastic and water drained out, leaving this dark, rusty color. Her nose wrinkled. “It stinks.”

If my heart had been beating hard a moment ago, what it did in that particular moment would have punctured a hole in concrete.

I knew exactly what was in that bag.

The memory of tugging my red wagon out to the lake all those years earlier came rushing back. The weight of the contents in back caused me to huff and puff by the time I reached the water’s edge. Mother and Father had killed our neighbor, Mr. Carter, chopped up his body, and tasked me with disposing of his remains. I’d cut those slits in the plastic myself with my knife, hoping the fish would help make Mr. Carter go away. Father had been pleased when I told him. Mother, not so much. She simply shook her head and made a good point. “What about the plastic? The fish won’t eat the plastic, and if they do, it will surely kill them.”

“Drop it, Libby. Just drop it and swim over to me.”

She didn’t, though, and somehow, she appeared to be standing. Although I knew the water in that part of the lake was far too deep, her other hand appeared and began tearing away at the plastic, opening the package. Each move more frantic than the last.

“Libby, don’t—”

Her eyes grew wide, and the color washed from her face. She didn’t stop, though. She kept ripping away the plastic. I saw Mr. Carter’s hair, one of his ears. His cheek, but no longer whole. The fish had eaten clear through to his jawbone.

A shrill scream echoed out from the lake, bounced off the surrounding trees, and found me where I bobbed in the water. This horrid cry. And when Libby turned the head in her hands, when she turned it to face me, I realized it wasn’t her who screamed—it was Mr. Carter. And the second time, he screamed louder still.

​SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 1999

​80

​ANSON

“​Anson? Wake up . . . wake—”

My body jerked. I went airborne for a brief second, then came down hard. My head cracked against cold metal. My eyes snapped open an instant before I bounced again. I caught a glimpse of the metal roof above me drawing closer, then I fell back and hit the metal again as a throaty engine roared.

It all came back to me at once.

The explosion at the Quick.

Hillburn.

His needle full of God knows what.

The bodies.

The semi.

The prick at my neck.

Libby.

The dream had felt so real, and I longed for her touch, her scent. As horrific as the dream was, I would endure it a million times just to be close to her again.

The roar of the semi’s engine.

Another bump in the road.

We were moving fast.

“Anson!”

Bare bulbs burned from above, offering just enough light to soften the gloom. I twisted my head to see Vincent on the ground next to me. His wrists were bloody from trying to break free of the zip ties. His lips, too, like he’d tried chewing through them and failed.

My hands and feet had been zip-tied too, and as I looked around, I saw dozens of kids from the Quick slowly waking, discovering they were also tied.

You can’t chew through police-issued zip ties, Champ. There’s a thin metal cable embedded under the plastic. Not their first rodeo.

And that’s what these were, right? Police-issued. Hillburn and his friends. Moss’s friends. All the same. All bad cops.

I considered telling Vincent, but it seemed pointless to take hope away from him. Instead, I scooted my back against the wall of the truck and managed to get myself into a sitting position so I could get a better look around. Paul was on the ground on the opposite side of Vincent, still unconscious. It was dark, but I spotted Ruddy too. Pudge was like this giant mountain among hills about ten feet further up the truck toward the front. He wasn’t quite awake yet, but his large frame was rolling slowly back and forth. He was so large and heavy that when we hit another bump in the road, he was the only person who didn’t leave the floor.

At first, I didn’t see the Kid, and I thought maybe they left him behind or transported him in some other vehicle. Then I spotted him near the back doors of the trailer, still unconscious.

Every inch of my body ached, but especially my head. It felt like I was in a vice. I knew this was from whatever they injected me with, but understanding that did little good when it came to getting my thoughts to find their way through the pain. It was like running in molasses.

I licked my dry lips and turned back to Vincent. “Any idea where we are?”

“No, but I think they dosed us more than once.” He nodded at his watch. “We’ve been out for over eleven hours. Almost twelve now. We could be anywhere.”

“They’re taking us to Chicago,” a girl’s meek voice replied.

I looked to my right and spotted her about six feet down. Like me, she’d managed to get herself into a sitting position. I remembered her from the Quick. Her name was Mona. Fourteen. Raven black hair, always in a braid that fell halfway down her back.

“Chicago? How do you know?”

She didn’t look at me. Instead, she faced forward with her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, zip-tied like the rest. “Because that’s where the Guyon is.”

That single word cut through the muck and pain in my head. I exchanged a quick look with Vincent, then turned back to her. “You know what Guyon is?”

In the dim light, I watched a soft sigh escape her lips. “It’s some old abandoned hotel. Every year, crime syndicates from all around the world gather there for two days. They buy and sell people like us, then ship us . . . wherever.” She looked around at all the unconscious bodies. “The girls usually go into the sex trades overseas—escorts, clubs, strippers, whatever. Some of the boys too.” She glanced at me. “Especially the cute ones.”

“Overseas?”

She nodded. “Europe, mostly. Sometimes Asia or the Middle East. They ship Americans there and ship kids from those places here. Apparently, we’re all easier to control when we don’t speak the language, especially when they hold whatever passports and papers they have on us. That stuff is all bogus, but if you’re in someplace like Moscow, don’t speak Russian, and have zero documentation—real or not—good luck getting home. Some of us will be resold or traded in secondary markets. Places like Saigon or Tehran. You don’t want to end up in Tehran. Or South America.” She shivered. “You definitely don’t want to go to South America.”

Pudge let out a loud groan and rocked again with a little more force behind it. The movement caught Mona’s eye.

“Boys like him go into labor. They’ll put him to work. Grueling, nasty, back-breaking stuff. If that doesn’t kill him and he doesn’t fight back, if he cooperates, he might end up in enforcement. Or they might just kill him. I heard a story once about some rich guy from Moldova who bought three boys just so he could hunt them in the woods with his friends. I heard they used bows and arrows, no guns, because that wouldn’t be sporty.” She did air quotes around that last word, spitting it out with a bit of sarcasm. After a few moments of silence, her voice dropped lower. “I thought about cutting my face,” she said softly. “Back at the Quick, when I first heard they were taking us to Guyon. I figured if I wasn’t pretty, they might not want me, but some of those guys—the buyers—they don’t care about that. Some of them like scars. They’re the worst of all. You don’t want to end up with one of them.”

Vincent shivered and shook his head. “Fuck this.” He yanked at the ties on his wrists again, but did nothing but worsen his cuts.

At his side, Paul mumbled something, and his eyes fluttered open. He stared up at the ceiling for several seconds, then seemed to realize where he was. “Mom, are we there yet?” he muttered, then closed his eyes again.

Pudge rolled to his side, and this time, he didn’t groan; he yelled. This unintelligible slew of words left his lips and his eyes popped open, wide with panic. He jerked his arms up, caught sight of the zip ties at his wrists, and yanked. When they didn’t snap, he yanked harder with a gruff groan. A third time, harder.

“He’s going to hurt himself!” I shouted to no one in particular, hoping someone closer would stop him.

Another yank.

He screamed.

