Page 104 of The Chain House

“And you watched over me?”

“Yes,” he said. “Me and Annie.” He laughed, wiped his eyes. “The Raven and Yellow. But Jules, with how easily he fooled her, how easily he seduced her … she was the one who … gave him the idea.”

“For what?”

“To form the cult,” he said. “She was the first member.”

“But you joined too,” Sam said, sounding confused and disbelieving.

“I was weak, son. Lost. So was Annie. We didn’t see it at the time, nobody does when they’re in one, but over time our eyes were opened, to all of it.”

“And you brought it all down.”

“Yes, we did.”

“I don’t think he’s ever forgiven you.”

“Just as I’ll never forgive him, Sam.”

They were silent for a beat.

“Dad … he called you the Kentucky Cannibal. Is it true?”

“No,” Trevor said. “No … just something they called me. A cruel joke, nothing more.”

“Okay,” Sam said, still sounding confused, and so suddenly small. “I gotta go.”

The call ended.

Lizzie’s phone had entered Twisted Tree and was heading farther east toward Ransom, Kentucky. Fitting, Trevor thought, if that’s where they were heading.

Toward Ransom.

CHAPTER56

“I DON’T EVEN KNOW if hell is the right place for you,” Agent Givens said.

And Batise, freshly scrubbed and shaved and now wearing the all-white uniform he would die in, stood in the middle of the warden’s office, acting as if hadn’t heard a word the FBI agent had said, before finally answering, “I had nothing to do with that house blowing up.”

“Just as you had nothing to do with the nine murders inside the Hawthorne mansion twenty years ago.”

“My thoughts and prayers—”

“Fuck your thoughts and prayers.” Agent Givens took a deep breath, stared at Batise, who had not taken his eyes off the window overlooking the yard since his arrival back into the office. “You could have stopped it.”

“But I didn’t.”

“No, you fucking didn’t. Because you don’t wish to show all your cards, you worthless piece of shit.” He pointed out the window toward the yard where the armed guards had joined the news crew down there. “And you’ve got twenty minutes to live.”

“Tick-tock, tick-tock …” Batise smiled, looked worriedly at Sam. “What is it, Sam Harper? What is it that has changed in you since we last spoke? Huh? You can no longer look at me? Your own flesh and blood?”

Sam thought of his conversations with Jennifer, and his dad, and refused to fall back under the man’s spell.

Agent Givens must have sensed Sam’s discomfort, because he steered Batise in another direction by showing him the first book in the Mallard Malone series.

“We think Minks has Emily Hawthorne as well, and that she is still alive.” Agent Givens showed Batise the words Governor Hawthorne had written down minutes earlier. “They had a secret system of communicating as kids.” He tapped the paper. “Look.” Batise looked and appeared to have read the words, but Givens read them aloud anyway: “I am alive please help me.”

“That means nothing to me.”