“He’s dead.”
“He’s … son of bitch. Do we still take him with us?”
Quinn looked back through the door at the body. “No. We can’t ri—”
He stopped himself.
Glancing to his right, he could see the two other cell doors. Numbers two and three.
He approached the door to cell number two.
“What are you doing?” Nate asked.
Quinn held up a hand to silence him, then pulled out his gun again. Carefully he released the door’s latch and pushed it open. The only light inside was that which spilled in from the hallway, but it was enough for him to see the room was empty.
He moved over to cell three.
“Pull out your flashlight,” he said to Nate.
He waited until his apprentice had the light on, then he repeated what he had done with the previous door.
Only, unlike cell number two, there was someone there.
CHAPTER
32
MARION BARELY REGISTERED THE HALLWAY DOOR opening for the third time. She’d moved into the corner farthest from the door, and had curled against herself. If anyone was talking, she didn’t hear. She just rocked back and forth, her mind searching for someplace happy, something to help her forget.
Ice skating with her family as a girl. The school trip she’d taken to New York when she was in high school. Kissing Reynard Moreau in an empty math classroom. He had been more nervous than she. She could remember feeling him shake even as his lips touched hers.
But she couldn’t hold on to any of the memories for long before they slipped into an image of Iris, eyes filling with water, lower lip quavering, her whole body emanating fear and confusion.
Marion rocked harder, trying to force her mind away from any thoughts of the child. But when they did, what replaced them were the faces of her mother and father and her sister, all staring at her with lifeless eyes.
She was jerked into the present by the sound of the latch to her door moving.
They’d come for her. Finally, they’d come.
It was her turn now.
She stared at the door as it swung open. She saw the shadow of a man, a gun at his side.
When the beam of a flashlight moved across her face, she started to scream.
“Hey, hey,” a male voice said. “It’s all right. Don’t yell. It’s okay.”
But she knew it wasn’t okay. She’d seen the gun in his hand. And though her eyes were now shut tight, she could feel him approach her.
Her scream turned into a sob, and tears began pouring down her cheeks.
“It’s all right,” he repeated, much closer now.
Why did he keep saying that?
“Nate, move the light out of her eyes.”
The glow on her lids lessened, but didn’t go completely away.
“It’s okay,” the man said. “We’re here to help you. Take a breath. Relax.”
Despite herself, she did what he said. After a moment, she allowed her eyelids to part.
The man was in front of her, a warm smile on his face. She almost smiled, too, then she realized who he was.
It was the man who chased her in Montreal.
The man who had tried to stop her in front of her parents’ house.
He wasn’t here to help her.
He
She started screaming again.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said.
“You tried to catch me,” she said. “At my parents’. You killed my parents!”
