“What about me?” he asked.

Lyman considered handing him the medication, so he could dispose of it—or sell it, which was far more likely. Lyman had already stockpiled so much. That sort of thing was likely to come in handy when dealing with a recalcitrant prisoner. Knowing that, he’d prepared from the beginning and hidden it all in a small shoe box he kept with his few personal things. But, at the last second, he decided to keep even these last pills. One could never have too many, he told himself. “You’re getting paid well enough,” he said, and slipped the pills into the pocket of his pajama top.

Terry arched his eyebrows when he saw him do it. “You know you can’t keep them there. The nurse will come by in just a little bit to make sure you took all your medication, and if you do anything that’s out of the ordinary, it’ll draw attention we don’t need.”

“I plan to take them,” he lied. “I just don’t want to do it while you’re here. They’ll knock me out in no time, and what kind of company would I be then?”

“Go ahead,” Terry said, his concern melting away that easily. “I have to get my work done, anyway. This place isn’t going to clean itself.” He started for the door, pausing at the last second. “I’ve promised Emmett you’re not going to hurt Evelyn Talbot. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“I’ve told you, many times, I’ve never hurt anyone.”

“So the Zombie Maker stuff—with the ice pick through the eye socket and all that other gruesome bullshit—that wasn’t you?”

Bishop knew how benign he looked, lying in a bed with half his face paralyzed. As an educated man, a man who came off as a calm intellectual, he wasn’t anything like the thugs Terry associated with criminal behavior, a fact he continued to use in his favor. “You know it wasn’t. The detective who was investigating those murders planted the evidence in my house. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have let me out of prison, remember? I’ve shown you the archived newspaper articles online.”

“I remember. You just want her to sign some paper so you can get your life back; I got it.”

Bishop hid a smile. It wasn’t difficult to convince someone who wanted to believe him.

“So how long will you keep her locked up?” Terry asked.

“Not for long. Once I’ve had my say, really made her hear me, she can go, if she wants.”

“If she wants? A woman like that would never choose to stay with a man like you,” he scoffed, incredulous.

Bishop smiled as he imagined how easy it would be to change her mind—in the most literal sense. “You never know.”

5

Anchorage, AK—Tuesday, 10:16 p.m. AKDT

Evelyn was far more exhausted than ever before in her life, but she fought sleep, didn’t feel as though it would be safe. She had to remain as aware as possible and do something about her situation, couldn’t sit back and suppose Amarok or someone else would be able to find her.