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Back Surrender Your Sons Save as PDF
Chapters (43)
  1. Author’s Note with Content Warnings
  2. CHAPTER ONE
  3. CHAPTER TWO
  4. CHAPTER THREE
  5. CHAPTER FOUR
  6. CHAPTER FIVE
  7. CHAPTER SIX
  8. CHAPTER SEVEN
  9. CHAPTER EIGHT
  10. CHAPTER NINE
  11. CHAPTER TEN
  12. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  13. CHAPTER TWELVE
  14. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  15. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  16. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  17. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  18. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  19. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  20. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  21. CHAPTER TWENTY
  22. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  31. CHAPTER THIRTY
  32. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  41. CHAPTER FORTY
  42. EPILOGUE
  43. Acknowledgments

“No! I don’t poke around like this.”

“I mean, it’s possible he wasn’t listening to it. Maybe the Reverend needed to hide the tapes, and Bill’s stash was just the safest place?”

“Yeah, that sounds like the answer. Case closed; time for lunch.” Marcos clicks his fingers and retreats to the doorway. But I can’t follow him out yet.

“That means Bill has the other tapes in his bird’s nest…” I limp to the window, my lips moving independently of my brain. Through the suicide prevention bars, Bill’s watchtower stands, completely vacant, across the courtyard. An itchy tingling bullets up my spine. Bill isn’t there. I could scurry up and nab another tape before lunch.

“Please,” Marcos says, testier than ever. “I helped you, now you help me. Just take a breather and come to lunch. No more crazy detective stuff, okay?”

The sore on my back whines in agreement. I need to eat. And I don’t want to piss off Marcos or get him in trouble. I’ll take Drew’s advice: stick together. Darcy and Molly can help with what has to come next, and they need to know what I know—that Ricky Hannigan’s missing files were in the watchtower all along.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

LUNCH IN THE GULCH

Molly, Marcos, and I get the worst part of lunch over with first—seeing Briggs again. After Lacrishia delivers plates of peppered fish and instant vanilla pudding to us, my attacker stalks toward us on the way to his staff table. The hairs on my shoulders frizz and fly up, drawn to his presence like static electricity. It could be my imagination, but as soon as Briggs notices me, his boots slap harder against the cement floor.

I was prepared for this moment—Marcos insisted we rehearse.

“Watermelon, cantaloupe, watermelon, cantaloupe,” he and I murmur to each other. On the outside, we’re laughing, full of smiles, miming a lively conversation—“Watermelon, cantaloupe!” But inside, Briggs’s dread-soaked presence crushes every sound in the room into a muted, underwater silence like in war movies when a mortar goes off. “Watermelon, cantaloupe,” we repeat until Briggs passes. Marcos was right: jabbering nonsense kept my mind task-focused and unemotional. If we hadn’t, my attacker’s presence could’ve sunk me into a fugue—maybe I would’ve passed out or started sobbing without even realizing.

The world refocuses as soon as Briggs reaches the Reverend’s table at the farthest end of the South Pacific Gulch. Stanley Packard is in a fabulous mood. With his sleeves casually rolled above his meaty forearms, he cackles—mouth crammed with pudding—over some joke to Briggs, who isn’t up for a laugh at the moment. The Present Day Reverend still refuses to merge with the Boy Stanley I met on Ricky’s Expulsion tape.

How could that wounded, Pretty Young Thing become such a domineering creep? And potential murderer?