You’re just being paranoid, they told themself. They don’t know. They can’t know. Decent people—the kind of people you wanted to take with you, to make part of a normal family—didn’t do these kinds of things. Nam knew that much.

After leaving the Chief for the last time, still and stiffening on his bedroom floor, Nam finished filling an oversize hiking backpack with supplies: antibiotics, vitamins, bandages, a stitch kit, tins of food and bottles of water. They left it outside the back porch door as per the original plan. Rose had instructed them to gather these things slowly over the last few days, but taking precious supplies from a madman was an impossible task. It never would have worked. So they did it now, taking time to read labels and wrap bottles in protective fabric. Then they went up to release Rose.

Outside now, running through the overgrown yard toward the shadows of trees, Nam had a moment of panic for the first time, a sinking kind of fear that threatened to flush them away, out of reach. They turned around to look at the house, the windows dark, the left side sinking into the muddy earth.

“Nam, come on. We gotta go!” Derrick called. In front of him, Rose waved them on, terror and excitement making her dark eyes shiny.

One last look back. The house was just made of wood after all, not metal bars. The windows weren’t fortified. The back screen swung wild on its hinges like a mute woman screaming. And this time, they felt nothing. There were no eyes watching, no white ghosts floating, no bears stalking. There was just an old house being swallowed by the forest, one plank and one bone at a time.

“Coming.”

Nam jumped through the last knot of anxiety and off into the woods like a bird from an open cage.

CHAPTER 23

THE LIGHTS COME ON

French

“IT SEEMS THAT ONCE AGAIN, YOU ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY following the rules, Mr. Dusome.”

Agent Mellin glared at me over the thin frames of her spectacles. I fought to maintain eye contact even though it was making me nauseated. Because that’s what was required: eye contact when requested, complete subservience when demanded. Fear had grown in my body since I’d been here. It reached new places at a higher volume than ever before. It was more intimate, more immediate.

I opened my mouth to speak, but there were no words. What should I say? That the notes had already been in the mattress? That I’d never seen them before? Would she believe me if I told her that I’d written them myself? I couldn’t be responsible for the punishment–sorry, correction—of the entire isolation block. Their names bubbled up in my throat, slipped around my fingers.

“You know that having any personal items in your quarters is strictly forbidden, do you not?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I wished I had thought to bring something, anything, to stuff in my ears while I was in the Correction Room. Not that you could block out that wail. Its pitch was set to shake your brain on its stem. I lowered my eyes to my lap, watching my fingers hold and release every name. Kirby…Marsh…Shell…