Somehow, he got to his feet, and realizing his ankles were zip-tied only frustrated him more. He twisted hard to the right, lost his footing, and crashed back down to the floor. His body writhed in a furious flurry of spastic twitches. He rolled and cracked against the semi wall, then rolled back in the opposite direction as half-conscious kids shuffled to get out of his way. With a horrible cry, the muscles in his arms went taut, he yanked hard in both directions, and the zip tie on his wrists snapped and shot across the truck. He reached down to the one at his ankles and pulled it apart, unaware or uncaring when it left a deep cut in his palm. He stood back up to his full height and looked like some kind of monster—his eyes were bulging from his head, veins throbbing in his neck and face. He drew in air with a harsh gasp. His chest expanded and threatened to rip his shirt. It was impossible not to think of the Incredible Hulk, and when Pudge began banging his meaty fists on the metal walls of the truck, I half expected him to punch through, just like the character from the comics. He didn’t, though; all he managed to do was further bloody his hands.

While the rest of us were frozen, unable to do anything but watch, Mona inched closer to him. Still bound, she pressed her body against his legs. “It’s okay, Pudge. It’s going to be okay. Calm down. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

How she managed to sound so soothing, I’ll never understand, but somehow her words reached him. He quit banging, his breathing steadied, and finally, he looked down at her, his eyes red and moist with tears. When he saw the zip ties on her hands and feet, he reached down and yanked them apart. He freed her. And when he did, she wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. She held him like that for nearly a minute. When he finally calmed, she took both his hands in hers and studied his wounds. “You poor baby.” She kissed his fingertips, then kicked off her sneakers and took off her socks. She carefully tied them around his hands, covering the cuts, then smiled up at him. “Better?”

Pudge nodded. “Yeah.”

Mona looked up and down the length of the dark trailer, then back to him. “Do you think you can free the others?”

​81

​ANSON

Metal cable or not, Pudge managed to tear through all the zip ties. With the socks wrapped around his palms, he made it look effortless, and once he found a rhythm, it was quick work. Nearly everyone was awake by the time he finished.

The bumpy road had given way to smooth pavement, and the truck had picked up speed. We were on some kind of highway.

A plastic camping toilet was attached to some brackets in the front corner of the trailer with a series of bungee cords. A line had formed as people woke. Every time the lid was lifted, the harsh chemicals inside lofted out. The stagnant air in the trailer was heavy with the fumes.

Paul, Vincent, and I were huddled around the Kid, who was still groggy, but coming around quickly. “If she’s right about Chicago and we’ve been on the road for twelve hours, we’re almost there. It’s around eight hundred miles, right?”

He asked this of Vincent, who only shrugged. “How the fuck would I know?”

“Well, it is.”

The Kid looked down at the ground and mumbled something to himself. I think he was doing math, but I couldn’t be sure. Without looking up, he said, “You think they dosed us six times?”

“We’re sure about that,” I told him. “We all have six puncture wounds in the same places. One in our neck, five more in our thighs.”

“They might still think we’re asleep.”

“Why?”

“One of my foster dads sold ketamine, and he told me he loved it because people built up a tolerance fast. The half-life got cut with every dose, especially when they were close together.”

“Like six in twelve hours.”

He nodded. “If the first one knocked us out for three hours, the sixth might only work for one or two. Maybe less. With a long trip like this, they may not have thought about that.”

Vincent didn’t understand math, but he understood a tactical edge. “So when they open those doors, they’ll expect to find us all still sleeping.”

“Probably.”

I wasn’t so sure. “We don’t know if they used ketamine. What if it was something else?”

The Kid pursed his bruised lips. “The way I understand it, most drugs work like that. Painkillers too. Your body builds a tolerance, and they work less and less.”

“So they open the doors,” Vincent said, “and we rush them. All of us at once.”

“I don’t know. They might still have guns.”

“You know they’ll have guns,” Paul interjected.

Holding the wall as she went to keep from falling, Mona returned from the back of the trailer with Pudge following her like a lost puppy. “We checked every inch of this thing. The back door is locked from the outside. We couldn’t find a way to open it from in here. There are no vents or hatches anywhere. They rigged the toilet to the walls, but it’s not vented to the outside. There’s only that.” She pointed up and we all followed her finger.

There was an air conditioner unit built into the ceiling. About three feet long and a little more than two feet wide. But the ceiling was at least ten feet from the ground. It was rattling loudly, having trouble keeping up with all the body heat. Water dripped down in nearly a steady stream to a rusty puddle on the floor.

“There’s no way we’re getting up there,” Paul muttered. “Even if we could, it’s bolted in. We don’t have any tools.”

Even Pudge, the tallest of us by far, only glanced at it glumly before turning toward the back of the trailer again.

“Christ, that thing stinks.” Vincent frowned at the toilet at the opposite end.

Nearly everyone had used the toilet, including me. Every time someone flushed, a fine mist of harsh chemicals sprayed the waste in the bottom tank, and the acidic smell lofted out into the trailer. It was so thick now, I swore I could see it, this hazy film in the air.

Paul’s nose crinkled. “Maybe we should tell people to stop pissing in it.”

Vincent said something else, but I didn’t hear him. I’d stepped away and was working my way through the crowd toward the front of the trailer. The smell only grew worse as I approached, and my eyes began to water. The toilet looked like something picked up at a camping store. It was completely self-contained and strapped to the corner of the trailer with thick bungee cords. Thankfully, the lid was closed. I didn’t want to think about the contents of the disposal tank. There was a valve on the disposal tank threaded for a hose, but it was sealed. I was more interested in the inner workings. I flipped open the plastic lid on the back and peered down inside. There were two canisters. One contained compressed oxygen; the other was labeled “Bronopol” and covered in warning labels—flammable, corrosive, toxic category one, and a skull and crossbones image, too. Surely the source of the smell. Both canisters had quick-release latches for easy replacement. A label on the toilet itself read, “Outdoor use only - no confined spaces.” Clearly, our captors hadn’t read the instructions before installing it in the trailer.

You understand how it works, right, Champ? It’s a simple enough design. The flush handle opens the valve on the compressed air, it flows through that copper tube to the Bronopol, and it forces the chemical out through a spray valve down below. All pressure-based.

I did understand, and I told Father so.

That’s when the truck slowed.

There was a harsh blast from the air brakes and a quick deceleration. Those without a handhold were tossed forward. Others dropped to the floor. The truck nearly came to a stop, then accelerated again, this time making a long right turn.

Toll station, maybe? Father pondered. Followed by an exit ramp? That might mean you’re getting close to your destination.

“Pudge!” I called out over my shoulder. “I need your help with this!”

​82

​ANSON

Twelve minutes.

That’s how much time passed between the semi leaving the highway and coming to a complete stop.

Not much time.

But enough.

For the most part, everyone had returned to the place in the truck where they had originally woken. It was doubtful our captors would remember such a thing, but there was no point in tipping them off unnecessarily. There were only a few exceptions. Vincent was crouched in the corner near the back door on the right, and I had taken up position on the left. Pudge was beside me on the floor, his hands clasped and his ankles together like all the others. We had carefully placed the zip ties back on our limbs. Broken, but giving the illusion we were still bound. To anyone taking a quick glance, they wouldn’t know otherwise. The only thing that looked out of place was the mound under a borrowed jacket directly behind my right shoulder. There was little I could do about that.

The semi’s engine rattled, then went silent.

From deep in the trailer, someone coughed.

