Taking a breath to steady his resolve, he broke the seal and started reading. It was all there in photographs and plain print: the lost years and the war, the life of his middle son. It took an hour to skim the file, and two more to read it again more slowly. Turning off the light, French tried to understand the things he’d learned of his son and the darkness of this particular war. It was not easy. There was no clear path. He was exhausted and hurting, but when the sun rose, he was still at the desk, still dumbfounded, thunderstruck, blown the absolute fuck away.

24

Jason woke on a hard bunk, and knew, even without windows, that it was not yet sunrise. That was the rhythm of war and prison. Too many bloody dawns and dead friends. In the dark, he did push-ups and stretched, then trained for forty minutes, not just the close-quarter combat techniques taught to every marine in Force Recon—the combination of Okinawan karate, judo, tae kwon do, and jujitsu perfected by Bill Miller in 1956—but also a devastating blend of Van An Phai and Vovinam, learned across two years from a colonel in the South Vietnamese army. The movements were fluid, fast, precise. He worked until the sweat poured and the guards came to take him back to death row. One, he knew. Kudravetz. The other was new to X’s detail. They shackled him in silence, and no one spoke on the long walk. No one needed to. At death row, they removed the restraints and sent him down to X.

“Good morning, Jason.”

Jason took the final step down, and met X where he stood beneath the stone arch. “It’s a little early.”

“And yet you’re not my first visitor.”

Jason frowned because X did nothing without reason; said nothing without reason. He wanted Jason to ask about the visitor, so Jason did not.

Eventually, X shrugged. “You remember Reece, I’m sure. A blunt instrument, admittedly, but predictable when such things matter.”

Jason was still trying to gauge the moment. A smile. A frown. In the subbasement, they rarely meant the normal things. “How about you tell me why I’m here.”

“You’re here because I found yesterday unsatisfactory. Because I went to bed unhappy, and woke thinking we should try again.” X turned for the cells, and Jason followed with the same wariness. At the second cell, X gestured at a table set for breakfast. “Bacon and eggs, grapefruit and pastry. This is honey from the warden’s wife. She’s begun to keep bees, apparently.”

He offered a chair, and Jason sat stiffly, watching X do the same. He was clean-shaven and finely dressed, but his face was bruised and taped, his knuckles scraped raw. X noticed the studied glance, and shrugged a second time. “One of the Pagans, late last night. I think his name was Patterson.”

“Was Patterson?”

“Was. Is.”