He was just so damn confident.…

Roland didn’t back off, however. He smiled as though Jasper’s response amused him and sauntered over, going so far as to sit at the cement-like table where Jasper had his legs outstretched and his face turned up toward the sun.

“Enjoying yourself today?” he asked.

“I was until you decided to be a prick,” Jasper replied.

Roland chuckled.

“You think that’s funny?”

“No. What I think would be funny is to see how you behave when I have my knife at your throat and my dick up your ass.”

Watching him warily, Jasper sat up straight. “What have I ever done to you?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” He started scraping the dirt from beneath his fingernails. “I have a problem with men who victimize women and children. It’s a fucked-up thing to do.”

“What I’ve done or haven’t done is none of your business,” Jasper growled, but Roland didn’t get angry in return.

“According to what I’ve read online, you’ve murdered at least thirty women. Some you raped and tortured for days or even weeks. That true?”

Jasper could hear his own blood roaring in his ears. He was tempted to lash out, to teach Roland he was no one who could be messed with. That was how he’d met every challenge in the past—by coming right back at whoever stood up to him, louder and fiercer. But he was no longer in the outside world where most people played by the rules. No longer had the advantage of being the only one willing to go to any lengths necessary. “Why do you ask?”

“Thirty’s a lot.”

“I’m not saying it was thirty.”

“Well, we know there was at least one. Dr. Talbot has that scar on her neck to remind us. And you’re the one who put it there.”

Jasper could see where this was going. He just couldn’t see how to derail it.

“Don’t you ever wonder how they felt?” Roland asked when Jasper didn’t respond.

“No.” He didn’t care. It wasn’t about them. They didn’t matter. It was about the pleasure having that much power brought him.

“Well, maybe you should.”

“Are we going to have a problem, you and I?”

Roland didn’t so much as blink. “You catch on quick.”

Jasper narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going to do anything to me, not if I get to you first.”

“We’ll see how well that works out for you.” With another smile, he got up and walked away, and all through the rest of their time in the yard, Roland wouldn’t quit staring at him. The other inmates were catching on to his interest, murmuring that he was Roland’s next target and even placing bets as to who would survive in an incident between them.

If they were betting on Roland, they were betting on the wrong man, Jasper told himself. He never let anyone beat him.

Anchorage, AK—Sunday, 3:30 p.m. AKDT

Lyman Bishop hadn’t had a second’s trouble getting license plates for the van. He’d taken the ones he needed to get rid of with him in the rental car and, on his way back from running errands, when he was no longer in a parking lot where there might be surveillance cameras, he drove down street after street until he found an old truck in a quiet neighborhood and made the swap.