Redemption Road

23

Elizabeth couldn’t sleep. She came close more than once, but every time she drifted, she jerked awake thinking she’d heard Channing’s voice, or Gideon’s. Once that happened, her imagination kicked in, and she saw them as they probably were: Channing in general population, Gideon in a narrow bed. They were still her responsibility, so it seemed wrong to be tucked under a soft blanket with long views of purple water. So instead of sleeping, Elizabeth prowled the house. She walked long halls beneath carved beams. She fixed another drink, then stepped onto the deck and thought of other times and other waters.

The car, when it came, was like a voice in the woods.

Elizabeth walked back through the house and onto the rear porch in time to see the limousine roll to a stop.

“Where’s Mr. Jones?” She met the driver, a big man with large features, beside the car. Seen up close, she thought he seemed afraid. How long since they’d left? Twenty minutes? Less?

“You’re the cop, right? The one that’s in the papers?”

“Elizabeth Black, yes. Where’s Faircloth?”

“He told me to have some dinner.”

“Yet, you’re here.”

“Truth be told, ma’am, I’m worried. I’ve been driving Mr. Jones these past days. He’s a nice man, and gentle. Always the kind word, the bit of advice. He’s an easy man to care for, and-well-that’s the problem.”

“Where is he?”

“See, he wanted me to leave him there.”

“At the old farm?”

“I didn’t want to do it. I told him the man there was not his sort, not with the scars and hard looks and darkness coming down.”

“He’s at the farm, now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you came to me, why?”

“Because after twenty years driving all kinds of people into all kinds of situations, I’ve learned to trust my feelings, and those feelings tell me that was a bad place, ma’am, a dangerous, bad place and not right at all for a gentleman like Mr. Jones.”

“It’s good of you to worry. I mean that. But, Adrian Wall’s no danger.”

“The old man thought that, too, so I figured it might be the case.” The big head tilted, the thick hands twisted white. “But, then there was the car.”

The car.

Elizabeth turned out of the drive.

Gray, he’d said. Two men.

That was bad enough: a gray car with two men, parked at the end of Adrian’s drive. It had to be the same, first at Crybaby’s house, now at Adrian’s. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

They left before I dropped the old man, but I think I passed them later.

Later?

Like they were going back.

How far?

Three miles, maybe. Edge of town, and driving fast. That’s why I asked if you were police. ’Cause it wasn’t right, is all. The car. The way they looked at us. ’Cause they were fast moving at the old man, and ’cause something about ’em just scared me.

They worried Elizabeth, too. William Preston had a dark streak. She’d sensed it at the prison, and on the road above Crybaby’s estate. He had the wrong kind of interest in Adrian Wall. Prison guard. Ex-prisoner. It wasn’t right. There was an arrogance there, not just complacency but the unmistakable sense of easy violence. That’s what thirteen years of cop told her, that someone like Preston had no business anywhere near a man as fragile as Faircloth Jones.

Not after dark.

Not on an ex-con’s burned-out farm.

Elizabeth’s lights split the gloom as she drove. Tarmac. Yellow paint. In the darkness beyond, houses ghosted past, flickers of gravel and light, cars in silent drives. She was alone on the road, just her and the wind and the last line of bruised sky as full night descended. She crossed a wide creek, then crested a final hill before the road flattened and the farm road snaked in from the right. She made the turn-tires drifting-and saw the fight from a distance, not sure exactly what it was: a car in the drive, figures moving in the slash of her lights. Two men were on the ground, Adrian fighting with a third. Fifty feet closer, she saw that fighting was the wrong word. Adrian swung again, and the man went down with Adrian on top, his fists rising and falling and slinging red. The ferocity of it was so extreme that even parked and close Elizabeth sat frozen. Adrian had no expression, the face beneath his fists so pulped and bloody, it barely looked human. She saw Crybaby, motionless, another man down and crawling. For a second more she sat transfixed, then spilled from the car, knowing only that someone would die if she didn’t do something.