All heads turned.

It was too dark to know who it was, but they didn’t make further noise, and for that I was grateful.

I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Outside, I heard voices.

Footsteps grinding gravel against pavement.

First on the left side of the semi trailer, then rounding the corner toward the back. Someone shouted something about getting a door open. That was followed by a gruff woman’s voice yelling, “Got it!” and someone else saying something about stretchers. It sounded like “how many,” but I couldn’t be sure.

When a harsh metal squeak came from the door, followed by a bang, I pictured someone unfastening the latch outside, twisting it, and jamming the bolt to the side to release the lock.

My eyes snapped open, and I silently mouthed the words “get ready” to Vincent across from me, who nodded. Then we both closed our eyes again.

Both doors of the trailer opened at the same time. There was a cold rush of fresh air, quickly followed by a man saying, “They’re all still out. Get ‘em in the cages before they wake up. Take two at a time with the smaller ones. Little fuckers are light.” He sniffed loudly. “What the hell is that smell?”

“Fucking toilet,” someone huffed. “I told Jerry to buy the CampCo, but he wanted to save fifty bucks.”

“Cheap bastard,” the first voice responded. “Didn’t even need it. They’re all still out. Give me a hand with the ramp.”

There were two metallic clicks, then a rolling sound from somewhere beneath us.

In my mind’s eye, I pictured two men tugging a ramp out from under the truck, the kind I’d seen on moving trucks. The rolling was followed by a soft scrape on the pavement as they set the end of the ramp down.

“Go,” the first man said. “Hurry up.”

Footsteps bounded up the ramp. Two people? No, four. There was a slight rustle in the air as the first pair walked by me. The second pair stopped right in front of me.

I opened my eyes, just a squint to see what was happening, and—

A burly man with a bushy beard was staring down at me, both his hands holding up one end of a stretcher, his brow stitched tight. “Hey, this one’s a—”

And that’s when Mona knocked twice on the trailer wall.

The signal.

Pudge crossed in front of me in a blur. He barreled through two of the men, grabbed their stretcher, and swung it like a baseball bat at the other two. It cracked against both of them with this sickening wet thunk! All four were down in under a second.

Aside from Pudge, I was up first. I had to be. If I didn’t go first, the wrong people would get hurt. Everyone else got to their feet and fell in behind me. We made a rush for the open doors, everyone at once in absolute silence. Not a single word, whisper, or cry. Exactly as instructed. We all had our mouths pinched shut, holding our breath. Eyes closed as much as we dared.

I shrugged the two canisters out from under the jacket at my side, thrust them out ahead of me, and twisted open the valve.

A harsh stream of Bronopol caught a man standing next to the ramp on the forehead. He squeezed his eyes shut and stumbled backward, tripped, and fell to the pavement as I ran out, twisting right and left. I bolted down the ramp, spraying everyone I saw—the ones with guns, the ones with more stretchers, the ones who were just standing there trying to make sense of what they saw. I sprayed everybody. And as I did, Vincent, Pudge, and all the others came out of the trailer behind me. This massive wave of bodies, some down the ramp, others jumping. Those who jumped came out with as much height as possible—they landed on the ones near the back of the trailer, rammed others, hit them with whatever force they could muster.

“Grab weapons,” we had instructed. “Take cover if you can’t, but come out hard.”

We’d removed the bungee cords from the toilet, and several kids were swinging them. The metal hooks on the end caught flesh, tore. Someone else threw the toilet, and a group of boys came barreling out behind it.

From the corner of my eye, I caught Vincent ripping an assault rifle from the shoulder of one man while Pudge gripped another man by both sides of his head and twisted. The man’s neck snapped with the thick pop of a dry tree branch. Pudge was on another man before the first body hit the ground. In total, eleven people had been sent to unload us, and with our numbers, we made quick work of them. By the time both my canisters were empty, all eleven were on the ground, either unconscious or dead.

Hillburn wasn’t among them. Neither was Carmichael.

“Anybody hurt?” I asked, tossing the empty canisters up into the trailer.

There were several grumbles, but aside from minor cuts and bruises, nobody had been seriously injured.

Vincent brushed at a scrape on his cheek and grabbed the legs of one of the men on the ground. “We need to get all these guys in the trailer.”

Pudge tossed another one over his shoulder, carried him to the back of the truck, and threw him inside like yesterday’s trash. With a soft grunt, he turned and went for another.

Paul appeared with the semi’s keys in his hand. He frowned when he saw what we were doing. “Screw that. Leave them. Let’s get everyone back inside and get the hell out of here!”

That wasn’t an option, at least for me. “Libby’s in there somewhere.”

“Kristina and Tegan, too.” Vincent checked to ensure a bullet was chambered in his rifle, then quickly ejected the magazine, confirmed it was full, and clicked it back in place. “We can’t leave Twill, either.”

“We don’t know they’re in there,” Paul shot back. “Not for sure.”

“Leave if you want to,” Vincent told him. “Nobody’s stopping you.”

“Who wants to—” Paul started the sentence as he turned toward the crowd behind him. Their faces answered his question before he got all of it out of his mouth. Nobody was going anywhere.

Pudge tossed another body into the truck, then helped two other boys with the unconscious man they were carrying.

Ruddy was holding an assault rifle. His lips tightened as he stepped up to Paul and jerked a thumb up at the building. “There’s a good chance we have friends in there. Every kid locked up inside is no different than us. They could be us. We need to get everyone out. If we don’t stop this tonight, we could end up in there next year or the year after that. This is our chance to end it.”

Soft murmurs of agreement rumbled through the crowd—boys and girls, all in.

Paul sighed. “I guess if I’m going to die, it might as well be with you guys.”

The last body went up into the truck. We closed the metal doors and twisted the bolt to lock it from the outside.

A kid we called Lisco appeared, holding two more assault rifles. He handed one to Paul and held the other out to me.

I shook my head. “I don’t really like guns.”

Slinging the strap of the second rifle back over his shoulder, he pulled a knife in a leather sheath from his back pocket and pressed it into my palm instead. “Word around the Quick is you’re a knife guy.”

I had no idea why word of such a thing would filter around the Quick, but now wasn’t the time to ask. I took the knife and slipped it into my back pocket. It wasn’t my knife, but it was better than nothing.

“Shit!”

The shout came from the hotel.

Vincent and I turned in time to see a guy with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail disappear through a metal fire door and vanish inside the building.

​83

​ANSON

“​Oh, hell,” Vincent muttered. He watched the man run inside, then quickly turned back and barked instructions out to the group. “Stay behind me! We’ll start at the ground floor and spread out, work our way up. The only innocent people here are our friends and kids like them. Take out anyone else you see. Don’t hesitate, just shoot. If you don’t think you can do that and you have a gun, give the gun to someone else. Hang back. There’s no shame in that. The rest of you, come with me!”

This wasn’t the boy I knew from Finicky’s. This wasn’t even the boy I knew from the Quick. This was someone else entirely. He twisted back around and ran toward the door, grasping the rifle in the same two-handed grip I’d seen cops use. It seemed to come naturally to him.

Paul must have known what I was thinking; he was watching Vincent, too. “His dad, his real dad, was in the military,” Paul told me. “He was killed in the Middle East when Vincent was eleven. That’s how he ended up in the system.”

