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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

But once I arrive, the pictures make sense. Instant, gruesome sense.

The frame on the right is black and white: two young, handsome men wear kimonos. They’re embracing. One is Hispanic and razor thin; the other is white, his round face achingly familiar. The man I met in the hospital bed would end up far more emaciated, but it’s the same person:

Ricky and Rigo.

Time and breath cease. The frame on the right—Ricky and Rigo—plunges an icy hand into my chest and squeezes. History laughs wickedly at the men’s smiles: Rigo will die. Ricky will suffer a brutal attack.

Why does Karaoke Bill have a picture of Ricky and his husband? Why was he listening to Ricky’s Expulsion tape? Why does he live in this dank, horrible room when the rest of the staff sleeps in a plush cabin near the waterfall?

The frame on the left holds my answer.

It’s a family photograph, decades old but well preserved—its colors have barely faded. Bill was clean-shaven then: a healthy man with swooping, blow-dried hair and a hearty smile poses with his wife and young son. The little boy, fair and round faced; the wife, chubby, cheery, and permed. The happiest I’ve ever seen Mrs. Hannigan.

His name is Bill Hannigan.

And Ricky was his son.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

MR. HANNIGAN

Surrender your sons, read the vandalized greeting outside the bunker.

A warning. An order. An admission of guilt?

At one point early in Ricky’s life, they were a family, but tragedy tore them apart. Did Bill kill Rigo and massacre his own son? The truth is closer to the surface than ever.

In all the times I brought Meals on Wheels to the Hannigans in White Eagle, I saw no pictures of Bill. Was the memory of him too painful for his wife? Too triggering for Ricky? The FBI came looking for a man they’d been trying to catch for decades—but he was being sheltered on an island, far from the law. Ricky knew it was inevitable I would be sent to Nightlight, so he left me a message that was both a warning and an order: HELP CONNOR.

Help catch my father.

Is Karaoke Bill the murderer I’ve been hunting? Was it him—and not the Reverend—who traumatized Ricky? Questions won’t stop swirling through my throbbing skull. Regardless of what I’ve discovered, leaving this island immediately is the only thing that matters.