“Adrian!” she yelled, but he didn’t react. “You’re killing him.” She caught an arm, but he ripped it free. “Adrian, stop!”

He didn’t, so she drew her weapon and struck his head hard enough to drop him in the dirt. “Stay down,” she said, then ran to Faircloth Jones and gently rolled him. “Oh, God.” He was unconscious and so white he looked bloodless. She found a pulse, but it was irregular and thin.

“What happened to him?”

Adrian dragged himself to his knees, head low as he stared at his hands, at the split knuckles and bits of teeth wedged under the skin.

“Adrian! What the hell happened?”

His gaze slid to the second guard, Olivet. He was on his belly, still crawling. Four feet away, Preston’s gun glinted in the dust. Adrian staggered to his feet and stepped on Olivet’s hand as it reached for the gun.

“He happened.” Adrian picked up the gun and pointed it at Preston. “William Preston.”

“That’s Preston? Jesus, Adrian. Why?”

“He was torturing Crybaby.”

“Torture? How? Wait. Never mind. No time for that. We need a hospital, and we need it now.” Elizabeth cradled the old man’s head. “It’s bad.” She leaned into his breath; could barely feel it on her cheek. “We need to go now.”

“Take him.”

Elizabeth looked at Preston. The face was broken a dozen different ways. Blood bubbled at his lips. He was unrecognizable. “What about him?”

“Call an ambulance. Let him die. I don’t care. He’s not riding with Crybaby.”

“Help me, then.” They got the old man in the backseat of Elizabeth’s car. His head lolled. He weighed less than a child. “Come with me.”

Olivet moved again, so Adrian put a foot on his neck. “I’m not finished here.”

“Adrian, please.”

“Go.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but Faircloth needs a hospital, and he needs it now.”

“Go on, then.”

“We need to talk.”

“Fine. You know the old Texaco east of town? The one on Brambleberry Road?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me there.”

Elizabeth took a final look at the scene, at beams of yellow light and the two guards, down and broken. “Are they going to die?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Elizabeth struggled with the answer. Adrian seemed cold and untouchable and every bit a killer. He pointed the gun at Preston, and she hesitated: lawyer in the back, half-dead prison guard bubbling in the dust. Would Adrian do it? Pull the trigger? She honestly didn’t know.

“Time’s wasting, Liz.”

Shit.

He was right. Only the lawyer mattered. “Brambleberry Road,” she said. “Thirty minutes.”

Elizabeth reversed down the drive and sensed Adrian’s stillness as he watched her go. She braked at the tarmac and in a swirl of dust saw him dragging Olivet by the collar, over the gravel and into the gloom, heading for the same gray car.

She waited for a shot that didn’t come.

Behind her, the lawyer was dying.

Adrian propped Olivet against the front tire, just behind the burning lights. He was hurt, but nothing like Preston. That meant a broken orbital and bloody nose. Maybe a cracked rib, based on the way air whistled past his teeth. Adrian had seen worse, experienced worse. He put the muzzle against the guard’s heart and used just enough pressure to keep him upright. The man was crying.

“Please, don’t kill me.”

The words put an unfeeling twist on Adrian’s face. How many times had he begged, only to be cut again, beaten again? He thumbed the hammer and thought about blowing Olivet’s heart through an exit wound the size of a grapefruit.

“I have a daughter.”

“What?”

“A daughter. She’s only twelve.”

“That’s supposed to save you?”

“I’m all she has.”

“You should have thought about that before.”

“I’m sorry-”

“Don’t.”

“You don’t know the warden. You don’t understand.”

“You don’t think I know the warden?” The night darkened as Adrian loomed above the guard. “His face. The sound of his voice.”

“Please don’t do this.”

“Were other prisoners killed? Others besides Eli Lawrence?”

“I’m sorry about the old man. He wasn’t supposed to die. None of it was supposed to be like this.”

