West, she thought. They were moving west.
But what did that matter? They were moving faster, now. No sounds of other cars, no billboards or signs. When the car slowed, it made another turn, then jolted over broken ground for what felt like miles. They were off the road, deep in the green. More metal clanked, and her head felt too small for the truth spinning inside it, that God had made this special hell for her, to be taken not once, but again. It couldn’t be coincidence, not twice. So swaying in the back of the car, lying horrified in the stink of it, Channing made herself a promise that, live or die, scared or not, it wasn’t going to be like the last time. She would kill first, or she would die. She swore it twice, and then a dozen times.
Two minutes later, a silo blotted out the sun.
27
Elizabeth drove through the morning fog and felt as stretched and thin as a character in an old movie. Everything was black and gray, the trees ghostly in the mist, and only the road gritty enough to be real. Everything else seemed impossible: the man beside her and the way she felt, the cool, damp air, and hints of swamp beyond the road. Maybe it was the silence or the invisible dawn, the sleeplessness and uncertainty, or the delusory nature of what she was doing.
“This is very hard for me.”
Elizabeth glanced right and knew Adrian was speaking of trust. They’d slept in separate rooms and woken to awkwardness and unexpected silence. He was embarrassed by what she’d learned, and she was undone by the memory of his skin. It wasn’t the tactile nature of it that haunted her dreams, not the ridged scars or the hard planes or even the resilience of it. She’d dreamed of minute tremors, and of the will it took to force that kind of stillness. She’d seen so many victims over the years, people ready to break or run or simply fold. But he’d stood perfectly still, only his eyes moving as she’d asked him to trust and then touched the most damaged parts of him. Those were the dreams that held her down, long visions of nakedness and heat and reluctant faith.
A fever dream, she thought. That’s what Adrian had always been.
Only, now he was not. He watched the water beside them, the glimpses that were black and slick beyond the trees.
Elizabeth asked, “Can you tell me why we’re here?”
He didn’t say anything at first. Tires hummed, and sudden ripples stirred the water. She thought it was a snake, the way it moved, or the spined back of some enormous fish.
“This is an old swamp,” he said. “Half a million acres of cypress and black water, of alligators and pine and plants you won’t find anywhere else in the world. There’re small islands if you know how to find them, and families that go back three hundred years, hard people descended from escaped convicts and runaway slaves. Eli Lawrence was one of them. This was his home.”
“Eli Lawrence is someone you knew in prison?”
“Knew? Yes. But it was more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
Adrian watched the forest for a long minute. “Have you ever been in prison?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“Then, imagine you’re a soldier behind enemy lines. You’re alone and cut off, but you can see others out there in the mist and the dark, all the people that want to hurt or kill you. You’re so cold and scared you can’t sleep or eat—you can barely breathe. But maybe you hurt a few of them first, and maybe you get lucky enough to survive the first day, the first night. But everything piles up, the sleeplessness and the cold and the goddamn, awful fear. Because nothing you’ve ever known could prepare you for being so utterly alone. It drains you from the inside out, renders you down to something you don’t even recognize. But, you manage a few days, maybe even a week. There’s blood on your hands by then, and you’ve done things, maybe terrible things. But you cling to hope because you know there’s a line out there somewhere, and that everything you’ve ever loved is on the other side of it. All you have to do is get there, and then it’s over. You’re home and you’re alive, and you think that before long it’ll be as if the horror was a dream, and not your life.”
“I can see that.”
“Being a cop on the inside is the same thing, but there’s no line anywhere, and it’s not days but years.”
“And Eli Lawrence helped you?”
“Helped me. Saved me. Even after they killed him.”
Adrian’s voice broke, but Elizabeth thought she saw parts of it. “When you say they killed him?”
“Preston and the warden, Olivet and two others named Jacks and Woods.”
“Guards?”
“Yes.”