“There’s a long line of men who can’t wait to prove themselves against him, and that, I’m afraid, is not something we can have. So, since you’re the only person he speaks to, I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page.”
“We don’t exactly swap recipes, sir. I barely know the man.”
“Still,” the deputy warden said carefully, “is there anything I should know?”
Not a benign principal—more a science teacher about to dissect a frog.
“John Cameron was not apprehended, Mr. Thomas,” Madison said. “He wasn’t caught. He’s here because he chooses to be. As long as everybody remembers that, you shouldn’t have any problem.”
“Why would he choose imprisonment?”
“Because he wouldn’t leave while Nathan Quinn was fighting for his life.”
“Maybe you overestimate his personal involvement in the situation and underestimate the security systems of this institution. This is not a bed-and-breakfast in the San Juan Islands.”
“You might want to ask Harry Salinger about how ‘personally involved’ Cameron felt when Salinger murdered James Sinclair and his family. As for the security systems here, nothing would make me happier than knowing they’re as good as you say they are.”
They regarded each other for one long moment, and Madison saw a man with graying sandy hair and a desk bare of any family photos, a man trying to keep things running in a place where angry, caged men might do anything to anyone for any reason.
“Look,” she said. “For what it’s worth, John Cameron doesn’t feel he has anything to prove to anybody. He’s not vain; he’s not going to go out of his way to make trouble. But if someone—if anyone—stands between him and whatever he wants, he will not be stopped, not without extreme consequences for both sides.”
“What if he changes his mind about staying?”
Madison stood up to leave. “We can only hope that he doesn’t.”
Chapter 3
The first time Madison had met John Cameron, she had followed him into a dark wood and waited, unarmed, just to speak with him. The second time, he had broken into her home, and she hadn’t even known he was there. The third time, they had chased Harry Salinger, the man who had killed his friend and kidnapped her godson, through the Hoh River forest.
If John Cameron was out in the world, she would be one of the people who would hunt him down. If she was the one between Cameron and whatever it was he wanted, she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to remove the obstacle. If there were words for that kind of acquaintance, Madison didn’t know them.
As always, they met in a separate cell away from the bustle of the visiting room and the brazen curiosity of inmates and strangers. Madison had checked her shield and her piece at reception, the female guard assessing her as one would an explosive device.
She had been patted down and cleared and now stood in a bare room made of metal bars inside a larger room; a scratched table was bolted to the floor, and two chairs made in a prison workshop somewhere in the fifties completed the setup.
The door opened, and two armed guards came in, escorting a tall man in orange overalls. The orange meant he was waiting for trial and had been denied bail; it meant a crime of violence.
Madison turned to face him.
His file told her that he was thirty-seven years old, six years older than she, and that the four scars that crossed and glistened on the back of his right hand were a grim reminder of hours spent tormented and tied to a tree with James Sinclair and David Quinn when he was twelve. The numbers he’d racked up in turn were unforgiving: five men dead on board the Nostromo, three drug dealers slaughtered in LA, one dealer in Seattle. Nine alleged murders: not one of them had ever come anywhere near resulting in official charges against John Cameron.
His file gave details and dates and times of death, but it couldn’t possible give a sense of what it was like to stand in the same room as this man. The fact that they were inside a jail was incidental. He was a predator, and when his amber eyes met hers, she felt the familiar chill in the pit of her stomach.
“Detective.”
“Mr. Cameron.”
He wasn’t shackled. The two guards simply withdrew and locked the barred door of the cell with the sound of metal scraping against metal. Madison could see them in the low light, flanking the exit, their weapons—and their desire to be anywhere else—in plain sight.
His dark hair had been cut jail short, but aside from that she couldn’t see any discernible changes. He looked as if he had just strolled in, as if he could just as easily stroll out. Only one thing was different, she realized—not that anyone else would notice: she had seen Cameron with Nathan Quinn, and there was an ember of humanity there, of warmth. This Cameron was completely shut down; the man who had drunk coffee at her grandmother’s table had packed up and gone.