“Yet, it is. You tortured Eli. You tortured me.”

“I did it for my daughter. We needed money. Child care. Medical stuff. I was going to do it just the once, one time, and that was it. But they wouldn’t let me go. The warden. Preston. You don’t think I have nightmares? That I hate my life? Please. She’s everything. She’ll be all alone.”

A girl. Twelve years old. Did that make a difference? After all he’d suffered, Adrian had two of the five men responsible and could cut the number to three. Preston dead. Olivet, too. That would leave the warden and Jacks and Woods. If he moved fast enough, he could kill them, too. Tonight. Tomorrow. Temptation was a burn, and though Eli chose this time to be silent, Adrian knew what Eli would say if he decided to speak.

Let the hate go, boy.

Freedom. Fresh air.

That’s enough.

It’s everything.

Here was the brutal irony. Adrian had never killed anyone. Not as a cop, not in the yard or on the cellblock. He’d pulled thirteen hard years and had more reason than most to kill a whole host of men. But, he felt the old man out there, the yellowed eyes and patience, the simple kindness that had kept him alive when any other man would have lain down and quit.

Don’t do it, son.

But, the gun didn’t move. It pressed so hard against Olivet’s chest Adrian felt the man’s heart beat against the metal.

“Please…”

The trigger tightened under Adrian’s finger. It was too much, too many years. It had to happen, so the trigger had to move. Olivet must have seen the decision in Adrian’s eyes, for his mouth opened, and in the stillness of that final moment, of the long, hard second that would be his last, a noise rose in the darkness beyond the field.

“Sirens,” Olivet said. “Police.”

Adrian turned his head and saw lights far away. They were blue and thumping and moving fast; but he had time if he wanted it. A minute. Ninety seconds. He could pull the trigger; take the car.

Olivet knew it, same as him. “Her name is Sarah,” he said. “She’s only twelve.”

Elizabeth passed the cops two miles over the bridge, but didn’t slow. They blew past her in the other direction: two patrol cars and an unmarked unit she swore was Beckett’s. They were moving fast-maybe eighty on the narrow road-and she knew they were going for Adrian. At speed like that there had to be a reason, but stopping or turning was not an option. Nothing mattered but the lawyer.

Reaching back, she found his hand. “Hang on, Faircloth.”

But no answer came.

She flew through town and hit the hospital parking lot at speed, the slick tires squealing as she bumped over the curb and rocked to a stop at the emergency-room door. Suddenly, she was inside and yelling for help. A doctor materialized.

“Outside. I think he’s dying.”

The doctor called for a stretcher, and at the car they lifted him. “Tell me what happened.”

“Trauma of some kind. I’m not sure.”

“Name and age.”

“Faircloth Jones. Eighty-nine, I think.” Doors slid open. The gurney clattered as they rolled him inside. “I don’t know his next of kin or emergency contact.”

“Any allergies? Medications?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I need to know more about what happened.”

The doctor was confident and sure, Elizabeth the opposite. “I think he was tortured.”

“Tortured? How?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

The physician scribbled a note as the stretcher rolled. “And, you are?”

“Nobody.” She stopped at a second set of sliding doors. “I’m nobody.”

He didn’t argue. There was too much to do, too many ways a man that age could die. “Room four!” he yelled.

Elizabeth watched them go.

When she returned to her car, she slipped behind the wheel and felt how the nurses stared after her. The doctor may not have recognized her, but others did. Would this make the papers, too? Angel of death. Tortured lawyer. For an instant she cared, but only for that instant. She got out of the car and walked back inside, approaching the first nurse at the first counter. “I need a phone.”

The nurse pointed, terrified.

Elizabeth crossed the gleaming floor and lifted the courtesy phone from its cradle. Her first instinct was to call Beckett, but he was at Adrian’s farm-she knew it. Instead, she called James Randolph.

