Previous Pagesupposed to see.”
Gavin closed his eyes.
Chloe’s words from the morning echoed through the room.
Mommy is still alive.
But now Mitchell understood something worse.
The woman had not vanished to escape Gavin.
She had vanished because someone had made her more useful dead than alive.
And whoever had built the case against Gavin had nearly succeeded in using the state to finish the job.
The recording in the red box
The recording from the red box began with breathing.
Not words.
Breathing.
Shallow.
Panicked.
As if Chloe’s mother had pressed the device close to her mouth while hiding somewhere dark and narrow.
Warden Robert Mitchell stood beside the conference table inside the Huntsville Unit, one hand braced on the chair in front of him.
Gavin Cole sat across from him, still in prison clothes, still wearing the face of a man who had been dead twelve hourse arlier
