The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(75)

Cameron’s feet hit the dirt hard as he sprinted and slowed down, sprinted and slowed down, his body reveling in the expense of energy.

Nathan’s reasoning would always follow the lawful path, Cameron reflected, while his own might just have to go right through that perimeter wall to get to the other side. In his loop, he passed the yard’s locked door, and in one smooth movement he took off the coat, dropped it to the ground, and kept running.

If he took another man’s life to get out of KCJC—which was more than likely to happen—he would never be able to stand in the same room as Nathan again. He would be a fugitive with his prints and his DNA in the system, and while none of that worried him unduly—most of his properties and assets had been set up under different identities—he would have to shed this name he carried and all of his life and past in Seattle, because it would be a felony for Nathan to merely speak on the phone with him and not report it to the authorities.

Cameron felt the scopes following his movements as if he could see them. He imagined those men standing in the murky observation decks in the middle of the night and wondered what he would have to do for them to take aim and shoot, how far up the chain-link fence they would let him reach before they stopped him.

He had no intention of behaving in such a crass manner, and yet there were unavoidable choices in his near future that would affect how he would live the rest of his life.

He saw the side door open and Miller step outside to take him back to his cell. That was the only thing that worked, ultimately: in a place like KCJC, the fastest way out was to let people unlock the door for you and then simply walk through.


“Show’s over for tonight, boys.” TD-1’s voice came through the headsets, and the other men laid down their weapons for a moment, stretched their sore limbs, and then resumed the watch. Below them, housed in the sprawling buildings, over a thousand men slept on narrow cots and dreamt their dreams.


Back in his cell, as his skin cooled down and he drifted into sleep, John Cameron thought he heard the trees that surrounded the prison shiver and murmur in the gloom. He might not have seen them behind the perimeter wall, but he knew they were there all the same.


Vincent Foley wrapped the blanket tightly around his slim shoulders. He had curled up under the bed and peeked every so often to check if a sliver of dawn was traveling across the walls.

The white day room of the Walters Institute was the only place that allowed him moments of brittle peace; he longed for the light that flooded in through the tall windows and hated the clouds that deprived him of his only protection.

He tried with all his might not to fall asleep again, because dreadful creatures infected his dreams—men who spent the night whispering and hollering in a pit dug deeply into the earth. He knew their faces, but their names had crumbled away over the years. And yet, their words were always the same, and although Vincent couldn’t tell anymore what they meant, in his dreams they trailed like claws over his skin, and during the day they were the rustle of the trees around the brick building.

Vincent saw the first light slide over his crayon drawings. As it reached them, they trembled and stilled, watching him and waiting for nightfall.





Chapter 34





Madison opened her eyes. There was enough light slipping in through the curtains that she knew it was early and little enough of it to tell her that sunshine would not be a part of her day. Her throat was still raw from the previous night, and she knew for a fact that she had drunk all the milk in the fridge. Cranberry juice would have to do.

In the kitchen, she put on the stovetop coffeemaker and drank the juice. Her fridge was beginning to look desolate. She brought the cup of coffee back into the living room, saw the map unfolded on the table, and remembered her thoughts from the previous night—the significance of the vic’s chair’s position, the message it sent to anyone who knew the truth.

She sank into the sofa and rested her feet on the low table, waiting for the caffeine to kick in and her brain to gear up and get going. Whatever direction her thoughts were heading in, they seemed to twist and turn and go back to Vincent Foley. She was sure he had been there on August 28; he had seen everything, and it was all rattling around in his ruined mind, beyond their reach.

Madison had met a good numbers of cons on and off the street, and she knew that men like Vincent, who would be vulnerable in any area of human interaction and field of work, were utterly exposed in a world where predators made the rules.

It was very doubtful that Vincent would have been entrusted with any information; he probably just turned up and did the job that was required of him, following Ronald and doing what he was told. And yet he might know something, anything, that might give them a little push in the right direction.