“James, it’s Liz.” She eyed the nurse, the security guard, who looked just as nervous. “Tell me what’s happening. Tell me everything.”

James Randolph had never been shy or slow. The phone call took less than a minute, so that when Elizabeth left for Brambleberry Road, she knew everything Randolph did about the grim, dark underbelly of her father’s church. It turned the world upside down.

New victims linked in death.

More bodies in the place she’d learned to pray.

She saw it as if she were there, but Randolph’s final words haunted her more deeply.

The whole world’s looking for him, Liz.

Every fuckin’ body.

He was talking about Adrian, and why not? Fresh bodies on the altar. Nine more under the church. Elizabeth had to ask herself again how much she trusted him. She said it was an easy question-that he was still the same man and that nothing real had changed. But she saw Preston’s face when she closed her eyes and wondered if, even once, he’d begged for mercy.

Every fuckin’ body.

Elizabeth turned onto Brambleberry Road and checked the pistol on the seat beside her. It was not the Glock she preferred, but when she pulled behind the old gas station and got out of the car, the gun went with her. She told herself it was smart, and only reasonable; yet the safety moved under her thumb. It was the silence and the darkness, the still trees and the scrub and the gray car bleeding into night as it sat under a tree at the back of the lot. The place had been old when she was a kid and was ancient now, a dirty cube on an empty road, a scratch mark that stank of chemicals and rust and rotting wood. Elizabeth understood why Adrian chose it, but thought if it came to dying, the old gas station was as good as any place she’d ever seen. Maybe it would open in the morning, and maybe not. Maybe a body could lie beside it forever, seasons rolling one across the other until the old bones and concrete looked like a single patch of broken pavement. That’s exactly how the place felt. As if bad things could happen here. As if they probably would.

“Adrian?”

She stepped over shattered glass and cinder block to where a sliver of light spilled through a crack at one of the rusted doors. Up close, she saw a pry bar and twisted metal. The lock was broken.

“Hello?”

No one answered, but she heard water running beyond the door. Opening it, she saw a single bulb above a grimy sink and a metal mirror. Adrian stood over the smudged porcelain, washing his hands in water that ran red. His knuckles were swollen and split, and Elizabeth felt her stomach turn as he pulled a bit of tooth from beneath the skin and dropped it in the sink.

“It’s just what prison does. It’s not who I am.”

She watched him work more soap into the cuts and tried to put herself in his shoes. How would she fight if every fight were to the death? “Crybaby didn’t deserve what happened to him,” she said.

“I know.”

“Could you have stopped it?”

“You don’t think I tried?” He was looking at her in the mirror, his face blurred in the filthy metal. “Is he alive?”

“He was alive when I left him.” Adrian looked away, and she thought she saw something soft. A blink, maybe. A flicker. “What did they want with you? Those guards?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“It’s personal.”

“And if Crybaby dies? Is that personal, too?”

He straightened and turned, and Elizabeth felt the first real fear. The eyes were so brown they were black, so deep they could be empty. “Are you going to shoot me?”

Elizabeth looked at the gun, forgotten in her hand. It was pointed at his chest, her finger not on the trigger, but close. She tucked it away. “No, I’m not going to shoot you.”

“May I be alone, then?”

Elizabeth thought about it, then gave him what he wanted. She would help him or not-she didn’t really know. But this was not the time to worry or plan. Crybaby was dying or dead, and as much as she wanted to know Adrian’s heart, what she really wanted was to breathe and be alone and grieve for the places of childhood. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

“Thank you.”

She eased the door closed but stopped at the end, watching through the crack as Adrian stared long in the mirror, then soaped his hands again, the water running red and pink and then clear. When it was done, he spread fingers on the sink and lowered his head until it was perfectly still. Bent as he was, he looked different yet the same, violent and held together and still somehow lovely. It was a foolish word-lovely-but that, too, came from childhood so she gave it a moment. He was lovely and undone, every tortured inch a mystery. Like the church, she thought, or Crybaby’s heart or the souls of wounded children. But childhood was not all good, nor were its lessons. Good came with the bad, as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure; everyone had secrets.

