Page 93 of Good Half Gone

Arthur took the security job, Ellis took watch outside, and Dalton built his bombs in D hall while Jude ran the hospital.

“And I happen to be very good at making people see things my way. You don’t know what spending seventeen hours a day in those rooms does to a man. You have all the time in the world to think…hatch a plan. We could talk to each other when we were outside in our individual gardens.Gardenis a generous word, Iris. They’re like grassed apartment patios. All in our own chain-link cage.”

Tears spill down my cheeks, and I rub them away with the back of my hand.

“A cage?” I am shaking, the words stuttering from my mouth. “Like the one you put Piper in?”

“Come on, you and I both know it wasn’t like that. Piper wanted to be with me. She loved me more than she loved you. That’s what makes you upset, isn’t it?”

He’s enjoying this.

Red explodes behind my eyes. I can barely catch my breath.

“Who helped you?”

“Do you want the full list? In order of importance?”

He laughs a foreign laugh. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never made a noise that terrible. The back of my neck tingles.

“Grayson was an old prick. He wanted to fuck Bouncer, so he had her sit in on our conferences. He impressed her pretty good, but I’d say I impressed her more.” He winks at me.

I see her lifeless face in my mind, red hair redder with blood. He’d made her feel like he was in love with her to get her to do what he wanted. Kept her under control with that too. I look at him in shock. Like me.

“I went on the prison diet. Lost a hundred pounds in my first year here. Grayson and I were the same height. With Bouncer’s help, I managed to change my face significantly.” I hadn’t recognized him, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever really looked at him either; my gaze had been elsewhere.

“It’s incredible what filler can do…hair dye…” He juts out his chin, running a palm over his jaw like a cartoon villain. He runs his thumbs over his eyebrows. “These are tattooed—no, what do they call it. Microbladed. Some people noticed.” He shrugs. “I made a big deal about losing weight and working out. I gave them a better version of Leo Grayson.”

“You wanted her to die. You planned it.”

“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like you were that day at the movie theater…”

“You actually believe that. You studied Leo Grayson, but did you ever study yourself?”

He laughs. “You’re smart as a whip, Iris—smarter than your sister.”

“Fuck you,” I say. My voice is clinical, lifeless. “Tell me about Piper.”

His expression changes. “That’s in the past…”

“Bullshit!” I say. “How dare you say that?”

He flinches. “It was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

He’s starting to get pissed. The muscles in his jaw are tight.

“She showed up at my house one night at three o’clock in the morning, pounding on my back door. My wife was out of town, so I let her in. We’d already started our relationship by then.”

Relationship. Is that what he thought it was?

“She was hysterical. She said men were chasing her. I calmed her down. She spent the night, but the next morning she wouldn’t leave. She was scared they’d find her. I got scared my wife would come back, so I told her I’d take her to my cabin. It’s a couple hours away. I used it for hunting. My wife never went out there because there was no indoor plumbing.”

He pauses to gauge my expression. I show him my numb, dumb face.

“She seemed to like it there. I asked her if she wanted to go home. She didn’t. She was ashamed of what those men did to her.”

It feels as if I’ve swallowed a mouthful of gravel. I clasp my hands in front of me to keep them from shaking.

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