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Back Deception Cove Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Forty-Five
  52. Forty-Six
  53. Forty-Seven
  54. Forty-Eight
  55. Forty-Nine
  56. Fifty
  57. Fifty-One
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Fifty-Seven
  64. Fifty-Eight
  65. Fifty-Nine
  66. Sixty
  67. Sixty-One
  68. Sixty-Two
  69. Sixty-Three
  70. Sixty-Four
  71. Sixty-Five
  72. Sixty-Six
  73. Sixty-Seven
  74. Sixty-Eight
  75. Acknowledgments
  76. Discover More
  77. About the Author
  78. Also by Owen Laukkanen

Boot steps on the wooden porch interrupted that line of thinking. Heavy, slow, deliberate. Then a knock at the door, three knocks, the same measured pace. Like whoever was out there knew she was at home, knew she had nowhere to run.

Beside Jess, Lucy began to growl.

One

One

A man goes into a cage for fifteen years and he’s bound to change inside, though in the end it’s up to him whether that change is for the better or the worse. Sometimes even he won’t know until he’s let back out into the world again, and at that point, there isn’t much that can be done but to stand back and keep watch, hope he isn’t broken beyond fixing.

Mason Burke had been eighteen years old, a boy and a wild one, when he walked into the Chippewa state pen on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and when he walked out again, his time served and fifteen years passed, he was no longer a boy and no longer wild, but still a mile shy of manhood and not fully tame, either.

He’d served his sentence quietly and without complaint, and he harbored no grudges. He was guilty of doing what the law said he’d done, what the courts had determined deserved fifteen years’ penalty, and in consequence he’d spent nearly half of his life a prisoner—though as far as he was concerned, he’d been treated fair.

But he hadn’t enjoyed prison. He’d learned how to survive, and how to pass the time, but just surviving fifteen years had forced him to stifle parts of himself he’d once thought were fundamental. He’d walked into prison a human being, albeit a flawed, reckless one, and as he stood outside those gates for the first time in one full decade and another half, buffeted by a chill November wind that swept across the barren parking lot, Mason couldn’t even be sure of his own humanity anymore, couldn’t be sure his time incarcerated hadn’t reduced him to something lesser, something base, something unfit for the world that awaited him.

He didn’t want to leave. That was the sickest part, the part that told Mason maybe something was broken inside him that could never be fixed. He wasn’t the first prisoner to have panicked at the first breath of free air, and he wouldn’t be the last, but as he stood gazing across that parking lot to the flat, dull land beyond, the whole world seemed impossibly large and alien, no walls and no boundaries, no structure, just a suffocating expanse of empty space and a lifetime’s worth of codes and social norms he’d missed out on learning.