Audra Snow, Laura Morgan, even dead-eyed girls like Chloe Sears—they all wanted to be whatever it was Jeff had tucked away in his hands. They wanted to be that baby bird, that tiny woodland creature. They wanted Jeff Halcomb to be their everything, and in the end, that’s exactly what he had become.

Lucas pushed the photograph beneath his stack of papers, not wanting to look at it anymore. Why did I speak to Mark that way? He had to call him back to apologize. He grabbed his phone, but rather than calling Mark back, he found himself speed-dialing Lambert Correctional Facility long after visiting hours were over. When Lumpy Annie answered the line, Lucas nearly sighed with relief at the sound of her voice. At least she was familiar. Maybe, finally, he’d stumble into a bit of luck—by some miracle, on his last attempt, Lumpy Annie would say, Wow, gee, Mr. Graham, I sure am glad you called, because inmate number 881978 suddenly changed his mind about that visitation thing. You should come on down first thing in the morning and do that interview you’ve been harassing us about.

But from the tone of her recognition, he doubted that was the case.

“Oh, hi, Mr. Graham,” she said, no longer needing an introduction.

“Hi,” he said, embarrassed by the fact that this prison receptionist had become somewhat of a long-distance acquaintance. “Sorry, I just had to check one more time. You understand . . .”

Lumpy Annie remained quiet for a long moment, then exhaled a breath into the receiver. “Mr. Graham, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“He’s still not taking visitors,” Lucas said. “I guess that isn’t much of a surprise.”

“Not quite,” she said. “It’s a bit more serious than that.”

“How so?”

“Mr. Graham, the inmate . . .” She paused, backtracked. “Jeffrey Halcomb, he’s no longer with us.”

“He was transferred?” That didn’t make any sense. Halcomb had been at Lambert since his conviction. If there had been any plans of transferring him from one facility to another, Lucas would have known about it.

“I guess you can say that,” she said. “He’s dead, Mr. Graham.”

Lucas lost his breath.

“He killed himself in his cell earlier today. His body is with the medical examiner. So I guess you can stop calling here.”

A strange feeling roiled around in his guts, one that suggested far more empathy than he cared to feel for a brainwasher, a conspirator, a murderer. Halcomb was dead? How could that be? A man like him didn’t just simply end himself like . . . like Hillstone. Like Schwartz. Like January Moore. Like the lost and lonely of Pier Pointe, 1983.

“I don’t—” Understand. The final word was lost among the dimness of his study, cut off as his gaze shifted to the cross on his desk, the artifact he’d been fiddling with during his research, tapping against his blotter to an unheard tune. Schwartz. Lucas leaned back in his seat, repelled by the cross’s very presence, suddenly sure that Jeff had gone the same way his inmate neighbor had. Someone had left that cross for Lucas with Lumpy Annie. Someone had also smuggled one in just like it and passed it on to Schwartz. How did a man kill himself in a maximum-security cell? Someone had provided Jeff with a weapon . . . someone from the outside.

“. . . the cross,” he murmured into the phone.

“Mr. Graham?”

“He stabbed himself, didn’t he?” The words trickled out of him in a slow, wheezing leak, so quiet that, had the connection been bad, Lumpy Annie wouldn’t have had a chance to catch his question. But she had. He could tell she had by the momentary pause, as if she was considering whether telling him to check with the coroner for that information, or to finally throw a bone to the desperate bastard who kept calling the prison.

“No,” she finally said. “He poisoned himself. Arsenic, they think.”

A shudder shook him from the inside out.

I don’t even know where she’d havegotten such a pill, Maury said of January’s death.

Someone had given it to her.

Just like someone had done the same for Jeff.

Just like someone had passed on the cross, first to Schwartz, then to Lucas.

“Holy shit,” Lucas whispered. “The visitor . . .”

“Mr. Graham?”

“The visitor,” he repeated. “Check the visitor. The woman. It was her. It had to be.”

Lumpy Annie went silent on the other end of the line.

What have I gotten into?

Laughter sounded from beyond Lucas’s study door.

He blinked, his heart tripping over itself.

It was a pair of girls. They were laughing on the other side of the wall. Laughing at him.

Lucas dropped his phone onto his desk blotter, launched himself up and out of his chair, and rushed across the length of his study to yank open the door.

But rather than hearing more laughter, his mouth fell open at what he saw instead. Despite the darkness, he could make out the outlines of the living room furniture in the moonlight. An armchair was stacked on top of the couch. The coffee table was somehow balanced on top of the chair. Couch cushions were piled high on top of the table. It was an impossible Jenga puzzle defying gravity.

Something in his chest loosened. An involuntary gasp escaped his throat. Suddenly, he was remembering the upside-down family photograph in the living room, recalling Chloe Sears’s dead-eyed stare and doped-up smile flipped onto its head. There had been the girl in the orchard. Somehow, despite the security system, they had found their way inside and moved things around. The washed-up writer and his little girl were, in someone’s messed-up opinion, getting exactly what they deserved. Because who the hell moved into a house like this? Who chose to live in a place tainted with blood and death? Someone was fucking with him.

“Jeanie?!” His daughter’s name slid past his lips, and while he was trying to subdue his panic, his voice sounded startled, strained. He was unsure why he was calling for her. He didn’t want her to see what was going on in the living room, certain that if she set eyes on that physics-defying stack of furniture, she’d freak out.

He forced himself out of the study. Darted across the living room. Diverted his eyes from the furniture tower, as though looking at it for too long would reveal some sort of voodoo curse. Why did I speak to Mark that way? Scanning every dark corner as he bolted to the far wall of the room, he slapped his hand over the light switch.

The overhead lights refused to come on.

That was when Lucas began to genuinely panic.

Oh God, they’re still inside.

Somewhere close, they were watching his temperature rise. Holding their hands over their mouths. Grinning behind their palms. Statuesque in their stillness.

He took the stairs three at a time, nearly launching himself into Jeanie’s room. The door flew open. He struggled to catch it by the knob before it slammed against the opposite wall. He missed. Jeanie jumped with a start. In the cold laptop glow of her room, she shoved a piece of paper underneath her bed and leaped up.

44

VIVI HAD GOTTEN used to spending time by herself and she was starting to enjoy the solitude. If she wasn’t in front of her computer or on her phone, she was sitting in the shadows of her closet, staring at the printed-out photographs of her newfound idol. The small photo Echo had given her of Jeffrey Halcomb remained constantly at hand. Even his handwriting was compelling—sharp and dangerous, alluring. She imagined rock stars writing the way he did. The difference was that Jeff was better than any rock star. Those guys were nothing but an illusion. Jeff Halcomb, though . . . he knew Vivi existed. The proof was right there, scribbled onto the back of a snapshot. Somehow he knew, and for some reason, he cared.