What were Adrian’s secrets?

How bad were they?

She watched a moment more, but there was no insight in the filthy room with the metal mirror and the dim, greenish light. Maybe he’d killed two men in the drive of his old farm, just shot them dead and left them there. Maybe he was a good man, and maybe not.

Elizabeth lingered, hoping for some kind of sign.

She left when he started crying.

When the door opened again, Elizabeth was beside the shuttered pumps in front of the old station, watching taillights fade a mile down the road. “Are you okay?”

Another car appeared in the distance, and Adrian shrugged.

She watched the lights swell and spill across his face. “You need to leave,” she said. “Leave town. Leave the county.”

“Because of what just happened?”

“That’s part of it. There’s more.”

“What do you mean?”

She told him about the discovery of another body on the altar, and of the graves beneath the church. It took some time. He struggled with it. So did she.

“They’re looking for you,” she said. “That’s why they went to the farm, to arrest you if they could.”

He used a thumb to massage one knuckle, then another, did the same with the other hand. “How old are the graves?”

“Nobody knows yet, but it’s the big question.”

“And the one on the altar?”

“Lauren Lester. I met her once. She was nice.”

“The name means nothing to me.” Adrian scrubbed both palms across his face. He felt numb and cold and disconnected. Two women murdered since his release. Nine more bodies found beneath the church. “This can’t be happening.”

“It is.”

“But why? Why now?”

Elizabeth waited for him to speak of conspiracy and the beer can, and how maybe this was part of some elaborate setup. To her relief, he said nothing. This was too big for that. There were too many bodies. “What about the guards?”

“Do you think I killed them?”

“I think you’re troubled.”

Adrian smiled because troubled seemed such a small word. “I didn’t kill them.”

“Should I take your word?”

She was small on the roadside, unflinching in the way any good cop should be. Adrian walked to the car and opened the trunk. Olivet was inside.

“Why did you bring him here?”

He dragged the guard out; dropped him on the tarmac. Elizabeth was alarmed, but Adrian was unswayed. He pulled the weapon from his waistband, sank into a crouch, and watched Olivet stare at the revolver as if to read the future. Adrian understood that, too, that fascination.

“I wanted to kill him,” Adrian said.

“But you didn’t.”

He saw her pistol from the corner of his eye and smiled because she’d come so far from the frightened girl she’d once been. The gun was unholstered, but low and steady. She was steady.

“Answer a question,” he said.

“If you give me the gun.”

“The men who died in the basement. Did they not deserve to die?”

“They did.”

“Do you feel regret?”

“No.”

“And if I told you this was no different?” He put the gun against Olivet’s chest and saw Elizabeth’s rise beside him.

“I can’t let you kill him.”

“Would you shoot me to save this man?”

“Let’s not find out.”

Adrian studied Olivet’s face, the fear and bruising and the sunken eyes. It wasn’t the daughter that saved him at the farm. It wasn’t blue lights or sirens. Adrian could have killed him and gotten away. Even now his finger felt the curve of the trigger. There was a reason though, and it still mattered.

“If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead already.”

Adrian lowered the hammer and placed the revolver on the ground. Elizabeth stooped to retrieve it, but he kept his attention on Olivet, leaning close until their faces were inches apart. “I want you to give the warden a message.”

“Yes.” Olivet tried to swallow, but choked. “Anything.”

“You tell the warden you’re alive because of Eli Lawrence, and that it won’t be like this the next time. Tell him if I see him, I’ll make it personal. I’ll make it like it was for me.” The guard nodded, but Adrian wasn’t finished. “Daughter or not, the same thing goes for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes. God, yes.”

