Page 19 of The Chain House

Trevor couldn’t read another page.

The book wasn’t bad; in fact, the entertainment level was top-notch and the writing solid, but something about the world building, just as Jennifer Daley had suggested, hit too close to home, and everything about the language—what novelists and agents and editors would call the voice—made his skin crawl. Because he knew that voice. Some hidden part of him knew that voice. At least a dozen different passages, he’d looked up from the book to see his arm hair standing on end.

Because he knew. Deep down, he knew who Mallard Malone was. Or might be.

But then again, maybe he didn’t. Not for sure. But he knew at least where Mallard Malone had come from. It’s the only thing that made sense, and if Jennifer Daley had sent him these books, it meant that deep down she knew something too.

No, he warned himself, don’t go there, Trevor.

There, meaning his past. Because his past wasn’t pretty. His past was a story best left buried—every tragic part of it—and only Annie, God rest her soul, knew it, and she’d taken that to her grave. But even Annie didn’t know all of it.

Trevor had been too ashamed to tell her all of it.

But if he were honest, Annie wasn’t the only person who knew his past.

There were at least two more people who knew, and one of them was set to die by lethal injection at midnight tomorrow night. And the world couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.

I can’t get rid of him fast enough, he thought, and that was the crux of the matter. Trevor hadn’t truly had a good night’s sleep since Sal Batise’s arrest, looking over his shoulder like he had been doing now for two decades. Even with the bastard in prison, in isolation, on death row. It didn’t matter.

Only when Sal Batise was in the ground would Trevor truly be free.

But would he?

Because Sal’s not the only one, he thought. Sal was a monster, but he wasn’t the worst. Not by far. He grabbed his wine glass and started to tip it back again before noticing he’d already finished it. He glanced at the Mallard Malone novel he’d tossed to the couch, and thought of the main character in it, the main character in every book in the series, Oliver Crown, and he felt sick with nauseating dread. Oliver Crown might be a fictional character, but he was based on somebody. No, in fact, he knew. If not just based on one person, Trevor thought now, Oliver Crown might just be the perfect blend of two. Of both of them. Both of his monsters.

A memory flashed at him without warning. Him, an adult, on his hands and knees, a strong hand clutching his hair, yanking his head back and laughing, one hand forcing his mouth open while the other held the handful of … of …

Trevor pinched his eyes closed to block the rest of the memory, but it had come on so fast and strong it had brought back with it a smell, a horrid memory of a stench, and he gagged, gagged again, and …

… no … no please no, he pleaded in the memory, his scalp on fire from how forcefully his hair was being pulled back, straining every tendon in his awkwardly arched neck … and the handful of horrifying mush crept closer to his forced open mouth, both of them laughing now, and the stench … and that fucker’s evil eyes gleaming down at him through the mask holes …

Trevor’s eyes flashed open. He fought rapid breaths, fought the panic attack, the first he’d had in years, in sixteen years, in fact, the last one occurring in the days after Annie’s death when he’d looked upon ten-year-old Sam sleeping in his bed and realized it was up to him and him alone to raise that boy now, and the pressure had come crashing down on him like a ton of bricks.

He considered calling Sam now to apologize for earlier.

He considered telling Sam that he had secrets, so many secrets no one would believe them, but with the weight of them now just under the surface, he felt like they were urgently pleading to come out.

One day when Sam was a teenager and he’d begun to grow his hair long, he’d said to Trevor, You know, Dad, I bet you’d look good with long hair. We should grow ours out together. It was a sweet thing to say, and Trevor had nervously laughed it off, hoping Sam would drop it, but he didn’t. Come on, Dad, Sam said, me and you. Let’s grow it out like rock stars.

And Trevor had overreacted so instantly he still occasionally, even years later, felt the emotional pain from it. I’m not growing my hair out, Sam, and that’s that, and he’d stormed from the room, silently crying about it later that night inside his locked bedroom.

But he couldn’t tell Sam he’d sworn to never let his hair grow out after that night on the Freedom Ranch. After that night he’d been on his hands and knees on the kitchen floor, with Minks’s strong hand gripping his hair so tightly his scalp felt like it was on fire and he’d later found it crusty around some of the follicles from having bled during the worst of it. He couldn’t tell Sam that. He couldn’t tell him he’d never grow his hair out long enough for someone to grab again, because of that.

So he’d overreacted then just like he’d overreacted today—because PTSD is real and when it comes it hits you like a truck, with little to no warning—but he’d only acted out of love, he thought.

And ultimately, out of fear.

Constant fear.

Trevor felt the urgent need to hear Sam’s voice, even if it was on voice mail. He dug around in his pockets, couldn’t remember where he’d left his phone. He’d been in such a zone reading that he didn’t even know what time it was. He was too buzzed to talk to Sam anyway. Maybe in the morning, after he slept this off. Sam had never seen him drunk, because it had happened only a few times in his life. Sam had rarely even seen him buzzed.

Because you don’t drink that much, Trevor.

You don’t fucking open a second bottle.

He leaned forward in his recliner and attempted to rub the alcohol buzz from his eyes, but that only made him dizzier when he opened them.

Dizzy and nauseous and woozy. He swallowed over the heavy lump in his throat, which was dry and felt thick and in need of another glass.