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that side of his body, but it wasn’t as bad as it would have been if he’d dragged it across the floor. The elevation was already numbing the leg.
    He heard a slight grunt, and then the door to the unit clanked and rolled up to the ceiling. Jazz’s eyes recoiled atthe sudden bright light that spilled in, and he shaded them with a cupped hand, peering into the light, his mind racing. Unless Hat shot him immediately, Jazz figured he had a chance to talk the killer closer to him.… He cast about blindly for the butcher knife. If he could get Hat close enough, he could jam the butcher knife right into that bastard’s heart.
    Ain’t I taught you nothin’, Jasper?
Billy’s voice whispered.
Heart’s protected by ribs and the sternum. Especially in your weakened condition, better to go for the carotid or the jugular. Or, if you can’t reach that, go for the femoral artery
.
    Right. Of course. More fatherly wisdom from Dear Old Dad.
    “Numb, stupid, self-absorbed prick don’t even bother to drag the body in!” the figure silhouetted against the hallway light said, and Jazz blinked rapidly, his quest for the knife forgotten. He was astonished that he wasn’t just hearing Billy’s voice in his head anymore—he was now imagining that Hat sounded like his father, too.
    He shook his head, and his eyes adjusted to the light, and
Oh my God. I’m not hearing things after all
.
    Billy tsked and kicked lazily at Morales’s body. A whispering sound came from her, and anyone other than Billy or Jazz might have thought—miracle of miracles!—she was still alive, but both Dents knew that sometimes gases built up in corpses are released when the body is moved or further damaged. Morales’s dead sigh was nothing more than that. Her last breath, perhaps, drawn in and never exhaled until now.
    With a swift and sure stride, Billy crossed from the entrance to where Jazz had propped his leg up. Billy had disguised himself—new hair color and length, facial hair, things like that—but no mask could hide Jazz’s father from him. Even if he hadn’t heard the voice, he would have recognized the walk; the way the lips moved; those cold, dead blue eyes.
    His father inhaled deeply and chuckled. “Ah, smell it! Preservative and rigor mortis! My two favorite smells.”
    Billy held a leather satchel in one hand and placed it on the workbench. “Oh, Jasper,” he said, his voice strangled. “Oh, what have you done? What did you let him do to you?”
    “Didn’t have a choice,” Jazz whispered. His voice, raw from screaming, was nearly useless.
    “Always a choice,” Billy reprimanded. “We’re masters of our own destinies.” He crouched down by Jazz, his cool blue eyes scanning up and down Jazz’s body. Jazz shivered; he hadn’t been this close to Billy in years. They’d been separated by a table at Wammaket State Penitentiary. Now it was just inches. And there were no shackles. No guards.
    Billy craned his neck to peer closely at the bullet wound and its attendant lateral cut. “You’ve butchered yourself, boy. Didn’t you learn nothin’ from listening to Dear Old Dad?”
    “I…” Jazz stopped. He was exhausted. Too tired to speak, much less to engage in the psychological thrust and parry of a conversation with Billy Dent.
    Billy took a moment to drag Morales into the unit—
unit 83F!
Jazz thought deliriously.
Population fifty-fifty, dead to alive!
—and then closed the door again, plunging them backinto darkness until he produced a powerful lantern from the leather satchel. The unit lit up; shadows leapt and pranced along the walls. Jazz went dizzy. Again. Stared off into the dark.
    “That’s right. Nothin’ worth seein’.”
    Clucking his tongue, Billy—with a gentleness that would have surprised anyone but Jazz, who now, quite involuntarily, experienced a sudden memory of his father tucking him into bed one night—took hold of Jazz’s left ankle. Supporting Jazz’s leg under the knee as well, he slowly