I frowned. “He told me he never met his dad.”

Paul’s eyes drooped. “He says that. I don’t know why. Maybe it helps him deal with the loss. I think he was really close with his father.”

“What about his mother? He said she was an addict.”

Again, Paul shook his head. “I heard she died when he was born. It was just him and his dad, then it was just him. Growing up on military bases, his father made sure he knew how to handle himself.” He turned back to me. “Don’t take it too hard. He never told me the truth, either. I heard it from Kristina. I think he just likes to keep his personal life . . . personal.” Paul twisted the rifle in his hands, lacking Vincent’s certainty. “Spartans, prepare for glory,” he said softly.

“Huh?”

“Just something I read in a comic once,” he replied. “Come on.”

We followed after Vincent, who had positioned himself with the barrel of his gun trained on the door. He signaled for me to open it. Paul, Ruddy, Lisco, the Kid, and all the others were behind us. The Kid was moving better now, but still slow. His face was covered in sweat.

I gripped the knob, silently counted to three, and yanked it open with a twist.

Vincent didn’t hesitate. He bounded through the opening and quickly put two rounds into the blond man who was standing there shouting into a phone. Like something out of a video game. No emotion. Not a word. The man dropped and Vincent moved past him, quickly sweeping the narrow hallway. The gun wasn’t very loud, and I realized there was some kind of suppressor on the barrel to muffle the sound. Paul’s rifle had one, too. One of the other boys scooped up the dead man’s handgun from the floor, and we kept going.

The hallway was riddled with old storage rooms and pieces of decrepit furniture. Some were stacked against the walls, while others were left in piles. Pieces from a time long past, covered in dust and grime. At the end of the hall were two service elevators, and by the looks of them, they hadn’t run in fifty years. The doors hung open on crooked tracks. The interior wallpaper was faded and torn, lit only by a single bare bulb strung from wires hanging out of the ceiling.

Silently, Vincent pointed toward a sign that read “Lobby” above a set of swinging doors on our left. He nudged through in complete silence, the rest of us behind him.

At first sight, it was clear the hotel had been abandoned for a number of years. Although several chandeliers provided light from above, about half the bulbs were dead. Thick cobwebs hung down in saggy sheets from the coffered ceiling. And like the walls of the elevator, the once ornate wallpaper was faded and tinged with age.

There was a man behind the reception counter with his back turned, watching a video on a laptop. Near the center of the expansive lobby, among the broken and discarded furniture, someone had arranged some of the undamaged chairs and tables in three small sitting clusters of four. Only one of them was occupied. Two women and a man. They hadn’t heard the gunfire in the hallway; their backs were to us, and they seemed to be in a heated conversation.

Vincent pointed at Ruddy, then at the man behind the counter watching the video, then back at himself, followed by a two-fingered gesture toward the three people in chairs. The rest of us followed a few paces back, doing our best not to make a sound.

There are no innocents here, I heard my father whisper a moment before Ruddy shot the man behind the counter. One bullet to the back of the head—he never saw it coming. Like Vincent’s rifle, Ruddy’s had a suppressor too; the shot was a soft thunk! Loud enough, though.

In the chairs, the man and two women startled, looked up, and saw Vincent hovering above them, the barrel of his rifle moving slowly from one to the next.

The man started to reach inside his jacket and Paul raised his rifle. “Don’t.”

In that instant, Paul looked as confident in his abilities as Vincent, although I spotted a thin bead of sweat slip down the back of his neck.

The man lowered his hands to his lap. “What is this?” He spoke in a heavy accent. Russian, maybe. “This” came out as “dis.” He caught the rest of us standing behind him, this mob of kids, and frowned. “Who let you out of your hole?”

Vincent shot him.

A single bullet to the right side of his head. It went in with a small hole, but took out a good portion of his skull on the way out. Hair, bone, and brain matter sprayed the side of the wingback chair, and the man slumped.

One of the women opened her mouth to scream, but went quiet when Vincent swung the rifle toward her. The other woman had remained silent. Calm, even. She was maybe fifty, with a stoic face, subtle makeup, and shortly cropped dark hair. She slowly leaned back in her chair and pressed her palms together under her chin. At first, I thought she was praying, then I realized she was contemplating her situation.

“Viktor always was a bit of an ass. He won’t be missed,” she said in an accent similar to the man’s, but different. Not Russian—maybe Ukrainian, or another neighboring country. “It’s best you consider his death a victory and leave this place with that feather in your cap. Only misery awaits should you decide to stay.”

Although there were nearly forty of us, we’d held the silence of the truck. Her words carried to every person in that lobby.

Spread out on the table between the three people were Polaroids. Maybe twenty in total. Pictures of boys and girls, anywhere from nine or ten to their late teens. I knew if I were to turn them over, I would find codes such as “WF15 5k EC,” “WM15 4k AD,” or “WF15 6k MP” written on the backs of each—descriptions, ages, price tags, and initials. The simple coded language I’d seen before. One that seemed to transcend dialect in a place like this—a simple code understood by all. The two women had been drinking coffee. The man had some kind of cocktail. They were bartering—buying, selling, or trading children right here. Out in the open. No different than if they were swapping baseball cards.

The first woman, the one who nearly screamed, had slowly slipped her hand down her thigh to the slit in her dress. Found something and began to take it out. She had made the move slowly, over the course of a minute. Nearly unnoticeable. But I noticed. Vincent did, too. He shot her with the efficiency he had used to dispatch the man she’d been speaking to.

The Ukrainian woman didn’t flinch as the last of her companions died. If she was frightened, she showed no sign. She simply tilted her head slightly to the side and looked up at Vincent. “There is no need for further violence. Perhaps we can help each other. If you wish to leave, you are welcome to take my car. Or my plane; it’s waiting for me at the airport. You’re free to go anywhere in the world.” She spoke to him as if they were the only two people in the room. “I have more than a million dollars in U.S. currency aboard. Several gems, too, in a safe behind the headboard in the bedroom. You are welcome to take it all. Consider it a gift from me to you. Simply walk away.” She studied our numbers for a moment. “There is room for all of you.”

Vincent kept the gun on her. His eyes, too. He didn’t trust her enough to look away. “Do you see them, Anson? Are their pictures on the table?”

I had already checked the photographs. I didn’t recognize any of the kids in the Polaroids. “They’re not there.”

“Show her, Paul,” Vincent said through clenched teeth. Again, without looking away.

Paul reached into the pocket of his jeans and took out a piece of paper. He unfolded a sketch of Tegan, Libby, and Kristina and placed it on the table in front of the woman.

“Them,” Vincent told her. “Where can we find them?”

She smoothed the paper out with slender fingers and glanced at Paul. “This is impressive. You drew it?”

Vincent pressed the barrel against her temple. “Where are they?”

The words came out the second time with more force than the first, and if the woman planned to stall for time, she realized that was no longer an option. “They are quite beautiful. I’m sure they’ll fetch top dollar if they haven’t already. I could buy them for you, if you’d like.”

“Just kill her, Vincent,” Paul said. “She’s not going to tell us anything. We’re wasting time.”

She looked back at Paul, her lips curling into a smile.

Paul frowned. “Something funny?”

“You honestly believe you have the upper hand.”