Adrian stood and studied Liz’s posture, her face. Her fingers were still white on the pistol grip, but he could live with that. What mattered was that she was there at all, that she’d come back when she didn’t have to, and that she’d exercised restraint where no other cop would have. It was a small thing in a large world, but in the dim light before the old station Adrian felt less alone than he had in a long time, not at peace but not destroyed, either. He wanted Liz to understand that, to know she meant something to him and that it wasn’t something small. “You have questions,” he said. “I’m not sure I can tell you everything, but I’ll try.”

“That would be nice.”

“Will you come with me?”

“What?”

“You said it yourself. I have to leave this place.”

“Where would we go?”

“It’s a secret,” he told her, and Liz looked down the darkened road. Secrets were dangerous; both of them understood that. But he could tell that she was hurting, and that her life, too, was at a crossroads. “Please,” he said; and she looked at him with those clear and telling eyes. “I’m tired of being alone.”

They took Elizabeth’s car because cops had found Preston, and the gray car would by now be flagged. Adrian directed her to a road that went east, and they rolled through the night in silence, small towns sliding past, the emptiness between them black and flat and whiskered with pine. “Tell me I’m not crazy,” Elizabeth said, once.

“Maybe the good kind,” he said, and that seemed to fit. She was alone with the man who’d saved her life. He was wanted for murder, and wind was in her hair and nothing else mattered. That was crazy, but she thought it needed to be. Everything else she loved was beyond her help. Channing and Gideon and Crybaby. They’d face prison or heal or die, and Elizabeth could affect none of it. Circumstance had stripped that power from her and left her here with this man, in this place of darkness and speed and screaming wind. She could touch the moment and the man beside her, and that was it. Her own wants were strange to her. Was she a cop or a fugitive, a victim or some peculiar, new thing?

What about the feelings in her chest?

She risked a glance, but Adrian’s eyes were closed, his face tilted up so wind lifted his hair and streamed it backward. She felt a moment’s connection; and that was the thing, she decided, the one thing she knew for sure. Adrian had a story, and she was going to hear it, to know what and why and if anything remained of what she’d once thought to love.

“Tell me the story.”

“When we’re not moving,” he said. “Once we’re still.”

“Okay.” She frowned and felt the road through the wheel, the hum of rubber, and the movement of old springs. “Then tell me one true thing.”

“Just the one?” Humor rose in his eyes, a flash quickly gone.

“It’ll do for now.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I’m happy that you came.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s the truth.”

She let him have the moment and the silence that followed. It was his game, and she’d agreed to play. Tomorrow, after all, was time enough for reason. Not to say they didn’t play things smart. They stayed off the main roads and watched for cops, passing like ghosts through one small town and then another. After a final, long stretch of empty road, he said, “This’ll do.”

He meant a low-rent motel, lit up in the night ahead. Elizabeth slowed the car, then turned into the lot and drove past a dozen old cars brushed with road dust and red neon. The motel was low and long, with an empty, concrete pool and lime stains seeping from the mortar. “What town is this?”

“Does it matter?”

They were on the edge of something small, but there were a hundred towns like that in the coastal plains, some of them wealthy, most of them poor. This felt like the latter. “Get us two rooms.” Elizabeth parked in front of the office, dug some bills from her purse, and handed them over. “Try for something in the back, preferably at the far end. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Adrian took the money but didn’t move. Pale blue doors stretched off to the left. Ten feet away, an ice machine rumbled and clanked. “Where are you going?”

“Do you trust me?”

He looked at the motel, frowned.

“Twenty minutes,” she said, and waited until he got out of the car. When he was gone, she drove into town and found what she expected to find: silent streets and shuttered buildings, small men passing bottles in brown paper bags. There were no restaurants, so she bought beer and food at a convenience store that smelled of fried chicken and sweet tobacco. When she took change from the woman behind the counter, Elizabeth asked, “What town is this?” The woman named the town, and Elizabeth visualized a map in her head. Halfway to the coast. A lot of empty space and skinny roads. The name sounded right. “What’s here?”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. A college? Industry? When people think of this place what comes to mind?”

