Late that night, Edison Leonard lay on his bed in the storage building. From time to time he would fall into a light, anxious sleep, but any sound or the absence of sound would bring him back to full consciousness. There was an owl’s hoot, and later for a time there was a faint breeze that rustled the leaves of the surrounding trees. For a long time he lay listening to Lonny Mann’s breathing.

This night felt like the nights he had spent in the federal prison at Victorville years ago. He had been on one side of a vendetta between two cliques, his and another, who had been fighting over ownership of certain desirable parts of the exercise yard. The issue wasn’t important. It was just all they had to fight about. During the worst of it, they had tried to get opponents hurt and into the infirmary so they could be reached during the night.

Ed had developed a fear that Lonny Mann might want to kill him in his sleep. A person who was not a wholehearted friend was a potential enemy. Ed had already resented Lonny for not working hard and risking Ed’s reputation along with his own. He was sure Lonny had detected the resentment. And now Ed had lied to Lonny about having sex with Charlotte. They had both been out of prison for two years already, but the crazy old claustrophobic calculations were still in Ed’s mind. Why not in Lonny’s? The old aggression and intimidation of prison weren’t that easy to shake off. Lonny might be capable of killing Ed so he would have no rival with Charlotte and so she would be frightened enough to submit.

Ed Leonard listened to the breathing coming from the other end of the storage building. He tried to tell whether the long, slow breaths were genuine sleep or Lonny Mann skillfully pretending he was asleep. Fake sleep was a two-part attack on his defenses, designed to fool him into feeling safe and to actually make him sleepy.

Lonny was someone he would never have wanted to be with in this situation. Lonny had been sentenced to life at least twice, once for killing an inmate in prison. He had also bragged in Ed’s presence about his dealings with women before incarceration. He talked about things he had done to women and the things he was planning to do in Weldonville when the breakout came. Enslaving a beautiful woman like Charlotte might be too much for Lonny to resist.

Ed couldn’t be sure Lonny had turned on him, but he had thought about Lonny so hard that it would have seemed foolish not to take precautions for the night.