Vincent drilled the barrel harder against the side of her head. “If you don’t know where they are, you’re dead.”

The smile never left her face. They could have been discussing the weather. “They’ll be in their room upstairs, of course. Where else would beautiful girls prepare for the evening?”

From behind the reception desk, the Kid called my name. When I saw his face, I knew something was horribly wrong.

​84

​ANSON

The Kid had zeroed in on the laptop. I found him hovering over the keyboard, his face pasty and shimmering with sweat. He seemed oblivious to the dead man at his feet. When I saw what was on the laptop screen, I understood why.

Twill was in some sort of a cage, her back against the bars. Unconscious. The image was hazy, tinged with bright green. Some kind of night vision. It looked like there was someone in the cage with her, lying against the opposite wall, also unconscious. That wasn’t the worst part, though. It was the small button in the corner of the screen that grabbed me. It read, “Bid Now.”

“Is this live?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Not at first. He was busy clicking through windows and studying text that looked like complete gibberish to me. When he did speak, his voice was trancelike. I only got half his attention. “I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell. It’s not a video file stored locally on this machine; it’s being broadcast on a private VPN network. There’s no way to differentiate between a live feed or a recording, but the ‘bid’ button doesn’t work. That makes me think . . .”

“It’s too late to bid because it’s already happened.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you tell where she is?”

He shook his head. “The VPN keeps rolling. Every five seconds, the IP address changes. It’s rerouting all over the world.” He tapped a dirty fingernail against the corner of the screen near the clock. “That little lock icon is for a program that keeps it all in sync, like a key. Garage door openers work the same way. It makes them hard to clone. You need both halves to complete the link, but even if you have them, the rolling IP prevents tracing. She could be in the next room, or she could be halfway around the world.”

On the screen, Twill stirred. Her head rolled loosely on her neck as she slowly came to.

“Oh, fuck! Is that Twill?”

Ruddy.

I ignored him. “Is there anything on that thing that might help us find the girls?”

The Kid minimized the video window and went back to the gibberish text. “Maybe. I need to spend some time on it—check all the directories, software, stored data . . .”

From the middle of the room, Vincent called out to me. He had the woman on her feet. “You coming or staying here?”

I told the Kid, “You can’t stay here. It’s too open. Why don’t you take the laptop to one of those storage rooms we saw on the way in and see what else you can find? Wait for us there?”

The Kid looked relieved. The truth was, without elevators, we’d be climbing stairs, and he was in no condition for that. I think part of me knew there was a good chance we wouldn’t be leaving this building, particularly if we went upstairs, and I wanted the Kid to live. I wanted to see him escape all this. I turned to Ruddy. “Stay with him? Keep him safe?”

Ruddy tightened his grip on his rifle and nodded. “Yeah, alright.”

I went back to the others. When I told Paul and Vincent what was on the laptop, Paul whistled. “Twill in a cage match? Fuck that.” He glanced over at Vincent. “Remember what she did to that Mathew kid back at Finicky’s? Tore him apart, literally.” His eyes grew wide, and he turned back to me. “She sliced him up into pieces and put him in these small white boxes. Ears, eyes, nose, lips, even his—”

“Enough,” Vincent told him.

Paul wasn’t done, though. “She left the boxes all over the farmhouse. Tied them up with a string like some kind of present. Scared the piss out of Finicky every time she found one. Even Welderman and Stocks were rattled. I’d never seen them scared before. That girl has no trouble going batshit. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of her crazy.”

Vincent was eyeing me, but he kept his mouth shut.

He’d told me Twill led Mathew out to the cornfields and killed him, but he said they never found the body. Apparently, that was only half the story. The grim look on his face told me Paul was telling the truth.

I thought about what she did to the medical examiner back at Roper the day I’d first met her. The three guys in that cottage out at Charleston Harbor.

I told you from the start that girl was off, Champ. Didn’t I tell you? Maybe it’s best if she dies in that cage. A wild animal is one thing. A caged wild animal is another. A caged wild animal who escapes is another beast entirely. Not something you want to encounter.

The woman at the end of Vincent’s rifle had remained quiet through all this, as if waiting patiently for whatever came next, a bored look on her face. Like our sole purpose was to break up the monotony of her day.

Vincent shook off Paul’s story and turned back to all the other kids still milling around the lobby. “I thought I told them to spread out.” He opened his mouth to address them, and the woman managed to quiet him with a simple look. “If they leave this lobby and venture further into the hotel, they will all die.”

He stared her down. “We’re armed and we have numbers.”

“You’re children marching into the fire. Do you want their deaths on your hands?”

Vincent didn’t reply to that.

“Tell them to remain here,” she said. “Or go back outside. I don’t want to see them die any more than you do.”

“Because you’re some kind of saint and you want to help us?” Paul said sarcastically.

Although she didn’t reply, I understood. “Because we’re only worth something to her if we’re alive.”

A flash of ice passed behind her eyes. “Further bloodshed is unnecessary. I’ll take you to your friends, then you will leave us to conduct our business.”

Paul coughed into his hand and muttered, “Bullshit.”

“I can’t risk further injury to my clientele. It’s bad for business. There will always be more girls to fill the coffers.” She smiled coldly at me. “Boys, too. But proper clientele can be far more difficult to cultivate.”

She said this without emotion, as if stating facts, and the knife Lisco had given me grew heavy in my hand. It wanted to come out of the sheath. It wanted a taste of this woman’s neck. Vincent’s finger eased closer to the trigger of his gun, too. I think we all wanted her dead, but now wasn’t the time.

Vincent leaned toward Lisco and Pudge, who had come up beside him. “Wait here with everyone. If we don’t come back in fifteen minutes, I want you to clear this place floor by floor. Kill every last one of these people.”

Pudge let out a soft grunt and flexed his bloody hands.

​85

​ANSON

The woman crossed the lobby to a bank of elevators with Vincent, as Paul and I followed several cautious steps behind them. It was impossible not to notice the poise and sophistication with which she moved. She showed no sign of fear or agitation. Her hands remained in plain view, clasped in front of her waist. Father had once told me you could tell a person’s station in life simply by the way they carried themselves. Poor people tended to move in quick, jerky strides, like a guarded mouse making off with a newfound morsel, while the wealthy somehow glided like figure skaters on fresh ice. This woman moved with the fluidity of water, and I knew if Father had seen her, he would have said she was not only wealthy, but she surely came from old money. The kind of wealth that breeds more wealth over generations. She didn’t seem bothered by the filth of the abandoned hotel. Instead, she appeared disinterested. As if the dirt couldn’t touch her. Like it knew better.

When we reached the second elevator from the left, she stopped outside the door.

Like the elevators in the service hallway, it was in disrepair. One door was open, the other closed, and the elevator car sat beyond them at a slight tilt on its tracks, precariously balanced. A hair’s breadth away from dropping.

“No way I’m getting in there,” Paul said. “I’ll take the stairs, thank you very much.”

She eyed him, simply waiting for him to finish speaking, like she knew he had to get it out before they could move on. Then she said, “You have yet to encounter any guards. Aren’t you the least bit curious as to why?”

“Dumb luck,” Vincent muttered.