“Hell if I know.” The woman used her teeth to draw a cigarillo from the box. “Not much around here but poor people and swamp.”

When Elizabeth returned to the motel, she entered the lobby and inquired about room numbers from the old man working the desk.

“You mean the scarred fella?”

“Yes.”

He looked her up and down, then shrugged as if he’d seen it all. “Nineteen and twenty. Left side around the back.”

“May I use your phone?”

“I got phones in the rooms.”

“I’d rather call from here.”

“Long distance?”

“Maybe.”

A mean glint rose in his eyes, so she put $10 on the counter and watched the bills disappear.

“Ten dollars buys five minutes.” He pushed a rotary phone across the counter and shuffled into a back room.

Elizabeth dialed a number from memory and got the hospital switchboard. “I’d like to inquire about a patient.”

“Are you family?”

Elizabeth played the police card, offering her name and badge number, and telling the woman what she wanted. “Mr. Jones is in ICU. Just a moment.”

The phone clicked, and an ICU nurse answered Elizabeth’s questions. Faircloth was alive, but critical. “A stroke,” she said. “A bad one.”

“Jesus. Faircloth.” Elizabeth pinched her eyes. “When will you know if he’s okay?”

“I’m sorry. Who are you again?”

“A friend. A good one.”

“Well, we won’t know anything until tomorrow, at least. Even then, it’s more likely to be bad news than good. Is there anything else I can tell you?”

Elizabeth hesitated because she was hurting for Faircloth, and because the next part was slippery.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Do you know anything about a man found beaten on the roadside north of town? Early forties. Thickset. Uniformed officers would have called it in or transported him directly.”

“Oh, yeah. Everyone’s talking about that.”

“What are they saying?”

The nurse told her, and Elizabeth may or may not have said good-bye. She hung up the phone, walked into the night, and sat for long minutes in the car. Crybaby was still alive-the best possible news-but William Preston was not. He spent an hour in surgery, then died on the table, beaten to death, the nurse said, by an as-yet-unidentified person.

But, that was coming.

Elizabeth turned the key and felt a hot wind on her neck.

When Olivet told his story that was definitely coming.

Adrian sat on the edge of the bed with his back straight. He was worried, but not about normal things. He was going to lose her, Elizabeth, who, other than Crybaby Jones, was the only person alive who’d kept faith in him during the trial. He’d find her face first thing in the morning, front row as they led him in, shackled. He’d look for her, too, at day’s end. A final glimpse before they took him away. A nod that said, Yes, I believe you did not kill her.

But, that was a long time ago, and there were other issues, now. Olivet. Preston. He’d seen the way she looked at him, his bloody hands. She wanted him to be the same. He wasn’t.

“What do I do?”

He was talking to himself, the room, the ghost of Eli Lawrence. Nobody answered, so he waited for the sound of her car beyond the glass, and only as it came did Eli finally speak.

Stand tall, boy.

Adrian closed his eyes, but felt the room around him. “She saw what I did.”

So?

“You saw how she looked at me.”

You’re only what prison made you. You already told her that.

“And if she doesn’t believe?”

Convince her.

“How?”

Eli didn’t answer, but Adrian knew what he would say.

Tell her the truth, son.

If she’s all you have left, then tell her everything.

Adrian thought that made sense but had no idea how to do it. She’d think him delusional or untruthful or both. It was all so jumbled and fragmented: the things that were real, the things imagined. How could she possibly believe that, for years, his waking hours had been worse than the worst nightmare? She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

A minute later, she knocked on the door.

“You came back.” He smiled, trying for a joke as he stepped aside to let her in.

She put a bag on the dresser, and bottles clanked. Something was different. She was stiff, unyielding.

“What?”

“Officer Preston is dead.”

