Page 83 of The Chain House

“Did you ever see him without the mask?”

“No,” she said. “And he never got to know me without mine.” She lowered her voice. “We all wore masks, Jennifer, they just weren’t so outwardly visible. Good luck finding him. As you’ve probably discovered, he’s a man of many names. The Count of Monte Cristo whenever he was feeling revengeful and mysterious. Holden Caulfield whenever he was feeling alienated. Mr. Darcy whenever he felt an urge to lean toward the aristocratic and aloof. Hannibal Lecter or Count Dracula whenever he lusted for blood. He’s Shakespeare’s Iago when he’s bloated with malice. When he’s especially cruel and arrogant and sadistic, he’s Joffrey Baratheon. And Mr. Hyde … let’s just say he was in there, too, always watching, observing …”

“Are you saying we’re dealing with multiple personalities here? A dissociative disorder?”

“Or the ultimate plagiarism,” Nancy said. “He didn’t just steal these characters from the books he’d read, Jennifer. He truly believes he became them.”

CHAPTER42

THE STEAKS, BROUGHT in from a local high-end Twisted Tree steakhouse, were better than Sam had imagined a last meal could be, or should be, given the state of their situation, with two folding chairs on opposite sides of a flimsy-legged card table in the middle of Warden Wren’s office, one of them shackled and chained, the other free to roam about; one hinting he was the other’s father, and the other not knowing who to believe anymore.

Multiple times, Sam had been on the verge of asking who his mother was, but each time words failed him. The sun had set an hour ago, and something about the finality of this meal brought the execution to stage front-and-center. Sam also knew this was officially Batise’s fourth final meal, and that he’d managed to acquire last-minute stays of execution on the previous three. But with Justice Minks applying the pressure, Sam saw no path out of this for Batise. There was the prospect of finding Emily Hawthorne’s body, and the book along with it, but once the body was found, Sam wondered what leverage Batise would still have, and during their dinner, he’d asked Batise as much, and Batise had countered with, “My stay will come by what is learned from the book.”

“So that’s your play?” Sam asked. “Your life hangs in the balance of a book you wrote and buried over twenty years ago?”

Batise looked at his left wrist, as if checking a watch that wasn’t there. “They better hurry.”

“You don’t seem worried,” Sam said.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Sam Harper.” Batise wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and tossed it on an empty plate still swimming with blood from his rare steak. “Although I’d be lying if I said the firing squad doesn’t give me pause.”

“You’re the one who wrote it in the book,” Sam said. “Minks is just following your playbook.”

“But I didn’t think it would ever be done to me.”

“So you aren’t working together?”

“Do the feds think we are?”

“They aren’t ruling that out.”

“As they shouldn’t.”

“Are you?”

“No,” Batise said. “The man truly wants me dead. He needs me dead. Or the series just wouldn’t work. It’s important for what happens in the next one.”

“You mean the previous one?”

“Sure,” he said, picking his teeth with a pinkie fingernail. “And no, I didn’t name you.”

Sam had raised the question earlier while they were eating—Who named me? And that he’d recently learned his real name was Steven Batise.

Batise had avoided answering the question then but answered it now: “Your mother named you.”

“And who was my mother?” Sam asked, throat heavy with emotion, because he’d never consider anyone his mother other than Annie Harper.

“Her name was Jules Whitaker. She named you Steven Batise.”

“Was she a member of the cult?”

“No … she was before The Collective,” Batise said. “I didn’t even know you were born.”

“You’ve been on record, many times, and despite bragging about the thousands of women you’ve been with, you claimed to have never sired a child.”

“And then Jules shows up on the Freedom Ranch with a little boy she claims was mine.”

Sam’s jaw tightened: “Am I? For sure … yours?”