She nodded toward the door leading to the stairs off the lobby. “Because the guards are positioned in the stairwells, monitoring every point of ingress or egress. Everyone else is on the second floor, preparing the main ballroom. That is where the auction is to take place later tonight. You’re fortunate enough to arrive early, before most of the guests. Certainly, before the bulk of the security. Had you arrived four hours from now, you would have been gunned down before you set foot in the lobby.”

“The ballroom is on two,” I said. “Where are you keeping the girls?”

“We keep the appurtenance on the eighth floor.”

“Appur, what?” Paul frowned.

“It means product,” I told him. Not exactly sure where I picked up the word, and feeling dirty for knowing it.

She nodded with approval, then went on. “Customers who stay on site will use four, five, and six. The seventh floor is highly guarded to ensure there is no unauthorized traffic to the floor above, as is the third floor to protect the customers. Think of three and seven as impenetrable, because that is exactly what they are. Should you take the stairs, even if you manage to subdue the guards placed there, you would surely die on three. Three is a hornet’s nest. By all accounts, this hotel appears abandoned, but in reality, once properly staffed, it’s a fortress. It’s one of the many reasons we use it.”

“How many people are here now? Your . . . clients?”

Her lips pressed into a tight line; she didn’t answer me. Instead, she stepped into the elevator. “Don’t let appearances deceive you. I guarantee it is in perfect working order.” With careful movements so as not to spook anyone, she removed a gold key from around her neck, slipped it into the control panel, and twisted it. There was a soft hum and the buttons lit up. “It’s now or never, gentlemen.”

The three of us stepped in after her. The cracked tile floor let out a mild groan but held. When the woman pressed the button for the eighth floor, there was a soft buzz, and something odd happened—while the broken elevator doors didn’t move, two inner metal doors did. They slipped out from behind the crooked panels and slid shut with a gentle whoosh of air. A moment later, the car began to rise. An arrow above the door slowly twisted to the right, gliding past the floor numbers positioned in a semicircle. My gut tightened as it swung by three and again by seven—the two floors she said contained the guards—but we kept rising without incident.

The doors opened on a long hallway.

A desk had been placed directly in front of the elevator doors, and at the sight of us, the woman sitting behind that desk quickly straightened up. She was morbidly obese, appearing as if she hadn’t left that chair in a year. Like she couldn’t leave the chair if her life depended on it. Her greasy brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She held a Nora Roberts novel in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other. She lowered both to the desktop, her beady eyes darting across each of us before landing on the woman. “Ms. Pavelko. Is there a problem?”

There was an old rotary phone on the desk. I had no idea if it worked, but just in case, I twisted my hand around the cord and yanked it from the wall.

The woman who brought us up here—Ms. Pavelko, apparently—retrieved her key from the elevator and stepped out. “No problem, Gladys, I assure you. My friends are here to retrieve several of our guests, then they’ll be on their way.”

The mouth of the woman behind the desk was open slightly and drooped just a little bit more as she eyed first what I had done to her phone, then the guns. “Ah, huh.”

When her fingers began to slip under the edge of the desk, Vincent thrust his rifle toward her. “Don’t do that, Gladys.”

She pulled her hand back and rested it on the top of the desk. The nails on each of her nubby fingers had been chewed to the quick.

“Show her, please,” Ms. Pavelko instructed Paul.

He took out the sketch and held it out.

Gladys studied the drawing for a moment, then retrieved a stack of photographs from the corner of the desk and began to leaf through them, occasionally glancing back at the sketch. She removed three pictures and laid them out between us like playing cards—Libby, Tegan, and Kristina. “That them?”

The three of us nodded.

The woman looked back at Ms. Pavelko. “They’re all in 807.”

“Anson,” Vincent kept his gun trained on the woman. “Go get them. Paul and I will wait right here.”

Ms. Pavelko gave me a stern look. “The occupants of 807 only, that’s the deal. Touch no other door, or I cannot guarantee you a safe exit.” She then added, “Remember what I said about the floor below us. We don’t need a phone to summon security. A simple scream will do.”

​86

​ANSON

I rounded the desk in silence and, with my knife at the ready, made my way down the hall. Much like downstairs, the paper on the walls was faded and torn. Wide swaths had been ripped away, revealing plaster and lath beneath. The ceiling was riddled with cracks, and although there were small crystal chandeliers every few feet, they were dark. The only light came from a string of bare bulbs tacked along the ceiling beside them. The scent of mildew rose from the carpet with each step, and by the time I reached the door for 807, my nose was itching with a sneeze, but I managed to stifle it before it got out.

The door was heavy oak, solid. While the original antique key lock was still there, a modern shiny deadbolt had been drilled into the top corner to secure the door from the outside. I reached up and twisted the thumb latch; the bolt retracted with a click. When I reached back down to the knob, I realized my hand was shaking.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open on what first appeared to be an empty room, then a heavy lamp swung down from the right, struck my arm, and shattered on my plaster cast. I jumped back just in time to avoid Tegan, who came at me from the opposite side with what looked like a shower curtain rod. A gasp came from the same direction as the lamp, and I found Kristina standing there, her hand over her mouth. My name came out muffled from behind her fingers. “Anson!”

Tegan, who had nearly impaled me, froze and dropped the shower rod. She stared in disbelief. “What are you doing here?!”

Both were wearing black slinky dresses. Matching high-heeled shoes were scattered about the floor.

And that’s when I saw Libby.

She stepped out of the bathroom at the back of the room in a similar dress, although hers was red. Her hair had been blown dry and swept back from her face. Her makeup was expertly applied, no doubt by Tegan, who had an eye for that sort of thing.

When she saw me, her lips parted slightly, and I heard her whisper my name. Then I was holding her. I had no memory of crossing the room. I simply found her in my arms, me in hers, an embrace, then a kiss, and her lips were the sweetest thing I had ever tasted. I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Time no longer existed, no longer passed. There was nothing but us.

“Are you ready to go home?” I finally managed. She buried her head against my shoulder and nodded, although neither of us knew where home was, or what that really meant. I suppose it simply meant somewhere we were together.

“How did you find us?” she whispered.

“I’ll tell you when we’re safe. Right now, we need to go.”

I reached the back of my neck, unfastened Libby’s locket, and held it out to her. Her face lit up. “I thought it was lost!”

She spun her back to me and pulled her hair aside. After I fastened the clasp, she turned back around and gave me another kiss. “I love you, Anson Bishop.”

Kristina wasted no time. Forgoing the black heels on the floor, she grabbed a pair of ratty tennis shoes from beside the bed and slipped them on. She tossed another pair to Tegan and a third to Libby, who then retrieved Tegan’s shower rod before returning to me at the door. “Lead the way.”

Back in the hallway, Kristina crossed over to room 806 and reached for the deadbolt at the top of the door. Tegan started toward the door to 805.

“Don’t,” I quickly told them both.

Kristina hesitated, but didn’t release the lock. “They’re holding people behind every one of these doors.”

I glanced back down the hallway where that Pavelko woman was watching us closely. “We can’t. Not right now. We’ll find some other way. You open one of those doors and we’re all dead.”

Libby’s face went pale when she spotted Pavelko at the end of the hall. “Shit, it’s Klara. He’s right. Don’t do it. Stop.”

“You know her?”

Libby nodded, and a shudder rolled down her body, but she said nothing else.