“Are you certain?”

“He died in surgery.”

Adrian tried to get his head around that. The beating had been about Crybaby and past hurts and blind rage. He’d not meant to kill the man, but he wasn’t sad about it, either. “Is this where you arrest me?”

“If that was the case, I wouldn’t be here alone.”

“Then, what?”

“Give me your hands.”

She stepped closer and took his hands. The skin was split, but the bleeding had stopped. She held the crooked fingers, looked at the swollen knuckles, the stippled nails.

“About Preston-”

Elizabeth shook her head, stopping him. “Take off your shirt.”

He looked down, ashamed.

“It’s okay. Go ahead.” She released his hands, and his fingers were clumsy on the buttons. Elizabeth kept her eyes on his face, and when the shirt came off, she guided him to the lamp. “It’s okay,” she said again; but he flinched when she touched the first scar, tracing its length, and then touching a second. “So many.”

“Yes.”

He knew what she’d find if she took the time to count: twenty-seven on his chest and stomach, and untold more on his back and legs. When she put her hands on his hips, he said, “Please, don’t.” But, she gentled him like a child, then turned his back to the light and traced a scar that ran from left shoulder blade to right hip. “Elizabeth-”

“Be still.”

She didn’t rush. Her fingers followed one scar, then another, a journey that twisted across his back and left him naked in his soul. How long since he’d been touched without pain in its wake? How long since the simplest kindness?

“All right, Adrian.” She touched him a final time, both palms cool and flat on his skin. “You can put it back on.”

He slipped into the shirt, small tremors still moving in the muscles of his back.

“You want to tell me about it?” She meant the scars, so he turned away, not just because she’d doubt the story, but because that’s what prison had taught him. Don’t rat. Don’t trust. Keep your shit together. Elizabeth seemed to understand, sitting on a narrow chair and leaning forward, her eyes intent, but still soft. “Your scars didn’t come from fights in the yard.”

She didn’t make it a question.

He sat on the bed, so close their knees almost touched.

“Shanks are stabbing weapons. Most of those scars come from long cuts with a thin blade. Did Officer Preston do it?”

“Some of it.”

“And the warden.”

Again, it wasn’t a question; and he shied from the directness of her stare. He didn’t talk about the warden. That was primal. Even the guards spoke his name in a whisper.

“The warden tortured you.”

“How do you know that?”

“His initials are carved into your back in three different places.” She watched his face. He kept his eyes down, but felt the sudden flush. “You didn’t know that, did you?” Adrian’s head moved, and Elizabeth leaned so close he felt her breath. “What did they want from you, Adrian?”

“They?”

“The warden. The doctor. The two guards I know about. They tortured you. What did they want?”

Adrian’s head was spinning. She was so close. The smell of her hair and skin. She was the only person since Eli to ever care, and Eli had been dead for eight years. It was making him dizzy. The truth. A woman. “How do you know these things?”

“You have ligature marks on both wrists. They’re faint, but clear enough to someone who knows what they look like. Most of the wounds were stitched, which means the doctor was in on it. Otherwise, you’d have gotten word out through the infirmary. A phone call. A message. Whatever they wanted, they didn’t want you talking to anybody else.” Elizabeth took his right hand in both of hers. “How many times were your fingers broken?”

“I can’t talk about this.”

“That’s scar tissue under your nails, those white lines.” She touched a nail, and her hands were gentle. “I won’t take you back,” she said. “If you tell me your secrets, I’ll keep them.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your friend. And, because there are larger things happening here. The warden. The guards. Whatever else is going on in that godforsaken prison. That doesn’t mean others aren’t looking for you-state police, FBI even. Killing a prison guard is like killing a cop. It’ll be worse even than before. You can’t go back. Not ever. You know that, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me what they did?”

“Don’t the scars tell you enough?”

“Can you tell me what they want?”

“No.” He shook his head and met her gaze at last. “I need to show you.”