Anchorage, AK—Thursday, 4:30 p.m. AKDT

“What’s wrong with you?”

When he heard that question, Jasper peered out through the bars of his cell to find the man in the cage across from him watching him closely. A new inmate who’d arrived only two months ago, Roland Holmes was like a praying mantis. He blended in, waited for what he wanted to come to him—and then he could be lethal.

Jasper was cautious around him. Unlike the many braggarts he’d encountered since coming to Hanover House, Roland never said much about himself or his crimes, never talked about the killing that’d gotten him incarcerated.

But Jasper had heard what the others had to say about him. He’d bludgeoned his old man to death when he was only fifteen. The judge had gone easy on him because his father had been such an abusive prick, but Roland hadn’t stopped there. He’d killed three inmates while he was in prison—for attempting to gang-rape him, unless that was just a rumor that enhanced the story—and when he got out at thirty-four he killed his mother’s new husband because the dude wouldn’t allow him to see her for fear he was too “dangerous.”

The inmates respected him. Truth be told, Jasper did, too. But he tried not to show it. Roland hated men who raped and tortured women—and if he learned you’d ever harmed a child, you were as good as dead. Jasper had once heard him mutter that going after such easy and innocent prey was like killing a household cat instead of having the balls to try for bigger game and that put whoever made such a mistake in the same category as his father.

But he didn’t understand. Jasper didn’t go after women because he was afraid of men. He had no sexual interest in men, gained no pleasure at the thought of torturing or killing them—not unless they were all he had to choose from.

Anyway, even Evelyn seemed to respect Roland, probably because he’d contacted her from wherever he was serving time before this and asked to come to Hanover House. Told her he wanted to know why he did what he did, why he didn’t fear the consequences as he should and why he couldn’t cope more effectively with his impulses.

“Nothing’s wrong with me.” Jasper wanted to tell Roland to mind his own business, but no one talked to Roland that way. If he did, Roland would simply bide his time until the perfect moment—and then he’d use a shiv. That was exactly the kind of excuse Roland was looking for from a man he’d already marked as having “broken the rules of engagement.”

“You’ve been pacing like an angry cat.”

Why was he always thinking of cats? “So? I’m anxious. You’ve never been anxious?”

“Not without cause. You didn’t have anything to do with Dr. Talbot’s abduction, did you?”

It would be a death sentence to say yes and Jasper knew it. “No.”

“You’re sure? Because she’s pregnant. You know that.”