At the mention of the woman’s name, both girls stepped away from the doors. Tegan told me in a low whisper, “We can’t let her live.”

Anson . . .

Father again. Not Champ this time, but my name. He drew it out, this cautionary warning. I couldn’t remember the last time he called me by name. I squeezed Libby’s hand and told Tegan again, “We’ll find another way.”

Libby let out a soft sigh and squeezed my hand back. “I know you will.”

We made our way down the hall and returned to the elevators. Pavelko studied each of the girls, but eyed Kristina in particular when she said, “It appears knights have arrived to rescue you from the clutches of the evil queen.”

Kristina spat at her.

Thick spittle smacked against the woman’s cheek and dripped down. She made no effort to wipe it away until the woman behind the desk handed her a tissue. When she did wipe it away, she smiled. “I’ll remember that when they bring you back. And they will bring you back.”

“Fuck you, you demented cunt.”

She looked like she might lunge at her, but Tegan took her by the arm and held her back. “We’ll find another way,” she said softly, repeating my words. And somehow, hearing my words from her lips made whatever had taken place between Klara Pavelko and the girls as much my problem as theirs.

I expected Father to tell me it wasn’t, but he said no such thing.

Vincent’s eyes met Kristina’s, and words silently passed between them. The tension drained from her face at the sight of him. Then he motioned for all of us to get back in the elevator.

Paul had been watching Tegan, but she hadn’t so much as glanced at him.

Libby and me.

Kristina and Vincent.

Paul had carried feelings for Tegan from the first moment I met him, but she never showed the least bit of interest in him. There was a longing behind his eyes, and it was painful to watch. On some level, I think he hoped finding her, “rescuing her,” as Pavelko put it, would have somehow changed her feelings for him, but it had not. Finally, Paul swallowed and turned toward the woman behind the desk. “What about her?”

Klara Pavelko was back in the elevator, her key back in the panel. “Gladys knows better than to sound the alarm. Don’t you, Gladys? You understand doing so means a lot of people would get hurt unnecessarily, and you have no interest in sparking that fire. Isn’t that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gladys retrieved her book and Diet Coke. “You were never here.”

The rest of us stepped into the elevator, and when Pavelko pressed the button for the lobby, the interior doors whisked closed.

All eyes went to the sweeping arrow above the door. We all watched as it glided past seven, six, and kept dropping until it reached one. Something felt wrong, though. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, not at first, then it hit me. The car didn’t feel like it was going down; it felt like it was rising. And the sweep of the arrow across the numbers felt wrong, too—it was moving too fast. Its motion didn’t fit the momentum of the elevator.

“Vincent, something’s—”

Wrong.

But I didn’t get to finish the sentence.

When the doors opened, we weren’t on the lobby floor. They opened on what looked like some kind of penthouse. And we weren’t alone—Hillburn, Carmichael, and half a dozen others were standing there, flanking the elevator, their guns trained on us.

Behind them was a man I didn’t recognize.

He stood at the center of the room wearing a suit that looked like it cost as much as a house. His blond hair was slicked back, and he had an old scar across the otherwise smooth skin of his left cheek. “Thank you, Klara,” he said with an accent that screamed New York. “I’ll take care of this from here.”

Hillburn stepped forward. “Set the weapons down on the floor of the elevator, and everyone step out slowly. Anyone makes a wrong move and we open fire.”

Father always told me every decision came with a choice. Every action led to a reaction. I played out every possible scenario in my head and saw no way out of this that didn’t include death. “Do as he says,” I said softly, setting my knife down at my feet.

Paul and Vincent lowered their rifles and placed them on the floor. Libby set the curtain rod down, then we all got out of the elevator. All but Klara Pavelko, who disappeared behind the elevator doors when they closed with that same soft rush of air.

“Which one is he?” the man in the suit asked.

Hillburn kept his gun on us. “The one with the cast on his arm, Mr. Tucker. That’s Anson Bishop.”

The man’s cold eyes drilled into me. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bishop.”

​87

​ANSON

My grip tightened on Libby’s hand. My heart beat with such force that I felt it between our palms, rapid and hot. An involuntary flutter—I had no doubt this man saw it in my neck, maybe my temple, maybe behind my eyes. He didn’t so much look at me as look through me, and as he did, it seemed as if he could reach inside and tug out my darkest secrets. Like he knew exactly where to find the ugliest ones.

I quickly took in the space. I didn’t mean to look away—Father would have told me not to, to never break eye contact with a man like that. Doing so is a sign of weakness, but I couldn’t help myself. Unlike the other portions of the hotel we’d seen, the penthouse was immaculate. Marble floors polished to a sheen. Freshly painted walls adorned with several paintings. The modern furniture appeared new. There was even a fire burning in a hearth off to our right, surrounded by several leather chairs and a matching couch. There were a number of doors, all closed. All painted matte black with the exception of one. The door deepest into the room was a dark red. Tucker had been eating before we arrived. The remains of a steak dinner were on the table next to the couch. A half-finished glass of brown liquor. Bourbon, maybe? Whiskey? On the wall above the fireplace was a painting of a different sort. It wasn’t an image; it only contained words written in careful script. A quote:

“When you are told that youth of both sexes can mingle in close embrace with bosoms and abdomens in friction and limbs intertwined, and survive the experience without mental or physical pollution, you know the teller of lies.”

- J. Louis Guyon

Guyon. The man who built this place and named it after himself. This place where lives were bought and sold. Had he known this was what it would become? Or had there once been happiness here?

This man will kill all of you, Champ. He’ll sooner kill you all than let his dinner go cold. This is the kind of man who takes lives as easily as he breathes. He does it regularly to ensure the people around him know how easily he can snuff them out. This is the man your mother stole from when she ran off. I can only imagine what he’ll do to get it back.

Before Father’s words died in my head, I released Libby’s hand and took a slow step away from her. I’d hoped Tucker didn’t see, but the prickle of little hairs on the back of my neck told me otherwise.

Vincent’s hands closed into fists. “We have close to fifty people in the lobby downstairs. If we’re not down there in”—he checked his watch—“eight minutes, they’ve been told to storm every floor and kill anyone they run into. They won’t stop until they reach you. They’ll leave your head on a stake in front of this place on their way back out.”

Tucker didn’t appear the least bit worried. He rolled his hand through the air. “A bunch of children who have never fired a weapon with stolen guns against men like Carmichael here. Men who have done multiple tours in the nastiest places this planet has to offer. Men who have killed and developed a taste for it. Sounds like the potential for a bloodbath. One I don’t believe would end in your favor.”

“We’re leaving,” Vincent said again, his voice filled with hard defiance.

Carmichael took three quick steps and jammed the barrel of his gun into Vincent’s chest. “We can’t sell this one, so why is he still breathing? Let me shoot him. We’ll send his body downstairs. Watch how fast that puts the others in line.”

Tucker smirked at this, like he found it amusing. He stepped over to a table and retrieved a cigar from a wooden box, smelled it, then clipped the end before placing it in his mouth and lighting it. He inhaled deeply, held the smoke for a moment, then let it out in a slow white cloud. “That’s not true. I know a Russian gentleman who enjoys breaking boys just like him. The more obstinate, the better. I imagine it would take less than a week. What do you think about that . . .”

