“Just what the world needs. Another Harry McGlade.”
“Maybe you can babysit sometime. Harry Junior should get to know his Auntie Jackie.”
Now I made the WTF face. “Don’t call me Auntie Jackie.”
“You know, I just read that if your baby doesn’t stop crying, she’s never too young to get started on Ritalin.”
“And stop giving me parenting advice. In fact, can you stop talking altogether? Please?”
“Okay, but I get to say one more baby tip.”
I sighed. “Fine.”
“You should never raise your voice at your child. It means you’ve lost control.”
I considered it. “That’s actually pretty good, McGlade.”
“Thanks. And make sure to drill a few holes in her Punishment Box, so she can breathe a little bit.”
I knew McGlade was joking. Probably. Hopefully. And thankfully, he kept his word and was mostly quiet for a while, except for his annoying habit of humming old Neil Diamond tunes.
“You need to pee-pee?” McGlade finally broke the semi-silence.
“What?”
“Piss. Urinate. Drain the clam. I thought you crazy preggos had to pee-pee every five minutes.”
“I’m fine, and though I’m touched by your interest in my bathroom habits, why are you asking?”
“There’s a truck stop coming up.”
I tried to suppress a shudder, but it came anyway. “I hate truck stops.”
McGlade glanced at me and then slowly nodded. “Oh, yeah, I remember. Some assholes attacked you at a truck stop a while back.”
My mind involuntarily conjured up an image of a serial killer named Donaldson, his corpulent face leering at me.
“Yeah, two of them almost killed me.”
“What happened to those guys?”
“One of them’s in jail. The other ran into a bigger badass than he was.”
That run-in had happened shortly after my encounter with Donaldson. Supposedly, he’d been tortured for hours and then burned. It was a miracle he’d survived, though Donaldson probably didn’t consider it miraculous in the least.
“Where is he now?” McGlade asked.
“Last I heard, in an institution, in terrible pain, under constant medical care.”
Harry said, “Sounds like he got what he deserved. What was his name?”
“Donaldson.”
Harry snapped his fingers on his good hand. “I heard about that guy. He was hanging out with some young chick. They were both killing hitchhikers or some crazy shit.”
“Can we not talk about this? You promised not to talk about anything.”
“Someone tied them up and went at them with antique farm implements.”
“McGlade…”
“Didn’t Donaldson have a bunch of pictures in his car of people he’d killed?”
“McGlade! Enough!”
He glanced at me, saw how serious I was.
“Jesus, Jackie. What’s the problem?”
“Pregnancy isn’t easy, McGlade. It’s especially difficult when you’re staring over your shoulder the entire time, waiting for some psycho to kill both you and your baby. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be afraid all the time?”
McGlade didn’t answer. I hoped that had finally shut him up.
But after a few miles of silence, I began to feel shitty for snapping at him. Was that who I’d become? A gigantic bitch who treated the people who cared about her like trash?
“I understand fear,” McGlade said, jolting me out of my self-pity party.
I stared at him. “I know.”
“Do you?” He briefly met my eyes. “You’ve been through the wringer, Jack. No doubt. No one ever said you had it easy. But how much do you know about what Alex did to me?”
Alex Kork was another psycho from the past I didn’t want to think about. But she’d hurt McGlade as much as me. Maybe even worse.
“I remember being tied to that chair, helpless. Phin ever tell you about it?” McGlade asked.
“Not in detail.” Phin had been there as well. They’d been bound, back to back, at Alex’s mercy. And Alex had no mercy.
“She was cutting my fingers off,” McGlade said, holding up his mechanical hand. “Stopping the bleeding with a blowtorch. Lemme tell you—the pain was unimaginable. But you know what was worse than the pain? The loss of all hope. Knowing I was helpless, that it wasn’t going to end. That was worse. I’d take a bullet for that man of yours. Phin is the only thing that kept me sane while it was happening. And then you came in, saved my ass. I owe you both. And I’m sorry I piss you off all the time. You’re family to me, you know.”
Ah, hell. I hated Harry when he got real. It made me feel even worse about myself.
“Got any more of those parenting tips?” I managed to say, trying to break the maudlin mood.
“Just one. Love your kid. Love her as hard as you can. Because you don’t have forever. You only have a short time.” He frowned. “It’s always too short a time.”
I let that sink in. Then said, “Christ, McGlade. That’s almost profound.”
“Yeah. And also, teach her how to suppress the gag reflex. That’s the single most important trait in chicks.”
I felt a headache coming on. “You can go back to shutting up now.”
The GPS piped in to inform us that our exit was coming up. McGlade turned off the highway, and soon we were cruising through a residential area. Townhomes and cul-de-sacs. The neighborhood wasn’t affluent, but it had a homey Mayberry, USA, vibe going on. It was nice to see trees again after an hour of flat, barren plains.
We were nearing the residence of Violet King, and I was thinking about what I was going to say to her when McGlade broke my concentration.
“Promise not to freak out?” he asked.
I didn’t like his tone, and it made me freak out a little. “What?”
“I’ve been keeping a close eye on the rearview mirror, for obvious reasons, and the same beat-up Monte Carlo has been behind us since we left Chicago.”
March 28, Three Days Earlier
The pain was constant.
Unrelenting.
It didn’t even let up during sleep—what little sleep he could get between nightmares.
That’s how it had been for years.
He was hooked on narcotics. Always wore two codeine patches on the ruins that were his legs. Thrice-daily Vicodin and Norco. Ativan to help him sleep. His lungs were scarred, making each labored breath a wet, raspy wheeze. He had six fingers left, and only four of them still worked properly.
Sometimes, it got so bad he couldn’t stop trembling, shaking for hours on end. If he’d been the type of man to believe in karma, or justice, or some higher power that dished out retribution, he might have drawn the obvious conclusion and realized this was what he deserved.
That’s what the judge, and the jury of twelve, had said while sentencing him to this hellhole.
Him and his partner.
Partner. What a joke.
A joke that became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Though he’d killed many, and was widely known as a monster, the extent and permanence of his debilitating injuries deemed him no longer a threat to society, so this medical facility wasn’t even maximum security. Sometimes, they forgot to lock the door to his room at night. One of his doctors even had the balls to tell the court that there was zero concern about escape, because that would mean being away from the pain meds.
The court agreed. Their mistake. One they’d pay dearly for.
Groaning, he shuffled down the hospital hallway, supporting himself with the rolling IV stand, his backless gown exposing the latticework of scars covering him from neck to heels. Nurses didn’t even bother looking at him. To them, he was as harmless as a toothless puppy. Even with full doses of various medications swirling through his system, walking was agony, each step an electric jolt of pain, firing the nerve endings he still had left—an unremitting reminder of the horror he had endured.