“There’s a railing there,” Caine said.

“He went through it. Crash. Bumpety-bump all the way down. It’s a long way down. Me and Penny just climbed down, so I know it’s a long way down.”

Caine wanted this to stop. He didn’t want to have to hear the next part. Panda had been okay. Not a horrible kid. Not like some of Caine’s few remaining followers.

Maybe that explained why he would drive a car off a cliff.

“Anyway, he’s totally dead,” Bug said. “Me and Penny got him out. But we can’t get him up the cliff.”

Caine got to his feet. Legs shaky, stomach like a black hole, mind filled with darkness. “Show me,” he said.

They walked out into the night. Feet crunched on gravel now interrupted by tall weeds. Poor old Coates Academy, Caine thought. It had always been so meticulously maintained back in the old days. The headmaster would definitely not have approved of the big blast hole in the front of the building, or the garbage strewn here and there in the overgrown grass.

It wasn’t a long walk. Caine did not speak. He used Bug sometimes; Bug was useful. But the little creep was not exactly a friend.

In the pearly starlight it was easy to see where the railing had been ripped apart. It was like a steel ribbon, cut then left half curled, dangling over the side.

Caine peered through the darkness. He could see the car. It was upside down. One door was open.

It took a few minutes for him to locate the body.

Caine sighed and raised his hands. It was near the limits of his range, so Panda didn’t come flying up off the ground. He sort of scuffed and scooted along at first. Like an invisible predator was hauling him away to its lair.

But then Caine got a better “grip” and Panda rose off the ground. He was on his back, staring up at the unreal stars, eyes still open.

Caine levitated the boy up from the crash, up and up until he brought him to as gentle a stop as he could. Panda lay now on the road.

Without a word, Caine started walking back to Coates.

“Aren’t you going to carry him back?” Bug whined.

“Get a wheelbarrow,” Caine said. “Carry your own meat.”

THREE

63 HOURS, 31 MINUTES

THE WHIP CAME down.

It was made of flesh, but in his nightmare it was a snake, a writhing python that sliced the flesh from his arms and back and chest.

The pain was too terrible to endure. But he had endured it.

He had begged for death. Sam Temple had begged to die. He had begged the psychopath to kill him, to end it, to give him the only relief possible.

But he had not died. He had endured.

Pain. Too small a word. Pain and awful humiliation.

And the whip kept coming down, again and again, and Drake Merwin laughed.

Sam woke up in a bed of tangled, sweat-soaked sheets.

The nightmare did not leave him. Even with Drake dead and buried under a mountain of rock, he had Sam under the control of his whip hand.

“Are you okay?”

Astrid. Almost invisible in the darkness. Only the faintest starlight filtered through the window and framed her as she stood there in the doorway.

He knew what she looked like. Beautiful. Compassionate, intelligent blue eyes. Blond hair all wispy and wild since she’d just gotten up from her own bed.

He could picture her all too easily. A picture more detailed than real life. He often pictured her as he lay alone in his bed. Far too often, and for too long. Too many nights.

“I’m fine,” Sam lied.

“You were having a nightmare.” It wasn’t a question.

She came in. He could hear the rustle of her nightgown. He felt her warmth as she sat at the edge of his bed. “The same one?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s getting kind of boring now,” he joked. “I know how it ends.”

“It ends with you alive and well,” Astrid said.

Sam said nothing. That had been the outcome: He had survived. Yes, he was alive. But well?

“Go back to sleep, Astrid,” he said.

She reached for him, fumbled just a little, unable to find his face. But then her fingers touched his cheek. He turned away. He didn’t want her finding the wetness there. But she wouldn’t let him push her hand away.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “You just make it harder.”

“Is that a joke?”

He laughed. The tension broke. “Well, not an intentional one.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Sam.” She bent over and kissed his mouth.

He pushed her away. “You’re trying to distract me. Make me think about something else.”

“Is it working?”

“Yes, I’d say it’s working very well, Astrid.”

“Time for me to go.” She stood up and he heard her moving away.

He rolled out of bed. His feet hit the cold floor. “I need to do a walk-through.”

She stopped in the doorway. “Sam, I heard you come in two hours ago. You’ve had almost no sleep. And it will be dawn in a couple of hours. The town will survive that long without you. Edilio’s kids are on duty.”

Sam pulled on a pair of jeans and zipped them up. He considered telling her about Orsay, about this latest craziness. But there would be time for that later. No rush.

“There are things out there that Edilio’s guys can’t handle,” Sam said.

“Zil?” Astrid said. The warmth was rapidly draining out of her voice. “Sam, I despise Zil as much as you do. But you can’t take him on yet. We need a system. Zil is a criminal, basically, and we need a system.”