“Vincent,” Hillburn said.

“Vincent,” Tucker repeated. “If our friend Ms. Pavelko has taught us anything, it’s that there is an appetite for all types. And she seems to have them all on speed dial.”

He gestured toward a table against the far wall lined with computer monitors, each playing some kind of video feed. No sound. I hadn’t gotten a good look at them when we first came in; I’d been focused on Tucker, Hillburn, and the other men with guns. Each video appeared to be a different room in the hotel. In some, children were alone, sitting on the beds or pacing the rooms. In others, though, they weren’t alone—they were with men, women, some clothed, others not. I looked away before I saw more. I didn’t want the images in my head. Once they were there, they’d spend the remainder of my life trying to get out. I turned from those screens only to find myself looking at another. At a face I recognized.

“Twill,” I said softly.

​88

​ANSON

Twill was bound to a chair with something on her head. In her mouth, too. A rubber ball? Some kind of gag? No. Something to keep her from biting her own tongue. A shadow crossed over her, someone else in the room. As I watched, Twill’s body jerked and stiffened, her back bent at an impossible angle, and she threw her head back in a silent scream. The sound was muted, yet that scream might have been the loudest I had ever heard. Electroshock. The pain in her eyes. The fear. Her lips pulled so tight around her teeth, they looked like they might tear away. And it didn’t stop. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.

Tucker reached over and pressed the power button on the monitor.

The screen went black.

He took another puff of his cigar and smiled. “Your mother took something of mine and you’re going to help me find it, Mr. Bishop.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The look he exchanged with Hillburn was brief, but enough. Hillburn jerked his rifle around from Vincent and brought the barrel within an inch of Libby’s head. To her credit, she didn’t flinch. Instead, she reached over and took my hand again as if to tell Tucker neither of us was hiding anymore.

Tucker took another puff of his cigar and let the smoke crawl out from the corner of his mouth as he said, “Your mother took something from me. I’m going to take something from you.” He looked around the room at the others. “In fact, I’m going to take five somethings from you until you have nobody left. At that point, if you still haven’t told me what I need to know, I start taking parts of you. I’ll start with your fingernails. Then your fingers. I’ve got a guy who knows just how to tie off a wound, cauterize it to keep you from bleeding out. I’ll cut, he’ll close, and between the two of us, we’ll keep going until you’re nothing but a pile of sloppy wet parts on the floor. The only thing I’ll let you keep is your tongue, because at some point, you’ll cave and tell me where that fucking woman is hiding.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

He went on as if he didn’t hear me, his eyes shifting to Libby. “Maybe instead of a bullet, I’ll cut her up and make you watch. I’ve seen people live as long as a week while I cut away. You think you can watch that for a week, Anson? You think you can watch me cut the life from this girl bit by bit and keep your mouth shut?”

“I don’t—”

“Shut the fuck up!” he screamed, slamming the tip of his cigar down into the ashtray at his side and grinding it out. He shouted so loud that Hillburn jumped. Not Libby, though. She gave him nothing, and I loved her more for it. She might have been the strongest person I knew.

Tucker sucked in a breath and slowly let it out. His scowl twisted back into a sadistic smile. “I’m a patient man, Anson, but the things your mother took . . . even a patient man will only tolerate so much.”

“I don’t know where she is,” I said again. “But I’ll help you find her.”

At this, there was a slight spark behind his eyes. He extinguished it quickly, but I’d seen it. His voice was calm again when he spoke. “I’m listening.”

“You let my friends go and keep me. Put the word out that you have me.”

Mother won’t come for you. You know that. She left you for dead when she buried your knife on the edge of your lake.

Paul, Vincent, the girls, they all began to protest at once, but it was Libby’s voice I heard most. “Anson, no—I can’t lose you again!”

I turned to her and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “She’ll return what she stole.”

She won’t.

“She won’t leave me here. Not with these people.”

She will.

“We’ll be back together soon enough.”

We won’t.

No longer Father’s voice in my head, but my own.

I will never see this girl again.

Libby looked up at me, her eyes pleading.

Tucker clucked his tongue. He turned away from us and paced the room, several slow strides from one end to the other, before he turned and made his way back. He came right up to me, getting so close I could smell the steak sauce on his breath behind the scent of his cigar. “If she doesn’t show, you’ll wish you were strapped to a table in hell, because that will be better than the things I’ll do to you.”

I swallowed. “I understand.”

“No!” Libby screamed out. She tried to get between me and Tucker, but Hillburn grabbed her and pulled her back.

“Get them all out of here,” Tucker commanded.

Hillburn pulled Libby away. Twisted her around and pulled her away until I could no longer see her.

I didn’t turn. I couldn’t look. I remained still.

Behind me, I heard the elevator doors open, but I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t watch my friends step into that elevator. I knew I’d never see them again. I’d never see Libby again. I wanted to cover my ears, to block out the sound of it, because I knew the sound of them leaving my life would haunt me, too.

The elevator doors closed and the room went silent. Hillburn, Carmichael, and all the other men with guns were gone, too. Only Tucker and I were left in the room.

I forced myself to speak. “How do I know you’ll let them go?”

Tucker let out a sigh and walked back over to the computer monitors. He flicked the power on a single screen and the lobby came into view. A moment later, I saw them step from the elevator, and with Hillburn and the other gunman behind them, they were ushered out the front doors of the hotel. Not just Libby, Vincent, Paul, and the others, but everyone. All the kids who came with us in the semi—he let them all go. Two minutes and they were gone. I was alone. When the lobby was empty, Tucker flicked off the monitor. Reaching for the phone, he dialed an extension, simply said, “Send him in,” and hung up.

About a minute passed before the dark red door at the back of the room opened and a little man stepped out. He wore an argyle sweater and glasses on a silver chain hanging around his neck. His greasy hair was slicked back from his large forehead, and when he smiled, he revealed yellowed teeth. “Hello, Anson.”

Tucker’s eyes never left me. “I believe you know Dr. Oglesby?”

My gut twisted at the sight of him. I wanted to scamper back toward the elevator like a mouse to its hole. Pry the doors open and jump if that’s what I had to do. Anything to leave that room. To get away from him. I knew I could do none of those things, not if I wanted my friends to live.

All became clear—I recalled the video of the man kidnapping that girl from the street, shoving her into the back of that SUV. I thought of Andy and Emily and Amanda and all those people up on the wall at the Quick. Doctor Oglesby had purchased them from Meagan. It had been him all along, all those years. He’d tortured them. He’d killed them. It was all in his eyes, the twisted hunger burning there, the flames growing at the sight of me, growing with anticipation. He licked his lips.

“You’d better not disappoint me, Anson,” Tucker said.

Goodbye, son, Father whispered.

Dr. Oglesby turned and went back through the door without another word, because there was nothing left to be said.

I forced myself to follow after him. I walked by Tucker without meeting his gaze. I walked by the computer monitors and tried not to think of Twill, screaming in pain. I tried not to think of the shadow in the room with her, no doubt made by the man I was following.

I left the penthouse behind me as I stepped into the gloom, into a hallway darker than coal. At my back, the door thumped shut and sealed with a click. The twist of a deadbolt on the opposite side.

This door of dark red.

This door, the color of spilled blood.

This door of scarlet.

*