He chuckled quietly at his own joke before continuing.

“So I guess I can share. After all, sharing is caring, right, Junebug?”

“If you say so.”

“No,” he growled. “I want you to say so.”

Jessie gulped hard.

“Sharing is caring,” she muttered.

“Good job, little one,” he said happily. “So here’s the great thing about hospitals—they bring in unconscious people. So if you find a homeless person who matches your size, age, and general looks and poison him very near the hospital you want to access later, they’ll admit him. Then all you have to do is sneak into the hospital before the big security clampdown, collect the unguarded unconscious man, and take him to a little-used basement storage room where you now have all the time you need to do a total blood exchange, which is a massive transfusion, replacing all his blood with your own. And if you’ve been accumulating and storing your blood in a refrigerator at that very hospital over several weeks, the entire process is actually very efficient. The machine that does it is mobile and everything. Modern technology is a marvel, Junebug.”

“Sounds like a snap,” Jessie said sarcastically, knowing her father would appreciate her reluctantly noting just how difficult that process must actually have been.

“If you’re prepared, yes,” he agreed. “Then all you have to do is put your extra clothes with your fake ID on the unconscious man, take him up to an industrial duct fan near a courtyard-facing vent, and shove him through. He’ll come down in pieces like candy dropping from a piñata.”

He paused briefly, almost as if he was waiting for applause. When none was forthcoming, he continued.

“And if you set things up ahead of time by shimmying down a rope to that vent when you know you’re on a camera that will be checked later, you’ve doubled your ‘confirmation of fake death’ pleasure. Chopped up body that looks like me? Check. My fake ID left with the body? Check. Surveillance video of me entering the vent? Check. My actual DNA splattered all over the scene? Checkmate.”

“That is pretty clever,” Jessie whispered hoarsely. “But how did you find me at the bar?”

As she asked the question, she rocked back and forth as if in terrible discomfort. She was but that wasn’t the point. She was trying to keep her arms from losing all sensation. Getting good old dad to describe his exploits was a useful way to extend her life. But if she didn’t have any way to prevent him from using that knife, all the delaying tricks would be for naught.

Her father didn’t seem troubled by her movement. In fact, seeing the blood from her wounds drip wildly on the floor as if she was the brush for an unfinished Jackson Pollock painting seemed to give him great pleasure.

“That was easy too,” he said. “After he escaped, I had a powwow with our mutual acquaintance, Bolton Crutchfield. He helped tidy up a few of the boo-boos I got in our last encounter. But I was suspicious that his loyalties might have been compromised. He used to be such a devoted young man, eager to learn, happy to do my bidding without question. But then he met you and he seemed to go a bit soft. His affection for you clouded his judgment. And when he learned I was going to punish you for good, he seemed…unenthusiastic.”