Or what if there was someone else out there, someone lurking in the shadows, waiting for Jason to make his first mistake so he could swoop in and grab Ree? She knew something more about Wednesday night. D.D. believed it; he did, too. If someone had abducted Sandy, and if that same someone knew Ree had been a witness …

D.D. had sworn the cops were watching his house. A promise or a threat. He had to hope it was a little of both.

Jason went upstairs, changing into black jeans and a black sweatshirt. He paused outside Ree’s door, straining his ears for any sound of movement. Then, when the silence unnerved him, he had to crack the door open to reassure himself that his four-year-old daughter was still alive.

She slept in a rounded huddle, one arm thrown over her face, Mr. Smith tucked into the curve of her knees.

And Jason remembered clearly then, vividly, the moment he’d first watched her slide into the world. How wrinkly and small and blue. The flail of her fists. The tight, screwed-up pucker of her wailing mouth. The way he instantaneously, absolutely fell in love with every square inch of her. His daughter. His lone miracle.

“You’re mine,” he whispered.

Sandy was pregnant.

“I will keep you safe.”

Sandy was pregnant.

“I will keep you all safe.”

He left his daughter and jogged down the street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

You know the thing that takes you the longest to get used to in prison? The sound. The sheer, unrelenting noise of men, 24/7. Men grunting, men farting, men snoring, men fucking, men screaming. Inmates muttering away in their own delusional world. Convicted felons, talking, talking, talking even as they’re sitting on the john, as if shitting in plain sight is somehow easier if they talk through the entire freaking event.

First month in the system, I didn’t sleep a wink. I was too overwhelmed by the smells, the sights, but mostly the unrelenting sound that never shuts up, never gives you even thirty seconds to escape to some far corner of your mind where you can pretend you aren’t nineteen years old and this didn’t just happen to you.

I got jumped week three. Knew that by the sound of soft-soled shoes suddenly rushing up behind me. Then came other time-honored prison sounds—the wet thump of one man’s fist connecting against another man’s kidney, the crack of a skull against the cinder-block wall, the excited cries of the other zoo animals as I lay in a stunned heap, my orange suit somewhere around my ankles as one, two, three—hell, maybe half a dozen guys went at it.

No one goes to prison and comes home a virgin. No sirree, Bob.

Jerry visited me week four. Only visitor I ever had. My stepdad sat across from me, took in my bruised face, shell-shocked eyes, and started to laugh.