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Chapters (41)
  1. Dexter in the Darkby Jeff Lindsay
  2. IN THE BEGINNING
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. THIRTY-NINE

Carl looked at me searchingly, and I could almost hear a purring coming from the shadow just past his eyes. For a moment our eyes locked and the world was filled with the black sound of two predators meeting over one small, helpless prey. "Well, well," Carl said at last. "Can it really be?" He turned to Harry just as I was beginning to squirm. "So I'm supposed to be an object lesson, is that it, Sergeant? Frighten your boy onto the straight and narrow path to godliness?"

Harry stared back, showing nothing, saying nothing.
"Well, I'm afraid I have to tell you that there is no way off this particular path, poor dear Harry. When you are on it, you are on it for life, and possibly beyond, and there is nothing you or I or the dear child here can do about it."

"There's one thing," Harry said. "Really," Carl said, and now a slow black cloud seemed to be rising up around him, coalescing on the teeth of his smile, spreading its wings out toward Harry, and toward me. "And what might that be, pray tell?" "Don't get caught," Harry said.

For a moment the black cloud froze, and then it drew back and vanished. "Oh my God," Carl said. "How I wish I knew how to laugh." He shook his head slowly, from side to side. "You're serious, aren't you? Oh my God. What a wonderful dad you are, Sergeant Harry." And he gave us such a huge smile that it almost looked real.

Harry turned his full ice-blue gaze on me now.

"He got caught," Harry said to me, "because he didn't know what he was doing. And now he will go to the electric chair. Because he didn't know what the police were doing. Because," Harry said without raising his voice at all and without blinking, "he had no training."

I looked at Carl, watching us through the thick bars with his too-bright dead empty eyes. Caught. I looked back at Harry. "I understand," I said.

And I did. That was the end of my youthful rebellion. image

And now, so many years later-wonderful years, filled with slicing and dicing and not getting caught-I truly knew what a remarkable gamble Harry had taken by introducing me to Carl. I could never hope to measure up to his performance-after all, Harry did things because he had feelings and I never would-but I could follow his example and make Cody and Astor toe the line. I would gamble, just as Harry had.

They would follow or not.

SIXTEEN

T HEY FOLLOWED.